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Sometimes people accuse the saints of suffering from mental illness. Yet canonizations are generally good indications that one practiced heroic virtue, had great generosity, was spiritually mature, had a healthy and well-developed personality, and lived in profound union with God. Consider the example of St. Benedict Joseph Labre (1748-1783). At age 16 he resolved to live a religious life, attempting to join the strictest religious orders. Yet this was not God's will for him. Instead he had a unique call to live a most painful, penitential, lonely, and pitied life as a pilgrim outcast. The world served as his cloister, and he visited numerous shrines famous for Christian devotion. We can now see the prophetic role God assigned him as type for Christ's Church, which lives in exile and is scorned by the world.