St. Anthony Mary Claret

Who they were

Anthony Claret was a Catalan weaver's son who worked the looms of Barcelona before the priesthood, and he kept a maker's practicality for the rest of his life. When he became the great missionary of Catalonia and the Canaries, with thousands of sermons and towns preached awake, he concluded that the printed word outlasts the spoken one and built accordingly: a religious publishing house whose books and tracts went out by the million, and in 1849 the Claretian missionaries who carry his name on every continent today.

Made Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba, he spent seven years reforming a neglected diocese, regularizing thousands of marriages and defending the enslaved and the poor against entrenched interests, and he paid in fifteen documented assassination attempts, one of which laid open his face and wrist at Holguín. Recalled to Spain as confessor to Queen Isabella II, a court role he openly disliked, he used the position to found libraries, museums and more presses, followed the deposed court into exile, spoke at the First Vatican Council, and died in a French Cistercian refuge in 1870.

Why people turn to St. Anthony Mary Claret

Catholic publishers, writers, editors, and anyone making content meant to carry the faith, with St. Titus Brandsma and St. Francis de Sales. They wrote; Claret built the machines. Weavers and textile workers, by his first trade.

How to ask their intercession

Before publishing anything meant to outlast you, which was his own test. And for those serving in roles they did not choose, since his court years were exactly that and he used them anyway.