St. Martin De Porres

In my effort to learn more about the saints, I am going to post a small amount of information on each one during their feast day. OK, maybe not all of them, just the feast days that are on my wonderful calendar. Does your parish offer these?

So, today is the feast day of St. Martin De Porres. Information is from the Pocket Dictionary of Saints.

Photo Credit: Catholic Online

(1579-1639). Born at Lima, Peru, on November 9, he was the illegitimate son of John de Porres, a Spanish knight, and Anna, a freed Panamanian. He was apprenticed to a barber-surgeon when he was twelve and in 1594 became a Dominican lay brother at Rosary Convent in Lima. He served in various offices in the convent--barber, infirmarian, wardrobe keeper--and was active in caring for the sick throughout the city. He founded an orphanage and foundling hospital, was put in charge of the convent's food distribution to the poor, and ministered to African slaves brought to Peru. A close friend of St. Rose of Lima, his prodigious efforts to help the poor and his holiness and penances caused him to be venerated by all. He is reputed to have been gifted with supernatural gifts, among them bilocation and aerial flights. He died at Rosary Convent on November 3, and was canonized in 1962 by Pope John XXIII. He is the patron of interracial justice. --John J. Delaney