Feast day: October 24

St. Anthony Mary Claret

Archbishop, Founder · 1807–1870

Patron of Weavers, the Catholic press

A Catalan weaver's son who became a tireless missionary preacher, archbishop of Cuba, founder of the Claretians, and a pioneer of spreading the faith through cheap printed books.

Anthony Mary Claret was born in 1807 in Catalonia, Spain, the son of a weaver, and worked as a weaver and designer himself before following his vocation to the priesthood. Ordained in 1835, he became one of the most extraordinary missionaries of the nineteenth century — a tireless preacher who, by his own account, gave thousands of sermons and missions across Catalonia and the Canary Islands.

Convinced of the power of the printed word, he founded a religious publishing house and wrote and distributed an immense number of books, pamphlets, and leaflets to spread the faith — which has made him a patron of the Catholic press. In 1849 he founded a missionary congregation, the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, known today as the Claretians.

In 1850 he was made archbishop of Santiago de Cuba, where for six years he reformed a neglected and corrupt diocese with fierce energy — preaching, regularizing marriages, defending the poor and the enslaved against the planters — and survived multiple assassination attempts, once being slashed across the face.

Recalled to Spain as confessor to the queen, he was caught up in the political turmoil of the age and driven into exile when the monarchy fell. He died in exile in France in 1870, and was canonized in 1950 — the weaver's son who became one of the Church's great modern apostles.

He preached thousands of missions, survived an assassin's blade across his face in Cuba, and printed and gave away millions of religious booklets.

Image: Cesc2003 (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/16026a.htm