St. Anthony Mary Claret

Born: December 23, 1807

Died: October 24, 1870

Feast day: October 24

Patron saint of: textile merchants, weavers, savings, Catholic press, Claretians, Dioceses of the Canary Islands, foundations

If he had lived in our century, Anthony Claret would probably have been first in line to cart home a personal computer and a fax machine. (Dare we draw the line at a car phone?) Because he lived over a century ago, his tools were a bit different; but he used every one he could get his hands on to spread the word of God.

Born in Spain in 1807, Anthony Claret became one of the most practical men you could ever hope to meet, writes Robert E. Burns in Saints for All Seasons. Prior to becoming a priest, he studied design and manufacturing in Barcelona. The appreciation for new technology Claret learned there would come in handy throughout his life.

Using his business sense, he established religious publishing houses wherever he went, writing and often designing some of the books himself. “Since we cannot send missionaries everywhere,” he wrote, “let us send good books which can do as much good as the missionaries themselves.”

Throughout his early priesthood, Claret had felt a call to the missions. When he was 42, he gathered a small group of fellow priests into a religious congregation to do this work. He decided not to tie them to one particular activity, so the members were flexible to respond to different needs as they arose.

After only a year of guiding this group, Claret was named archbishop of Cuba, an appointment he dreaded and tried several times to refuse. Finally, when ordered to go, he went. Claret turned his attention to several of the thorniest social problems of Cuban society: interracial marriage, slavery, domination of the island by wealthy landowners.

Because interracial marriage was illegal in Cuba, thousands of couples lived together unmarried. White men fathered children with Black women yet were not held responsible for their support.

Claret met all this head-on. He went around the island performing marriages for 9000 interracial couples. For this he was vilified; some sent complaints to Madrid. He bought a plantation and turned it into a school and orphanage.

Although unable to budge the entrenched institution of slavery, he insisted that enslaved people had a right to worship and religious instruction.

When he realized that much of Cuban poverty was a result of too much land being used for the sugar plantations of wealthy landowners, Claret educated himself about agriculture. He began to encourage the formation of small, family-owned farms. He set up a system of credit unions, where workers, artisans, and small business owners could get loans.

Six years after he arrived in Cuba, he was appointed the Queen’s personal confessor. Claret abhorred the idea of being drawn into the intrigue of the Spanish court and agreed only on the condition that he could continue his apostolic projects and need not attend court functions. “I would almost have been glad if a revolution had come along and they had thrown me out,” he lamented.

He had 11 years to wait until this wish came true, during which time he published scores of books, restored a hospital for the poor, and opened a college and seminary.

Until his death in 1870, he used every moment to the fullest. Perhaps to explain his love for productive activity, he once wrote, “I was never much for sleep.”

—Catherine O’Connell Cahill