Martin de Porres

Saint Martin de Porres
Martin of Charity Saint of the Broom
Born	December 9, 1579(1579-12-09) Lima, Viceroyalty of Peru
Died	November 3, 1639(1639-11-03) (aged 59) Lima, Viceroyalty of Peru (modern-day Peru)
Honored in	Roman Catholic Church, Lutheran Church, Anglican Communion
Beatified	1837 by Pope Gregory XVI
Canonized	May 6, 1962, by Pope John XXIII
Major shrine	Church and Convent of Santo Domingo, Lima, Peru; St. Martin De Porres National Shrine in Chicago, Illinois
Feast	November 3
Attributes	a dog, a cat, a bird, and a mouse eating together from a same dish; broom, crucifix, rosary, a heart
Patronage	diocese of Biloxi, Mississippi, black people, hair stylists, innkeepers, mixed-race people, Peru, poor people, public education, public health, public schools, race relations, social justice, state schools, television, Mexico Peruvian Naval Aviators

Martin de Porres (December 9, 1579 – November 3, 1639) was a lay brother of the Dominican Order who was beatified in 1837 by Pope Gregory XVI and canonized in 1962 by Pope John XXIII. He is the patron saint of mixed-race people and all those seeking interracial harmony.

He was noted for work on behalf of the poor, establishing an orphanage and a children's hospital. He maintained an austere lifestyle, which included fasting and abstaining from meat. Among the many miracles attributed to him were those of levitation, bilocation, miraculous knowledge, instantaneous cures, and an ability to communicate with animals.

Account of his life

Juan Martin de Porres was born in the city of Lima, in the Viceroyalty of Peru, on December 9, 1579, the illegitimate son of a Spanish nobleman and a black former slave ^[1]who was born in Panama. He had a sister named Juana, born three years later in 1581. He grew up in poverty and, when his mother and sister could not support him, Martin was confided to a primary school for two years, then was placed with a surgeon-barber to learn the medical arts. This caused him great joy, though he was only ten years old, for he could exercise charity to his neighbor while earning his living. Already he was spending hours of the night in prayer, a practice which increased rather than diminished as he grew older. At the age of 15 he asked for admission to the Dominican Convent of the Rosary in Lima and was received first as a servant boy, and as his duties grew he was promoted to almoner. Eventually he felt the call to enter the Dominican Order, and he was received as a tertiary. Years later, his piety and miraculous cures led his superiors to drop the racial limits on admission to the friars, and he was made a full Dominican. It is said that when his convent was in debt, he implored them: "I am only a poor mulatto, sell me." Martin was deeply attached to the Blessed Sacrament, and he was praying in front of it one night when the step of the altar he was kneeling on caught fire. Throughout all the confusion and chaos that followed, he remained where he was, unaware of what was happening around him.^[2]

When he was 34, after he had been given the habit of a coadjutor brother, Martin was assigned to the infirmary, where he was placed in charge and would remain in service until his death at the age of fifty-nine. His superiors saw in him the virtues necessary to exercise unfailing patience in this difficult role, and he never disappointed them. It was not long before miracles were attributed to him. Saint Martin also cared for the sick outside his convent, often bringing them healing with only a simple glass of water. He begged for alms to procure necessities the convent could not provide, and Providence always supplied.^[3]One day an aged beggar, covered with ulcers and almost naked, stretched out his hand, and Martin, seeing the Divine Mendicant in him, took him to his own bed. One of his brethren reproved him. Martin replied: “Compassion, my dear Brother, is preferable to cleanliness."

When an epidemic struck Lima, there were in this single Convent of the Rosary sixty friars who were sick, many of them novices in a distant and locked section of the convent, separated from the professed. Martin is said to have passed through the locked doors to care for them, a phenomenon which was reported in the residence more than once. The professed, too, saw him suddenly beside them without the doors having been opened. Martin continued to transport the sick to the convent until the provincial superior, alarmed by the contagion threatening the religious, forbade him to continue to do so. His sister, who lived in the country, offered her house to lodge those whom the residence of the religious could not hold. One day he found on the street a poor Indian, bleeding to death from a dagger wound, and took him to his own room until he could transport him to his sister’s hospice. The superior, when he heard of this, reprimanded his subject for disobedience. He was extremely edified by his reply: “Forgive my error, and please instruct me, for I did not know that the precept of obedience took precedence over that of charity.^[4] The superior gave him liberty thereafter to follow his inspirations in the exercise of mercy.

Martin would not use any animal as food—he was a vegetarian.^[5] In normal times Martin succeeded with his alms to feed 160 poor persons every day, and distributed a remarkable sum of money every week to the indigent.

To Martin the city of Lima owed a famous residence founded for orphans and abandoned children, where they were formed in piety for a creative Christian life. This lay brother had always wanted to be a missionary, but never left his native city; yet even during his lifetime he was seen elsewhere, in regions as far distant as Africa, China, Algeria and Japan. An African slave who had been in irons said he had known Martin when he came to relieve and console many like himself, telling them of heaven. When later the same slave saw him in Peru, he was very happy to meet him again and asked him if he had had a good voyage; only later did he learn that Saint Martin had never left Lima. A merchant from Lima was in Mexico and fell ill; he said aloud: “Oh, Brother Martin, if only you were here to care for me!” and immediately saw him enter his room. And again, this man did not know until later that he had never been in Mexico.

Death and commemoration

San Martin de Porres Catholic Church in Laredo, Texas

St. Martin de Porres Catholic Church in Jensen Beach, Florida

Martin was a friend of both Saint John de Massias and Saint Rose of Lima. When he died in Lima on November 3, 1639, Martin was known to the entire city. Word of his miracles had made him known as a saint throughout the region. As his body was displayed to allow the people of the city to pay their respects, each person snipped a tiny piece of his habit to keep as a relic. It is said that three habits were taken from the body. His body was then interred in the grounds of the monastery.

After he died, the miracles and graces received when he was invoked multiplied in such profusion that his body was exhumed after 25 years and said to be found intact, and exhaling a fine fragrance. Letters to Rome pleaded for his beatification; the decree affirming the heroism of his virtues was issued in 1763 by Pope Clement XIII. Pope Gregory XVI beatified Martin de Porres in 1837. Nearly 125 years later, Blessed Martin was canonized in Rome by Pope John XXIII on May 6, 1962. His feast day is November 3. He is the patron saint of people of mixed race, and of innkeepers, barbers, public health workers and more.

He is commemorated in the Calendar of Saints of the Church of England on 3 November.

In iconography, Martin de Porres is often depicted as a young mulatto friar (he was a Dominican brother, not a priest, as evidenced by the black scapular and capuce he wears, while priests of the Dominican order wear all white) with a broom, since he considered all work to be sacred no matter how menial. He is sometimes shown with a dog, a cat and a mouse eating in peace from the same dish.

Today, Martin is commemorated by, among other things, a school building that houses the medical, nursing, and rehabilitation science schools of the Dominican University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines. A programme of work is also named after him at the Las Casas Institute at Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford.^[6] He is also the titular saint of the St. Martin de Porres Marianist elementary school in Uniondale, New York.

There is at least one reference to Porres in modern literature. In A Confederacy of Dunces (1980), Ignatius Reilly contemplates praying to Porres for aid in bringing social justice to the black workers at the New Orleans factory where he works.

See also

• Saint Martin de Porres sculpture series by Fr. McGlynn

References

1. ^ http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/2413/St_Martin_de_Porres__the_first_black_saint_in_the_Americas "St. Martin de Porres, the first black saint in the Americas." African American Registry.
2. ^ Biography in "The Saint Martin De Porres Prayer Book", p147-152
3. ^ Vie du Bienheureux Martin de Porrès, by Fr. Arthur M. Granger, O.P. (Dominican Press: St. Hyacinthe, 1941)
4. ^ ”Vie du Bienheureux Martin de Porrès, by Fr. Arthur M. Granger, O.P. (Dominican Press: St. Hyacinthe, 1941)
5. ^ Roberts, Holly Harlayne (2004-09-01). Vegetarian Christian Saints: Mystics, Ascetics & Monks. New York: Anjeli Press. p. 206. ISBN 9780975484401. http://books.google.com/books?id=ZEuamyoZIXwC&printsec=frontcover. Retrieved 2010-12-08. Lay summary. "he would not use any animal as food" 
6. ^ Las Casas Institute at Blackfriars Hall website

External links

	Saints portal
	Christianity portal
	Peru portal

Media related to Martin de Porres at Wikimedia Commons

• St. Martin de Porres website and image
• St. Martin de Porres – Saints of the Day
• Prayer for the intercession of St. Martin de Porres
• Order of Preachers: Southern Dominican Province of St. Martin de Porres
• St. Martin de Porres Shrine & Institute • Memphis, Tennessee
• St. Martin De Porres, First Black Saint Of The Americas, Celebrated Nov. 3

Persondata
Name	Porres, Martin De
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	December 9, 1579
Place of birth	Lima, Viceroyalty of Peru
Date of death	November 3, 1639
Place of death	Lima, Viceroyalty of Peru (modern-day Peru)