"A Son of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is a man on fire with love, who spreads its flames wherever he goes." — Saint Anthony Mary Claret
On the first of February, 1856, the Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba walked out of a church in the town of HolguΓn after a morning of preaching, and a man came out of the crowd with a razor.
The blade opened the archbishop's face, from the cheek toward the chin, and cut his arm as he raised it. Blood soaked his vestments. The crowd screamed. The attacker was seized on the spot. And Anthony Claret, bleeding in the street, did the thing that would not be forgotten in that town: he told the officials that he forgave the man, and he pleaded for his life.
There was nothing theatrical in it. He had been expecting something like this. For five years he had been preaching against slavery and against the arrangements that kept the poor of Cuba in misery, and powerful people wanted him gone. He also had a settled conviction that a missionary who is afraid to die is not much use.
If you have ever done the right thing and been punished for it, if you have been mocked, slandered or threatened for refusing to look away, then you know something of what this man's life felt like from the inside. He had the courage to forgive the man who cut him. He also had the humility to admit, in his own writing, that he was a sinner who had to start over every day.
A Weaver's Son in a Town of Looms
Anthony Mary Claret y ClarΓ was born on December 23, 1807, in Sallent, a small manufacturing town in the hills of Catalonia, in northeastern Spain. Sallent was a town of looms. The Catalan highlands had long been a textile region, and families like the Clarets made their living from cloth: carding, spinning and weaving wool and cotton, in small workshops and modest factories along the river.
His father, Juan, was a textile manufacturer, a small businessman with a mill and a household to support. His mother, Josefa, was a devout woman who raised their children in the faith. Anthony was one of eleven children, and the family was comfortable but not rich, which meant that the children were expected to work.
He was born into a Spain at war. Napoleon's armies moved into the Iberian Peninsula in the months around his birth, and the Peninsular War would devastate Catalonia for the first years of his life. After the French were driven out, the country settled into a long period of instability: civil wars over the throne, anticlerical riots, governments that seized Church property, and recurring waves of revolution. The Church in Spain, which had once seemed unshakable, was battered. Priests were scarce. Many ordinary people had no religious instruction at all.
Claret would spend his life trying to repair that.
The Boy Who Lay Awake Thinking About Forever
In his autobiography, which he wrote later in life on the order of his spiritual director, Claret recalled a night when he was about five years old. He lay awake in the dark and found that he could not stop thinking about eternity. He kept repeating a single word to himself: always. Always, always, always. It did not end. He did not know where he would be in all that time. The thought frightened him, and it also did something to him that he never forgot.
He grew into a quiet, serious, hard-working boy. He prayed the Rosary. He was drawn to the church. At twelve, his father put him to work in the family business, and he learned to weave.
He was good at it. At eighteen, he went to Barcelona to study the trade at a higher level, taking classes in design, learning to work with the new weaving machinery, and picking up Latin, French, engraving and printing along the way. Barcelona was a booming industrial city. He had talent, ambition, and the chance of a prosperous career in the textile business.
He was also, as he admitted later, tempted by the idea of making a great deal of money. He was young and capable and had ahead of him the kind of life that a smart man could build. But something was already turning inside him. One day in Barcelona he read the words of Jesus in the Gospel: What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? The question stayed with him. He kept asking himself what, in the end, his work was for.
He gave up the business. The idea of the priesthood had been growing in him for years, and in 1829, at age twenty-one, he entered the diocesan seminary in the town of Vic. He was now a former factory worker among younger students, sitting at the back of classrooms with a tradesman's hands.
The Doors That Closed
If the story ended there, it would sound simple. He heard the call, entered the seminary, was ordained and went on to found a congregation. But that is not what happened. For nearly a decade after he gave up his trade, almost every door he tried to open was closed.
He wanted to be a Carthusian, a contemplative monk of the strictest order, living in silence and solitude. But in July 1835, during a wave of anticlerical violence in Spain, religious houses across the country were attacked and suppressed, and the Carthusians' monastery was among those closed. He was ordained a priest that June, in the middle of the First Carlist War, while the country was tearing itself apart. The life he had planned as a monk was no longer possible.
So he turned to a different idea: to become a missionary abroad. In 1839, he traveled to Rome, to the office that directs the Church's missions, hoping to be sent overseas. He ended up entering the novitiate of the Society of Jesus, hoping to follow Saint Francis Xavier into the foreign missions. But his health was poor, and after a short time the Jesuit superiors concluded that his vocation lay elsewhere. In their judgment, he was needed in Spain.
He went home with nothing. No monastery, no mission to the Indies, no religious order. He was thirty-two years old, a priest with no clear future. He later wrote that those closed doors had taught him to stop planning his own life.
A Priest on Foot
Claret returned to Catalonia and served as a parish priest, first in Sallent, then in the village of Viladrau, in the mountains. He was an effective pastor. But he was restless. He kept seeing how many people in the Catalan villages, hundreds of miles from any city, had never heard a real sermon, had never been to confession in years, and had no idea what the Church taught.
In 1843, his bishop gave him permission to preach missions full-time. For the next several years, he walked from village to village across Catalonia, preaching in town squares, churches and fields, hearing confessions for hours at a time, sleeping in whatever room he was given, eating whatever he was offered. He carried a small bundle and a breviary. He preached simply and directly, in the language of ordinary people. Thousands came. By the end of his missionary years in Catalonia, he had preached an enormous number of sermons in hundreds of places.
In 1848, he was sent to the Canary Islands to preach for about fifteen months, with the same results. When he returned to Vic, he had a clear sense of what was missing. The work was too big for one man. He needed a team.
On July 16, 1849, in a small room of the seminary at Vic, Claret and five other priests formally began a new community: the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, soon known as the Claretians. Their purpose was simple. They would go to places where the Gospel was not being preached, go on foot if they had to, live simply, and preach with fire.
Seven Years in the Saddle
The founding had barely begun when the Queen of Spain intervened. Isabella II wanted a bishop for the Archdiocese of Santiago de Cuba, then a Spanish colony, a post that had gone unfilled for years. She had heard of the preacher from Catalonia, and she and her ministers recommended him to Pope Pius IX. Claret begged not to be sent. He was forty-two and had just started a congregation. But the appointment came through, and he obeyed. He was consecrated archbishop in the cathedral at Vic on October 6, 1850, and sailed for Cuba, arriving at Santiago in February 1851.
He found an archdiocese in disrepair. The clergy were few. Churches were neglected, and in the countryside, many couples lived together without being married in the Church, partly because the fees and the distances were too great. Enslaved people, who made up a large share of the population, often had no access to the sacraments at all, and the wealthy landowners who controlled the economy had little interest in changing the situation.
Claret did not wait in the city. He set out on horseback and mule across the archdiocese, visiting towns and villages that had never seen a bishop. He preached, confirmed, and heard confessions. He reorganized parishes and trained priests. He worked to bring thousands of couples into the sacrament of marriage, often by waiving or reducing the costs. He taught the poor trades and farming, and set up a savings bank and agricultural training to help families out of debt. He preached publicly that all human beings were created in the image of God, and he did not exempt the plantation owners from that teaching.
He also kept writing and distributing books. In 1848, before leaving Spain, he had helped found a religious bookshop in Barcelona, called the Religious Library, to produce and distribute cheap, solid Catholic literature. It was a startling idea. Most of the Spanish poor could not afford books, and what was cheaply available was often hostile to the faith. Claret wrote, edited and promoted a large number of titles himself, including a spiritual guide, The Straight Path to Heaven, and a book of formation for seminarians. In his time, the idea that a bishop should be a publisher struck many as odd. He saw it as the same work as preaching: reaching the people who would never come to a church.
In 1855, he joined with a Spanish woman, Maria Antonia ParΓs, in founding a congregation of sisters, the Claretian Missionary Sisters, to carry on the same mission among women and girls.
A Razor at HolguΓn, and a Palace He Did Not Want
Nothing he did in Cuba came free.
Landowners resented his teaching on slavery and the treatment of workers. Some officials resented his interference with arrangements that had suited them for decades. Slander followed him. Several attempts were made on his life. The attack at HolguΓn on February 1, 1856, was the worst. His face was cut open. He recovered, and he carried the scar for the rest of his life. When the attacker was sentenced, Claret pleaded for him.
In 1857, Queen Isabella II summoned him back to Spain to serve as her confessor. He did not want the job. He had spent his life among peasants, and he understood that a court was a dangerous place for a bishop. But the Queen insisted, and the Pope approved. He resigned his see in Cuba, was named titular Archbishop of Trajanopolis, and moved to Madrid.
For the next eleven years, he lived in the shadow of the throne. He did what he could to keep his promises to himself: he wore a worn cassock, rose before dawn to pray, and refused to use his position to pile up wealth or favors. He insisted that he was there as a priest, not a politician. He continued to preach, write and found, and he served as head of the Royal Monastery of El Escorial, where he worked to establish a school and a library.
But a confessor to a queen is never above suspicion. Isabella's reign was controversial, and her private life was a source of scandal. Her government was widely disliked. Claret's critics accused him of political influence, whether or not it was true. His enemies in the press mocked him. He lived with the knowledge that, as long as he stayed at court, he would be blamed for things he could not control. He prayed, and he stayed, because he believed the Queen needed a priest.
He also recorded in his autobiography a profound grace that came to him during these years. On August 26, 1861, while praying in a church at La Granja de San Ildefonso, he experienced what he described as a permanent Eucharistic presence in his heart, a sense of the Lord's presence that he said remained with him continually for the rest of his life. He also wrote of a persistent longing for martyrdom.
In September 1868, the revolution came. Isabella II was overthrown and went into exile in France. The new government was hostile to the Church. Claret, who had followed the Queen across the border, had no wish to remain in political exile. But he could not return to Spain.
A Hidden Abbey in the South of France
He went to Rome. In December 1869, the First Vatican Council opened, and Claret took part as a bishop. He supported the definition of papal infallibility. He was sixty-two and worn out. He had spent his life on the road, preaching in all weathers, sleeping little, and eating less. He had been cut with a razor and attacked by crowds, exiled by revolution and weakened by a heart ailment. His health was failing.
He left Rome that year. The new Spanish authorities had little love for him, and he was not safe in his own country. Traveling to France, he went first to the Catalan border town of Prades, and then to the Cistercian abbey of Fontfroide, near Narbonne, a quiet old monastery where the monks agreed to shelter him.
He spent his last weeks in a monastery cell, a long way from the cathedral of Santiago de Cuba, the palaces of Madrid and the villages of Catalonia. The man who had never rested now had no choice. He received the sacraments and spent his days in prayer. The monks cared for him. His Claretian sons gathered to be with him.
Anthony Mary Claret died at Fontfroide Abbey on October 24, 1870. He was sixty-two years old. He died in exile, away from the country he had served, without the martyrdom he had longed for, and in the arms of a community that was not his own. According to tradition, he died with the names of Jesus and Mary on his lips.
The Heart That Would Not Decay
The Church moved with deliberate speed. Pope Pius XI beatified him on February 25, 1934, and Pope Pius XII canonized him on May 7, 1950. His feast is celebrated on October 24, the day of his death.
His remains were returned to Spain in 1897. When his tomb was opened at Fontfroide, his body had turned to dust, but his heart was found incorrupt. It is preserved in the Claretian church at Vic, the town where he studied, was consecrated archbishop and founded his congregation. For a man who spent his life talking about the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the fire of love, the sign is hard to miss.
His patronage grows out of his life. He is the patron of the Claretians, the congregation he founded. He is the patron of the Catholic press, because he understood, before most bishops, that the printed word could carry the Gospel into homes that no preacher could reach, and he put enormous energy into making sure that good books were cheap and available. He is a patron of weavers and textile workers, because he was one, a tradesman who left a promising career but never lost respect for the people who work with their hands. Some lists also name him a patron of savings, which comes from the savings bank he established to help poor Cuban families. That last patronage comes from devotion, not from a formal decree.
His congregation has grown far beyond a room in Vic. The Claretians now work in dozens of countries, in parishes, schools, missions and publishing. The Claretian Missionary Sisters continue their own work in many parts of the world.
His deepest legacy is a pattern of missionary life. He showed that a bishop could be a publisher, that a preacher could be a banker for the poor, that a man could be called to a hundred different jobs and bring the same fire to all of them. He believed that the love of God, once received, could not be kept to oneself. He wanted a man on fire, setting everything around him alight.
| Born | December 23, 1807, Sallent, Catalonia, Spain |
|---|---|
| Died | October 24, 1870, Fontfroide Abbey, near Narbonne, France — after a long illness (heart ailment), at age 62 |
| Feast Day | October 24 |
| Order / Vocation | Priest and Archbishop; Founder of the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (Claretians, C.M.F.) |
| Canonized | May 7, 1950 — Pope Pius XII |
| Beatified | February 25, 1934 — Pope Pius XI |
| Body | Remains in Vic, Spain; heart found incorrupt in 1897 and preserved at the Claretian church in Vic |
| Patron Of | The Claretians · The Catholic press · Weavers and textile workers · Savings (by devotion) |
| Known As | The Weaver Who Set the World on Fire · Apostle of the Catholic Press · Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba |
| Key Writings | Autobiography · The Straight Path to Heaven · The Well-Instructed Seminarian · Sermons, pamphlets and letters |
| Foundations | Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (Vic, 1849) · The Religious Library, Barcelona (1848) · Claretian Missionary Sisters, with Maria Antonia ParΓs (1855) |
| Their Words | "A Son of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is a man on fire with love, who spreads its flames wherever he goes." |
Prayer
O God, who gave Saint Anthony Mary Claret a heart on fire with love for you and for the poor, and the courage to forgive those who struck him down, grant us, through his prayers, a faith that works with its hands, a voice that speaks the Gospel plainly, and a love that no fear can put out. Make us bearers of your fire to every place that is cold. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Saint Anthony Mary Claret, pray for us.
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