Alphonsus Maria de Liguori
September 27, 1696 — August 1, 1787 · Feast day: August 1
Alphonsus de Liguori abandoned a brilliant legal career after a single lost case, then spent sixty years reshaping Catholic moral theology away from grim rigorism toward confidence in God's mercy. He founded the Redemptorists in 1732 to preach to Italy's rural poor and left the Church measurably more merciful than he found it, dying at ninety-one in 1787.