Paschal Baylon

Who they were

Paschal was born to a poor family in Aragon and set to herding sheep as a child, which gave him time to pray; he taught himself to read from prayer books. Refused at first by the Franciscans of the Alcantarine reform, and declining a rich employer's offer to make him his heir, he was admitted as a novice in 1564.

He chose to remain a lay brother all his life, feeling unworthy to touch the Eucharist as a priest, and took the humblest tasks, above all that of doorkeeper, at Játiva and Valencia. Sent in 1576 to carry documents to the minister general in Paris, he was beaten and insulted by Calvinists and nearly stoned at Orléans for defending the Eucharist. Worn out by penance, he died at Villarreal in 1592 after receiving Communion.

The miracles

In 1897 Leo XIII named him patron of Eucharistic congresses and associations. The miracles examined for his canonisation are not described in the sources we have used.

Why that counted as sanctity

'Toward God, the heart of a child; toward one's neighbour, the heart of a mother; toward oneself, the heart of a judge.' Paschal, a humble doorkeeper, lived for the Eucharist and defended it at the risk of his life.