Catholic Fire

On January 16, from the Franciscan calendar, we celebrate the feast of St. Berard and companions. Six Franciscan friars accepted from St. Francis of Assisi an assignment to go to Morocco. They were to announce Christianity to the Muslims. Friars Berard, Peter, Adjutus, Accursio and Odo traveled by ship in 1219. Morocco is in the northwest corner of Africa and the journey was long and dangerous. The group arrived at Seville, Spain. They started preaching immediately, on streets and in public squares. People treated them as if they were crazy and had them arrested. To save themselves from being sent back home, the friars declared they wanted to see the sultan. So the governor of Seville sent them to Morocco. The sultan received the friars and gave them freedom to preach in the city. But some of the people did not like this. They complained to the authorities. The sultan tried to save the friars by sending them to live in Marrakech, on the west coast of Morocco. A Christian prince...

Born in 1804 in the province of Santander in Spain, Emmanuel joined the Franciscans with the hope of becoming a missionary. Ordained in 1831, following his request, he was sent to the Holy Land. There he had two terms of service. During the second, he was appointed guardian of Damascus in 1858 with a community of eight friars, six of whom were priests. A quarrel between a Maronite and a Druse in 1860 sparked atrocious rioting in which the Druses pillaged towns and massacred some 3,000 people, among them the Franciscan community at Damascus. The other Franciscan martyrs were priests - Carmel Volta (aged 57), Engelbert Kolland (33), Nicanor Ascanio (46), Peter Soler (33), Nicholas Alberga (30) - and lay friars, Francis Pinazzo (58) and John James Fernandez (58). All were Spanish except Engelbert who was from the diocese of Salzburg in Austria. They were all beatified with three Maronite laymen by Pius XI in 1926, the seventh centenary year of the death of St Francis.