St. Anthony Mary Claret

A weaver's son from Catalonia, Claret became a tireless preacher across Spain, founded the Claretian missionaries, and was sent to Cuba as Archbishop of Santiago, where he was nearly assassinated for his reforms. Recalled to Spain as confessor to Queen Isabella II, he wrote some 200 books and pamphlets and was driven into exile in the political upheavals of his time.

In Cuba he confirmed over 300,000 people, regularized marriages, and opened schools and credit unions for the poor, earning both devotion from the faithful and hatred from the slaveholding establishment. He survived at least fifteen assassination attempts, including a knife attack that left a deep scar on his face.

Claret spent his final years in exile in France, persecuted by the revolutionary government that had overthrown Isabella. He died at a Cistercian monastery near Narbonne in 1870, worn out by decades of ceaseless labor. Canonized in 1950, he is remembered as one of the great missionary bishops of the nineteenth century and patron of Catholic publishers.