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St. Hugh, Bishop of Grenoble
April 1, 2023
St. Hugh was appointed bishop of Grenoble specifically to reverse the desolate condition into which the church was sunk through the sloth and bad example of its late pastor. He found the people immersed in a profound ignorance of several essential duties of religion and plunged into vice and immorality. He endeavored by rigorous fasts watchings, tears, sighs and prayer to draw down the divine mercy on his flock. He had the comfort to see the face of his diocese in a short time exceedingly changed. For the last forty years of his life he was afflicted with almost continual headaches and pains in the stomach; he also suffered the most severe interior temptations. The remembrance of divine love, or of his own and others’ spiritual miseries frequently produced a flood of tears from his eyes which he found impossible to check. In hearing confessions he frequently mingled his tears with those of his penitents or first excited theirs by his own. At his sermons it was not unusual to see the whole audience melt into tears together. He often cast himself at the feet of others to entreat them to pardon injuries or to make some necessary satisfaction to their neighbors. He was nearly 80 when he died on April 1, 1132 after 52 years bishop.