St. Anthony Mary Claret

Anthony Mary Claret grew up in a textile-working family in Catalonia and trained in that trade before entering the seminary. Ordained in 1835, he moved from parish service into itinerant preaching, combining missionary travel with the distribution of religious publications.

Born at Sallent in 1807, Claret developed real skill in textile manufacture and studied in Barcelona. His religious vocation therefore redirected an established aptitude and possible career. The experience of work remained part of the background of a preacher who sought to reach people beyond academic circles.

His use of printed material extended preaching beyond a single visit or sermon. The congregation gave that missionary approach a continuing community and structure. Appointment to Cuba greatly widened his responsibilities, while political upheaval later made displacement and exile part of the same life of public ministry.

In 1849 he founded the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, now known as the Claretians. He was subsequently appointed archbishop of Santiago de Cuba and consecrated in 1850. His later life ended in exile in France, where he died on October 24, 1870. Pope Pius XII canonized him in 1950.

The Claretians' account of Claret's Cuban ministry includes a farm school for poor children, a savings institution, libraries, and writing on agriculture. These projects made material conditions part of his pastoral agenda. Agricultural knowledge, access to books, and ways of managing small resources answered needs a sermon alone could not meet.

He also brought teaching and charitable congregations to the island and worked with Antonia París in founding the Claretian Missionary Sisters. His opposition to slavery belongs within this setting of exploitation and inequality. The range of initiatives reveals a bishop trying to combine preaching with institutions of education and assistance, while his conflicts show that such work had social consequences.