St. Antony

Feast day: 13th June

Patronage: Seeker of lost articles

Anthony of Padua, (Fernando Martins de Bulhoes) (15 August 1195 - 13 June 1231) was a Portuguese Catholic priest and friar of the Franciscan Order. Noted by his contemporaries for his forceful preaching and expert knowledge of scripture, he was the fastest canonized saint and proclaimed a Doctor of the Church on 16 January 1946.

He was born in Lisbon to Vicente Martins de Bulhoes and Teresa Pais Taveira. His was a very rich family of the nobility. He entered the community of Canons Regular at the Abbey of St. Vincent on the outskirts of Lisbon. At the Abbey of the Holy Cross in Coimbra, young Fernando studied theology and Latin.

After his ordination to the priesthood, in 1219, he came into contact with five Franciscan friars who were on their way to Morocco to preach the Gospel to the Muslims there. In February of the following year, news arrived that the five Franciscans had been martyred in Morocco. Seeing their bodies as they were processed back to Assisi, Fernando meditated on the heroism of these men; inspired by their example, and longing for the same gift of martyrdom, he obtained permission from church authorities to leave the Augustinian Canons to join the new Franciscan Order. Upon his admission to the life of the friars, he joined the small hermitage in Olivais, adopting the name Anthony by which he was to be known. The new Brother Anthony then set out for Morocco, in fulfillment of his new vocation. Illness, however, stopped him on his journey. At this point, he decided to head to Italy, the center of his new order.

On the voyage, his ship was driven by a storm onto the coast of Sicily and he landed at Messina. From Sicily he made his way to Tuscany where he was assigned to a convent of the order, but he met with difficulty on account of his sickly appearance. He was finally assigned, out of pure compassion, to the rural hospice of San Paolo. There he appears to have lived as a hermit and was put to work in the kitchen, while being allowed to spend much time in private prayer and study.

Anthony became ill with edema and, in 1231, went to the woodland retreat at Camposampiero with two other friars for a respite. There Anthony lived in a cell built for him under the branches of a walnut tree. Anthony died on the way back to Padua on 13 June 1231 at the Poor Clare monastery at Arcella (now part of Padua), aged 36.

Anthony was canonized by Pope Gregory IX on 30 May 1232, at Spoleto, Italy, less than one year after his death. Proclaimed a Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius XII on 16 January 1946, he is sometimes called the "Evangelical Doctor."

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