St Anthony’s Bread (Feb 2018)
Servant of God Brother Juniper (1258)
Brother Juniper was one of the original companions of St. Francis and
” a man of such unshakeable humility, patience, and self-contempt, that the rising waves of temptation and tribulation could not move him.”
Brother Juniper evidently attained such a degree of holiness that he was quite indifferent to the opinion or regard of others. This was fortunate, since “he was considered stupid and foolish by those who did not know how perfect he was.”
Apart from the stories in his brief “Life,” little is known of his biography. In these stories, he appears to function as a kind of living parable. Francis and his followers were regarded by the world as “fools for Christ.” Just so, the exasperating foolishness of Juniper served among the friars as a standard by which to measure their own compromise with the wisdom of the world.
Over and over again, Juniper tested the patience of his brothers. And not infrequently, after one of his escapades, “the friars were very much shocked and scandalized, and they rebuked him forcefully, calling him a lunatic and a fool and a disgrace to the order of St. Francis, and declaring that he should be put in chains as a madman,” At the sight of the poor, for instance, he was filled with such compassion that he would hand them his garment or rip off a sleeve or a cowl to give them. Not content with giving away his own habit, he would freely dispense his books, altar vestments, or anything else he could lay his hands on. As a result, “when poor people came to Brother Juniper to beg, the friars used to take and hide the things they wanted to keep.”
One time, he set out to surprise the brothers by preparing a feast. After filling pots with water, he tossed in everything – “chickens with feathers and eggs in shells” – so that everything could cook together. When he set down before the friars “that hodgepodge of his, which not a single hog in the city of Rome would have eaten.” they scolded him severely. Juniper displayed such humble abasement that the guardian was moved. Such an edifying example of simplicity, he said, was worth the waste of food.
So on this, and many other occasions, Juniper’s foolishness ultimately bore such a lesson in charity, faith or humility, that Francis himself was moved to observe on one occasion, “My Brothers, if only I had a great forest of such junipers.”
He died in Rome in 1258.
Once when Brother Juniper was praying – and perhaps he was thinking of something extraordinary – a hand appeared to him in the air, and he heard a voice saying to him: “Oh Brother Juniper, without this hand you can do nothing.” He quickly arose and ran through the friary, gazing up at heaven, dancing and shouting in a loud voice: “Indeed that is true, Lord! Indeed that is true!” And he kept on shouting that for a long time.
– From the Life of Brother Juniper
Source : The Franciscan Saints (Franciscan Media)
The Servants of God Pedro da Corpa and IV Compagni
On the 27th January 2025, the Holy Father Francis received in audience Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, and authorized the Dicastery to promulgate the Decree concerning the recognition of the martyrdom of the Servants of God Pedro da Corpa and IV Compagni, religious of the Order of Friars Minor,murdered in hatred of the faith in the territory of the current Diocese of Savannha -USA in 1597.
The five Venerable Servants of God, all originally from Spain, responded generously to the Lord’s call to evangelize the peoples of America, even to the point of giving their lives.
Friar Pedro de Corpa was born in the small village of Corpa, in the diocese of Madrid-Alcalá, around 1560. He was a priest of the Province of the Friars Minor of Castile. In 1587 he embarked for Florida. He served the population in the village of Tolomato (near present-day Darien). Polygamy was in force among the native populations of these lands: in pastoral practice, the Franciscans had chosen to administer baptism to an equal adult only when he or she had committed himself to monogamous marriage. The crisis came when a young warrior, named Juanillo, a baptized and married Christian, decided to take a second wife. The situation was delicate as Juanillo, grandson of the tribal chief, was on his way to taking command of the village. Juanillo, rejecting Friar Pedro da Corpa’s warnings about the commitments made in baptism, left the mission and conspired with other natives of the interior region to eliminate the friar. In the first days of September 1597, the warriors attacked and murdered Fr Pedro de Corpa in his hut, they struck him with an axe and mutilated his body. The odium fidei was soon turned against the other four Friars Minor operating in the same territory, in different villages.
Friar Blas Rodríguez de Cuacos was born in the village of Cuacos (Cáceres – Spain), between 1550 and 1560. He was a priest of the Alcantarina Province of the Friars Minor of San Gabriel. In 1590 he had left for the Florida mission and at the time of the events he was working in the village of Tupiquí, near present-day Eulonia. In missionary work he shared the position against polygamy. When he found himself in front of the hostile band of rebels, aware of his imminent death, he asked to be able to celebrate his last Mass. After Mass, around the middle of September, he was barbarously murdered with an axe blow. His body was left abandoned in the woods and was devoured by beasts.
Friar Miguel de Añón, a priest of the Province of the Friars Minor of Castile, carried out his mission on the island of Santa Catalina, together with the lay religious Friar Antonio de Badajoz. The date of his birth in Zaragoza is uncertain. He faced the death, preceded by various tortures, together with his confrere Fr Antonio. His body was buried next to that of his confrere inside the village chapel.
Friar Antonio de Badajoz, a lay religious of the Alcantarina Province of the Friars Minor of San Gabriel, was born in L’Albuera, near Badajoz. After the outbreak of the revolt, the tribal chief of the island of Santa Catalina tried to warn him of the impending danger, but he did not accept, preferring to remain at the mission with Friar Miguel de Añón.
Friar Francisco de Veráscola was born on February 13, 1564 in Gordejuela, into a Basque family; he entered the Franciscan Province of Cantabria and left for the Florida mission in 1595. Here he was entrusted with the new mission of the island of Asao, today San Simón, opposite the current village of Brunswick, Georgia. His imposing stature and physical strength earned him the nickname “Cantabrian giant”. This characteristic made him popular amongst the gualeyouth, with whom he competed in wrestling, ball play and “throwing” spears. At the time of the death of his companions, he was not at the mission, but had gone by canoe to San Agustín, to take the necessary material for the chapel. Disembarking in Asao, he was immediately attacked by the rebels who murdered him with an axe blow.
The Cause of Beatification of this group of Franciscan martyrs, supported by the U.S. Episcopate, began in the Diocese of Savannah in 1981, as Postulator General of the Order of Friars Minor Br. Antonio Cairoli, OFM.
Source: OFM
Saint Angela Merici (1474-1540)
Born in Lombardy and orphaned at an early age, Angela Merici became a Franciscan tertiary and embraced a life of prayerful simplicity. After spending many years in almost continuous pilgrimage, visiting shrines of Italy, she had a vision one day in which she beheld a company of angels and maidens descending from a ladder in the heavens. A voice revealed that she would found a community whose members would be as numerous as the maidens thus revealed to her.
For some years Angela offered religious instruction to the children of her poor neighbors. Over the years, when not travelling, she had made this her regular occupation. Other women were gradually inspired to join her. Finally, after she had settled in Brescia, Angela had a group of twenty-eight women prepared to consecrate themselves with her to God’s service. They chose as their patron St. Ursula, a legendary fourth-century martyr widely venerated as a protector of women.
Although she devised a simple rule for her Ursuline community, Angela did not initially conceive of them as a religious order. While dedicating themselves to the education of poor girls, the members wore no habits and took no vows; they continued to live with their families rather than behind an enclosure. The idea of such an association of religious women was unheard of at the time. But the work of Angela and her companions was widely admired. Angela observed, “Each member of the Company should strive to despoil herself of everything and set all her good, her love, her delight, not in robes, nor in food, nor in relatives, but in God alone and in his benign and ineffable Providence.”
By the time of her death on January 27, 1541, Angela was revered as a living saint in Brescia. Crowds of people would follow her to church, attracted in part by her reputation for levitating several inches off the ground while gazing on the Eucharist. Four years after Angela’s death, Rome approved a constitution for her congregation, which would in time come to number many tens of thousands. She was canonized in 1807.
Source : The Franciscan Saints (Franciscan Media)
Blessed Gabriele Allegra (1907–1976)
Known as “the St. Jerome of China”, Fr. Gabriele was born Dec. 26, 1907 in a village in the province of Catania, Sicily, and entered the Order as a youth of 16. While he was studying theology at St. Anthony’s College in Rome, an academic conference was held there on the work of Giovanni of Montecorvino, a Franciscan who journeyed to China in the late 13th century.
Inspired by Giovanni’s attempts to communicate Christianity to the Chinese people, Gabriel sailed to Hunan Province shortly after his ordination in 1930, and as soon as he gained knowledge of the language, began translating the Bible into Chinese. This was a task that would consume the next 40 years of his life: facing many obstacles, he persevered, establishing the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum in Beijing in 1945. Forced to move to Hong Kong in 1948, he and his friar collaborators completed the translation of the Bible into Chinese with full commentary in 1968. He died in Hong Kong on Jan. 26, 1976.
Although known primarily as a biblical scholar, Fr. Gabriele was well-read in other areas of theology, becoming an expert on the thought of John Duns Scotus and a friend of the Jesuit Fr. Teilhard de Chardin. He also carved out time to help the poor, victims of war, and the sick, especially a leper colony in Macau, where he often spent his holidays. Perhaps Blessed Gabriele might be venerated as the patron of workaholics. He was fond of saying: “The most enviable fate for a Franciscan who does not obtain the grace of martyrdom is to die while he is working. . . . Everyone thinks I’m sick! I can still work — so let’s go on!”
Source : The Holy Name Province