St. Andrew Corsini

Andrew Corsini begins as the sort of young man whose story only matters if grace really changes him, and the life insists that it did. A reckless Florentine youth is brought up short by his mother's rebuke and then drawn into the Carmelites, where the earlier restlessness gradually becomes discipline, study, preaching, and leadership. When he is made bishop of Fiesole, the same change shows itself in public form.

He lives austerely, gives freely, seeks out the poor who are ashamed to ask openly, and becomes known as a peacemaker capable of calming civic strife as well as domestic quarrels. The life is not extraordinary because he never failed early on. It is extraordinary because a real conversion continued bearing fruit in office, charity, and public usefulness right to the end.