Saints come from a variety of social and economic backgrounds. John would have become like his father a shoemaker, but John desired to become a priest.

Owing to the worsening economic conditions at home, John had to give up schooling. But a kind soul came to their help and John went back to his books and graduated from the newly-opened Jesuit school at Mechlin, Belgium, and joined the Society of Jesus.

John was eighteen years old when he joined the Jesuits and twenty-two when he died. What was it that made the Church canonize this ordinary sort of religious ? John followed his own simple formula: to do ordinary things, demanded by the rule or otherwise, in the most extraordinary way. There are millions of souls that follow this way, and the Church chooses some of them as models for others to follow - in the case of John (and of Aloysius and Stanislaus), for the youth of Europe of the time.

He was cheerful, never a spoilsport, strict with himself, a dedicated student preparing for the future as an apostle in the Society of Jesus, and very humble despite being very brilliant in studies. A model of true dedication to one's vocation.