He founded the Redemptorist congregation in 1732. It was an association of priests and brothers living a common life, dedicated to the imitation of Christ and working mainly in popular missions.
Alphonsus has also been declared patron saint of moral theologians as he specialised in this area. His great reforms were in the pulpit and confessional. He suffered major ill health towards the end of his life. Alphonsus was known above all as a practical man who dealt in the concrete rather than the abstract. His life is indeed a practical model for the everyday Christian who has difficulty recongnising the dignity of Christian life amid the swirl of problems, pain, misunderstanding and failure. He suffered all these and yet he is a saint because somewhere in the middle of all his own suffering he came to know his God.