St. António de Lisboa

S. António (St Anthony of Lisboa or St Anthony of Padua) is one of the more loved and admired saint in the Catholic Church, a Doctor of the Church (b.1195 d.1231).

Though his work was in Italy, he was born in Portugal.

He first joined the Augustinian Order and then left it and joined the Franciscan Order in 1221, when he was 26 years old.

The reason he became a Franciscan was because of the death of the five Franciscan who shed their blood for the Catholic Faith in the year 1220, in Morocco, and whose headless and mutilated bodies had been brought to St. Anthony’s monastery on their way back for burial.

St. Anthony became a Franciscan in the hope of shedding his own blood and becoming a martyr. He lived only ten years after joining the Franciscan Order.

So simple and resounding was his teaching of the Catholic Faith, so that the most unlettered and innocent might understand it, that he was made a Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius XII in 1946.

Saint Anthony was only 36 years old when he died.

When St. Anthony found he was preaching the Gospel of the Catholic Church to heretics who would not listen to him, he then went out and preached it to the fishes.

He is typically depicted with a book and the Infant Child Jesus, to whom He miraculously appeared, and is commonly referred to today as the "finder of lost articles."

Saint Anthony’s Basilica, Padoa, Italy: