On February 25, 2025, Pope Francis authorized the canonization of Venezuelan doctor José Gregorio Hernández, which will take place on October 19 of this year. Known as the “doctor to the poor,” he is considered a saint in Venezuela and other Latin American countries for caring for the most disadvantaged. He is also recognized for his contributions to medicine in his country.
Dr. Hernández was a physician, scientist, professor, and philanthropist with a deep religious vocation. José Gregorio Hernández was born on October 26, 1864, in the small farming village of Isnotú, in the state of Trujillo (Venezuela). His mother died when he was only eight years old.
He studied medicine in Caracas and was so successful that the Venezuelan president sent him to study microscopy, normal histology, pathology, and experimental physiology in Paris.
Upon his return, he became a professor at the Central University of Caracas. After bringing his family to the capital, he wanted to become a cloistered monk in Italy, to devote himself solely to God.
In 1908, he entered the Carthusian monastery of Farneta under the name Brother Marcelo. However, a few months later he fell ill and his superior ordered him to return to Venezuela to recover.
He arrived in Caracas in April 1909 and that same month received permission to enter the Santa Rosa de Lima Seminary, but he continued to long for monastic life. He returned to Rome after three years, took some theology courses at the Pío Latinoamericano College, but once again fell ill and had to return to Venezuela.
He understood that God wanted him to be a layman and no longer attempted to return to religious life.
The holy doctor of the poor
He decided to become an exemplary Catholic as a doctor, serving the Lord in the sick. He devoted two hours a day to serving the poor.
His daily routine consisted of getting up at 6:30 in the morning, praying for a while, going to Mass, having breakfast, visiting the sick starting at 8:00, having lunch and resting at 12:00, attending classes at the university starting at 3:00, seeing patients when he returned home, having dinner, and reading medical books and reviewing the day's events for a long time before going to bed.
In his service to the poor, not only did he not charge them, but he also bought them medicine or gave them coins, putting them in their pockets. It seemed as if money burned a hole in his pocket. He contributed to churches, brotherhoods, nursing homes, etc. His affections were not for material things, but for God, the sick, his family, his friends, his students, science, and books.
Dr. José Gregorio Hernández broke with the belief, deeply rooted in his time, that science and religion were divorced. His way of evaluating the sick earned him the esteem not only of the disadvantaged, but also of powerful figures such as former President Juan Vicente Gómez, for whom he was the personal physician.
One day, while crossing the street to buy medicine for a very poor elderly woman, he was hit by a car and taken to a hospital where a priest was able to administer the Anointing of the Sick before he died on June 29, 1919.
Caracas was moved, and many said, “A saint has died.” So many people attended his wake that the authorities had to intervene to organize the crowd that wanted to say goodbye to him.
Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino, Archbishop Emeritus of Caracas (Venezuela), has written that José Gregorio Hernández was “an extraordinary medical professional, doctor to the poor, scientific researcher and university professor, an upright citizen and exemplary in the practice of the civic virtues of honesty, patriotism, social responsibility, community service, and an example of family conduct.”
Religious and spiritual life
The Cardinal emphasized that the most important thing is not that, but rather his religious dimension, which was “the indispensable point for beatification.” “José Gregorio was a man of intense religious and spiritual life, and of constant practice of the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. He was truly a man of God,” Cardinal Urosa emphasized.
The Archbishop Emeritus of Caracas also recalled that the so-called doctor of the poor “lived permanently united to God through a living, deep, and ardent faith that always moved him to do good. He had a very firm hope in God in the midst of difficulties; he expressed his love for Our Lord through a life of intense religious piety and love for his neighbor.”
In 1986, he was declared venerable by Pope John Paul II, and thousands of parishioners flock to him to ask for miracles of healing and to give thanks for favors received.
In Venezuela and neighboring countries, Hernández, who dedicated his life to the causes of the poorest and is remembered for his charity and generosity, is considered a saint to whom popular imagination attributes numerous medical miracles.