St. Anthony of Padua
Feast Day June 13
St. Anthony, born in 1195, was canonized less than one year after his
death(1231). Though his work was in Italy, he was born in Portugal. He
first joined the Augustinian Order and then left it and joined the
Franciscan Order in 1221, when he was 26 years old. The reason he became a
Franciscan was because of the death of five Franciscan protomartyrs. They
shed their blood for the Catholic faith in the year 1220, in Moroco, in
North Africa, and whose headless and mulilated bodies had been brought to
St. Anthony's monastery on their way back for burial. St. Anthony became a
Franciscan in the hope of shedding his own blood and becoming a marytr. He
lived only ten years after joining the Order.
So simple and resounding was his teaching of the Catholic faith, so that
most unlettered and innocent might understand it, that he made a Doctor of
the Church by Pope Pius XII in 1946. St. Anthony was only 36 years old when
he died. He is typically depicted with a book and the Infant Jesus to whom
He miraculously appeared, and is commonly referred to today as the "finder
of lost articles."