Obscure Saint of the Week

Obscure Saint of the Week
Saint Pedro Bautista Blásquez (1542-1597, Spain, Japan)
Feast Day: February 6
Patronage: Archdiocese of Caceres, Philippines; Japan
Pedro was born to Castillian nobility and studied at the University of Salamanca before joining the Franciscans.  After ordination in 1567, he taught philosophy and theology and was a superior for a few Franciscan communities.  He felt called to missionary work, so in 1580 he was sent to Mexico, where he founded more communities.  In 1583, he was sent to the Philippines where he became the first bishop of the Diocese of Nueva Caceres.  He founded many churches and defended the rights of the native Filipinos against the slave traders, arguing for their inherent dignity as humans.
Meanwhile, in 1590, the Jesuits had been expelled from Japan by anti-Western and anti-Christian authorities.  To replace them, Fr. Pedro and five other Franciscans were sent to Japan in 1593.  There they lived in poverty while caring for lepers and building schools, churches, convents, and hospitals. 
Despite this good work, they were hated by various groups in Japan, including Buddhists, European traders, and anti-Western Japanese officials.  They successfully convinced the emperor Toyotomi Hideyoshi that these Franciscan missionaries were a prelude to an invasion by Western powers, so he had them arrested on December 8, 1596.  The missionaries were rounded up and sent to Nagasaki where they were tortured and eventually executed.  Along the way, they were paraded through many villages, barefoot, during the difficult Japanese winter, for 800 miles, as a warning to other Christians.
St. Pedro is, thus, one of the twenty-six Franciscan, Jesuit, and Japanese converts crucified together on February 5, 1597.  During crucifixion their bodies were pierced through with lances to increase the suffering.  They are typically celebrated as St. Paul Miki and companions, and were canonized by Pope Pius IX in 1862.


Obscure Saint of the Week
Saint Dwynwen (5^th century, Wales)
Feast Day: January 25
Patronage: lovers (especially Welsh); sick animals
The beautiful and pious daughter of the Welsh king Brychan Brycheiniog, a young man named Maelon Dafodrill fell in love with Dwynwen and asked to marry her.  While she loved him, she also wished to be a nun.  One night she had a dream that she was a given a sweet drink which saved her from marriage but turned Maelon into ice.  Following the dream, she prayed for him and for all lovers to find happiness and that she not have a desire to marry. 
She then became a nun, living on Ynys Llanddwyn, an island accessible only at low tide.  A well associated with her, Ffynnon Dwynwen, became a place of pilgrimage for lovers.  Tradition says that lovers can talk to the fish in the well and whichever way they turn foretells their future.  Another tradition says that a woman can place breadcrumbs on the water and cover them with a handkerchief.  If the fish disturb it, her lover will be faithful. 
St. Dwynwen’s Church on Ynys Llanddwyn was a popular pilgrimage site in the Middle Ages.  During the Protestant Reformation, when devotions were suppressed, the site fell into disrepair.  It was only in the 19^th century, when the Anglican Church began to rediscover devotions, that people began to return.  Since the 1960s, her feast day has become a sort of Welsh Valentine’s Day.  A final tradition today says that if the fish are active in the well when a couple visits, the husband will be faithful.  “Nothing wins hearts like cheerfulness.”


Obscure Saint of the Week
Saint Jenaro Sanchez DelGadillo
(1886-1927, Mexico)
Feast Day: January 17
Jenaro was born on September 19, 1886, in Zapopan, Jalisco, Mexico.  He was ordained for the Archdiocese of Guadalajara in 1911 and served in a number of parishes, including Tecolotlan, Jalisco.  He was beloved for his pastoral work, especially for the sick.  He was humble and a great teacher.  He also was noted for his organizational and administrative skills.
When the Mexican government turned against the Church, he was arrested in 1917 for reading at Mass the letter by Archbishop Francisco Orozco y Jimenez, detailing the sufferings of the Church.  As the Cristero War broke out, he continued to celebrate Mass in private homes.  Jenaro and his parents were given shelter by the Castillo family at their ranch. 
On January 17, 1927, when he went hunting with the Castillos, soldiers entered the home to ambush him.  Though he could have escaped, he courageously decided to stay and face the soldiers.  He was hung from a mesquite tree and left as a warning.  His dying words, like so many Cristeros, was: “I pardon you, and my Father God pardons you, and long live Christ the King!”
His body was taken and buried privately in Tecolotlan.  In 1934, following the end of the war, his body was transferred to the Church of St. Michael the Archangel in Cocula, Jalisco.  He was beatified in 1992 and canonized on May 21, 2000.


Obscure Saint of the Week
Saint Theodosius the Cenobiarch
(423-529, Cappadocia (modern Türkiye))
Feast Day: January 11
Patronage: file makers
Theodosius was born into a pious family with probably some wealth due to his formal education from an early age.  He left home in his later 20s, influenced by Abraham, to more properly follow God.  He met
St. Symeon the Stylite in Antioch, who lived for 37 years on top of a pillar.  Theodosius was miraculously greeted by name and asked to ascend the pillar.  He did, and was embraced and blessed for great spiritual glory.  He continued to travel to Jerusalem and became the head of a church near Bethlehem.
After some time, he moved to become a hermit in a cave in the desert of Judah, said to be the cave where the magi stayed the night after they venerated Our Lord.  His holiness began to attract followers, and they built a monastery near Bethlehem.  There were so many that came to the monastery that there had to be different sections for students from Greece, Armenia, Persia, etc., but they all worked and prayed together well.  Near the monastery they also built a hospital, a hospice, and a mental hospital.
Theodosius was also a renowned teacher, and he opposed various heresies of the time.  The Roman Emperor at the time, Anastatius, attempted to bribe him to follow one particular heresy, but he took the money, gave it to the poor, and continued to preach against heresies.  Emperor Anastatius consequently exiled him, and he took refuge in present-day Lebanon until he was allowed to return under Emperor Justin I when he was in his 90s.
As he aged, he was stricken with a disease that made his skin as dry as stone.  He continued to work and pray and eventually died at the age of 105.  His title, “Cenobiarch,” means the head of people living a life in common.


Obscure Saint of the Week
Saint Manuel Gonzalez Garcia (1877-1940, Spain)
Feast Day: January 4
Manuel was the fourth son of five born to a carpenter in Seville.  He was a very pious young boy, active in the parish and singing in the choir.  He entered the minor seminary in Seville at the age of 12 and was ordained a priest on September 21, 1901.
The following year, he was sent to preach a mission at a church and arrived to find it dirty and neglected.  He knelt before the tabernacle and felt a call to revitalize devotion to the Eucharist and Adoration.  He wrote: “My faith was looking at Jesus through the door of that tabernacle, so silent, so patient, so good, gazing right back at me….His gaze was telling me much and asking for more. It was a gaze in which all the sadness of the Gospels was reflected…All of this sadness was there in that tabernacle, oppressing and crushing the sweet Heart of Jesus and drawing bitter tears from his eyes.”  Following the mission trip, he continued to work as a priest at San Pedro del Huelva in Seville and serve as chaplain for a nursing home.
He continued to work to strengthen devotion to the Eucharist, and eventually founded the Disciples of Saint John on March 4, 1910.  With the support of Pope Saint Pius X, the Disciples soon spread across Europe.
Manuel was chosen as auxiliary bishop of Malaga, Spain, in 1915, and was elevated to Bishop of Malaga in 1920.  He was moved to Bishop of Palencia, Spain in 1935.  He continued to spread love and devotion for the Eucharist, and became known as “Bishop of the Tabernacle.”
Bishop Manuel died of natural causes on January 4, 1940, and was buried next to the tabernacle in the Cathedral of Palencia.  He was canonized by Pope Francis on October 16, 2016.


Pope Saint Dionysius (3^rd century, Italy)
Feast Day: December 26
Little is known about his early life.  He may have been born in Greece and was a Roman citizen.  He was a monk and priest before becoming a bishop during the papacy of St. Stephen I.
After Pope Saint Sixtus II was martyred in 258 during the Valerian persecutions, the Church went nearly a year without a pope before Dionysius was elected on July 22, 259.  Due to that persecution, Dionysius spent much time reorganizing the Church which had been devastated.
He had a number of issues he had to deal with during his papacy.  He had to correct the Patriarch of Alexandria, also called Dionysius, regarding his teaching on the Trinity.  The pope also sent large amounts of money to the churches of Cappadocia (in Turkey) to rebuild churches destroyed by the invading Goths, and to ransom enslaved Christians.  He also successfully negotiated with Emperor Gallienus, who followed Valerian, for an edict of toleration that lead to a 40-year “Little Peace of the Church.”  Dionysius was the first pope to not die a martyr when he died of natural causes on December 26, 268.
One of the more difficult issues during Pope St. Dionysius’ time was the ongoing schism of the so-called Novatians.  This was due to a heresy taught in the 3^rd century by an antipope named Novatian regarding those who had left the Church during the Roman persecutions.  Novatian argued that apostates and others who had committed mortal sins like adultery, fornication, and murder, could not be Sacramentally forgiven, and therefore could not readmitted to the Church in full communion.  The Church, however, under the true pope Cornelius, had a more lenient policy of allowing apostates back into the Church.  The success of Pope Cornelius helped to solidify the Bishop of Rome as the head of the Church and also solidified the “universal” character of the Church for saints and sinners.


Feast Day: December 23
Patronage: against the death of children, difficult marriages, widows
She was born Mary Margaret Dufrost de Lajemmarais on October 15, 1701, the oldest of six children.  Her mother was the niece of Laverendrye, the first European to see the Rockies.  Her father died when she was just seven years old.  She went to school with the Ursulines in Quebec for two years, but returned at the age of 13 to help her mother raise her younger siblings and to educate them.  Her mother remarried an Irish physician, but he was unliked by others in the town and the family was forced to move to Montreal.
In August 1722, Marguerite married Francois de Youville.  The couple had six children, only two of whom survived infancy.  Both eventually became priests.  Her husband turned out to be an adulterous bootlegger who died in 1730, leaving Marguerite a significant financial debt.
Following this, she opened a small store to support her family, but she gave much of her profits away to those poorer than even herself.  She eventually gathered three other like-minded women and, with the help of Fr. Louis Normant du Faradon, they founded the Sisters of Charity of the General Hospital of Montreal (Grey Nuns) in December 1737.  They took over operation of said failing hospital in 1747, and Marguerite lived there the rest of her life.
The General Hospital, with Marguerite as the director, overcame numerous obstacles, financial and political, as well as military (their caring for English soldiers saved the hospital during the French and Indian War).  Marguerite died of natural causes at the hospital on December 23, 1771.  The Grey Nuns now serve throughout the world.


Saint Adelaide of Burgundy (931-999, France)
Feast Day: December 16
Patronage: abuse victims, against in-law problems, parents, prisoners, second marriages, widows
Adelaide was born a princess, the daughter of King Rudolf II of Burgundy.  She was married at the age of 16 to King Lothair of Italy (so she is sometimes known as Adelaide of Italy).  Lothair was poisoned by Berengarius, a rival who took the throne, in 950.  He ordered Adelaide to marry his son to solidify his power, but she refused and was imprisoned.  After a few months, she escaped and was sheltered by a priest.  She begged Otto the Great, a German king, for help, and so he came and defeated Berengarius.  They married, and he was crowned the Holy Roman Emperor in 951.
They reigned together until Otto died in 973.  He was replaced by their son Otto II, who treated her poorly when she clashed with his wife, Theophano, over power in the royal court.  Otto II died in 983 and was replaced by his infant son Otto III, with Theophano acting as regent.  At this point, Adelaide was exiled from the royal court until Theophano died in 991 and Adelaide stepped in as the new regent for the still underage Otto III.  Returned to a position of power, she did her best to help the poor, to build and restore monasteries and churches, and to evangelize, especially among the Slavs.  When Otto III came of age in 995, Adelaide retired to a convent near Cologne.  She never became a nun, but she spent the rest of her life there in prayer.  She died of natural causes in 999 and was canonized by Pope Urban II in 1097.


Obscure Saint of the Week
Saint Noél Chabanel (1613-1649, France, Canada)
Feast Day: December 8 (also September 26 as one of North American Martyrs)
Noél was one of four children and the son of a notary.  He entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1630 in Toulouse.  He taught in Toulouse from 1632-1639 and was ordained a priest in 1641.  Following ordination, he taught rhetoric in Rodez.
Like other Jesuits of the time, he felt a call to missionary work.  He was, therefore, sent as a missionary to the Hurons in New France (Canada) in 1643.  After arriving, he had a very difficult time adapting to the new land, culture, food, and languages.  This lead to a time of great spiritual struggle.  Rather than giving up, he decided to rely on faith.  His superiors gave him permission to return to France, but he realized it was God’s Will that he be a missionary, no matter how difficult.  He made a vow before the Eucharist that, if called to do so, he would spend the rest of his life in the missionary field.
From winter 1647 to fall 1649 he traveled with St. John de Brébeuf to work among the Algonquins at Sainte Marie.  He was then sent to Etarita to work with Father Garnier.  After only a few weeks, the situation was deemed too dangerous, and he was sent back to Quebec on December 5, shortly before an attack on the Christian Hurons by an Iroquois war party.  While leading a group of survivors to safety, he was murdered by an apostate Huron on December 8.  It was not until two years later that the nature of his martyrdom became known when the man admitted he had done so out of his hatred for the missionaries and the faith.
Quote from St. Noél: “I am going where obedience calls me, but whether I stay there or receive permission from my superior to return to the mission where I belong, I must serve God faithfully until death.”


Saint Catherine Labouré (1806-1876, France)
Feast Day: November 28
Patronage: the elderly, informed people, the Miraculous Medal, pigeons
Zoe was born in Burgundy, France, on May 2, 1806.  She was the ninth of eleven children for farmers Pierre and Madeleine.  She never learned to read or write, but had to take over care for the household after her mother died in 1815 and her older sister joined the Sisters of Charity.  Years later she visited a hospital run by the Sisters of Charity.  She had a vision of their founder, St. Vincent de Paul, telling her that God wanted her to work with the sick.  She joined the order in January 1830 and took the name Catherine.
On July 18, 1830, she had a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the chapel of the convent.  She was told, “God wishes to charge you with a mission. You will be contradicted, but do not fear; you will have the grace to do what is necessary. Tell your spiritual director all that passes within you. Times are evil in France and in the world.”  In November she again had a vision of the Blessed Mother.  This time she was told to have a medal made.  On one side was the image of Our Lady with the words: “O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.”  On the other side was the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  She relayed the vision to her spiritual director with the promise that “all who wear them will receive great graces.”
Her spiritual director, Fr. Jean Marie Aladel, eventually took her cause to the bishop, who ordered the making of what is now known as the Miraculous Medal.
She spent the rest of her life caring for the elderly and sick.  Catherine died on December 31, 1876.  Her body was exhumed in 1933 and found to be incorrupt.  She was beatified in 1933 and canonized in 1947.  The Miraculous Medal that came from her visions remains a favorite devotion for many Catholics.

Saint Marguerite d’Youville (1701-1771, Canada)