Catholic Fire

Feast of St. Martin de Porres, Religious First Saturday Today's Mass Readings On This Day in Catholic History: 1584 Saint Charles Borromeo , archbishop of Milan and cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, died at Milan, Italy (b. 2 October 1538). Birthdays: 1500 - Benvenuto Cellini , Italian artist (d. 1571) 1560 - Annibale Carracci , Italian painter (d. 1609) 1794 - William Cullen Bryant , American Romantic poet and journalist (d. 1878) 1801 - Vincenzo Bellini , Italian composer (d. 1835) 1876 - Stephen Peter Alencastre , Roman Catholic prelate, the fifth and last vicar apostolic of the Vicariate Apostolic of the Hawaiian Islands — now the Roman Catholic Diocese of Honolulu (d. 1940) 1948 - Lulu , British actress and singer, ( To Sir With Love) 1975 - Darren Sharper , American football player

Today is the feast of St. Martin de Porres, the first black American Saint. He was the illegitimate son of a Spanish nobleman and a young freed slave woman from Panama, who may have been black or of Indian blood. His father was repelled by the darkness of his son's skin at birth and abandoned him, leaving the child-raising to his mother. At age 12, Martin was apprenticed to a "surgeon," at that time a combination of barber, druggist, physician and surgeon. Once trained, he began to use his skills to serve the poor. At fifteen, he became a lay brother at the Dominican Friary in Lima, where he worked as a barber, a farm laborer, a clothier, and a care-giver for the sick. Each day Martin distributed food to the hungry, he was doctor to the sick, and he helped to establish an orphanage and a hospice for abandoned babies. Martin devoted himself to severe penances. In turn, God endowed him with many graces and an abundance of spiritual gifts: visions, ecstasies, bilocation (be...