Saint Diego of Alcalá

Diego was born in 1400 in San Nicolás del Puerto, a small village in the kingdom of Seville, into a poor family. As a boy he went to live with a hermit priest near his village, then spent years as a wandering hermit. He asked to join the Observant Franciscans, and they took him in as a lay brother: he couldn’t read or write, and he was never ordained a priest. He did the manual work of the friary and went around the villages near Córdoba, Cádiz and Seville. In 1441 he was sent to the Canary Islands, where he stayed five years and was guardian of the friary of Fuerteventura — a lay brother at the head of a community, something very rare. In 1450 he went to Rome for the canonization of Bernardino of Siena. During that stay an epidemic broke out in the friary of the Aracoeli, where three thousand friars from all over Europe were crowded together; Diego stayed on as a nurse, and everyone talked about him. He spent his last years in Alcalá de Henares, as a porter, handing out to the poor whatever was left over from the kitchen. He died on November 12, 1463. He was canonized in 1588 by Sixtus V at the request of Philip II of Spain, whose son, Don Carlos, had recovered after the friar’s relics were brought to his bedside. His name has traveled far: the city of San Diego, in California, is named after him. If your name is Diego, today is your name day.