Anthony Mary Claret

Who they were

Anthony Claret was born at Sallent near Barcelona in 1807 into a large Christian family, and worked as a weaver with his father before entering the seminary of Vic in 1829. Ordained in 1835, he went to Rome hoping for the missions and began the Jesuit novitiate, but illness sent him home, where he preached for seven years across Catalonia and the Canaries, always on foot with Bible and breviary. In 1849 he founded the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Claretians.

Made Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba in 1851, he found a diocese in ruins; he held a synod, reformed the clergy and travelled the whole territory, caring for the poor, and was wounded in an assassination attempt at Holguín.

The miracles

271 of his Claretian sons were martyred in the Spanish Civil War. The miracles examined for his causes are not described in the sources we have used.

Why that counted as sanctity

Anthony Claret was an apostle on foot, burning with charity for God's glory and the salvation of souls, and a shepherd who risked his life to renew a neglected Church.