From EWTN
Antoni Maria Claret i Clara was born in 1807 in Sallent in Catalonia, the son of a weaver who ensured him an education beyond what his class might have expected, trained as a weaver himself, worked in the textile industry in Barcelona, discerned a vocation to the priesthood, was ordained in 1835, and spent the next several years as a parish priest in Catalonia and a growing commitment to mission preaching that eventually took him throughout Spain and into the Canary Islands and Cuba. He founded the Congregation of Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (the Claretians) in 1849, and was appointed Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba the same year.
His years in Cuba from 1849 to 1857 were among the most intense of his life: he organized the diocese, cared for the poor and the enslaved, promoted agricultural cooperatives and savings banks for the rural poor, preached missions throughout the island, survived multiple assassination attempts (including a knife attack that severed a tendon), and established a model of pastoral engagement with the social conditions of colonial Cuba that made him controversial among the powerful interests he challenged and beloved among the poor he served.
He was recalled to Spain in 1857 to serve as confessor to Queen Isabella II, a position he accepted with considerable reluctance and used primarily as a platform for continued publishing and preaching. He was expelled from Spain with the queen during the revolution of 1868 and died in exile in France in 1870.
Antoni Maria Claret i Clara was born in 1807 in Sallent in Catalonia, the son of a weaver who ensured him an education beyond what his class might have expected, trained as a weaver himself, worked in the textile industry in Barcelona, discerned a vocation to the priesthood, was ordained in 1835, and spent the next several years as a parish priest in Catalonia and a growing commitment to mission preaching that eventually took him throughout Spain and into the Canary Islands and Cuba. He founded the Congregation of Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (the Claretians) in 1849, and was appointed Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba the same year.
His years in Cuba from 1849 to 1857 were among the most intense of his life: he organized the diocese, cared for the poor and the enslaved, promoted agricultural cooperatives and savings banks for the rural poor, preached missions throughout the island, survived multiple assassination attempts (including a knife attack that severed a tendon), and established a model of pastoral engagement with the social conditions of colonial Cuba that made him controversial among the powerful interests he challenged and beloved among the poor he served.
He was recalled to Spain in 1857 to serve as confessor to Queen Isabella II, a position he accepted with considerable reluctance and used primarily as a platform for continued publishing and preaching. He was expelled from Spain with the queen during the revolution of 1868 and died in exile in France in 1870.
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