St. Anthony Mary Claret

St. Anthony Mary Claret was born in 1807 in Sallent, in the Catalonia region of Spain, the son of a weaver. He worked in the textile trade as a young man before entering the seminary at Vic, and he was ordained a priest in 1835. Frail health closed the door to the Carthusians and to the Jesuit novitiate, so he poured himself into the work that would define his life: popular missions, preaching from town to town across Catalonia and the Canary Islands with tireless energy. Convinced that the printed word was a pulpit of its own, Claret wrote and distributed an astonishing number of books and pamphlets—by common count well over a hundred—and helped establish a religious publishing house, work that has made him a patron of the Catholic press. In 1849 he gathered five young priests at Vic and founded the Congregation of Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, known today worldwide as the Claretians. That same year he was appointed Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba, a neglected diocese he set about reforming with characteristic vigor: he regularized thousands of marriages, preached constantly, defended the poor, and made enemies doing it. An assassin slashed his face in Holguín in 1856; he counted the wound a share in the Cross. Recalled to Spain in 1857, he served as confessor to Queen Isabella II, using the post to continue his apostolate of preaching and writing while keeping his distance from court politics. When the revolution of 1868 sent the queen into exile, Claret followed, and he attended the First Vatican Council, where he spoke in defense of papal infallibility. He died on October 24, 1870, at the Cistercian monastery of Fontfroide in southern France. Anthony Mary Claret was beatified in 1934 by Pope Pius XI and canonized in 1950 by Pope Pius XII. His relics are venerated at Vic in Spain, and his feast is celebrated on October 24. He is a patron of the Catholic press and of weavers, a nod to both his father's loom and his own early trade.