Saint Anthony of Padua

His name was Fernando Martins de Bulhões and he was born in Lisbon on August 15, 1195. In Portugal they still call him Anthony of Lisbon. He was a canon regular in Coimbra from 1210. In 1220 the bodies of five Franciscans killed in Morocco arrived in the city, and that sight changed his life: he left the canons, became a Franciscan, taking the name Anthony, and set off for Morocco to get himself killed too. He fell ill as soon as he arrived and was sent back, and a storm drove his ship to Sicily. That is how he came to stay in Italy. In 1221 he was at the general chapter in Assisi, where he saw and heard Francis. Then they sent him to Montepaolo, near Forlì, to be the cook in a hermitage. Nobody knew he had a gift for speaking. They found out by chance, in Forlì in 1222: at an ordination there was no preacher, they asked him because there was no one else, and when he began to speak everyone stood still. From that moment he never stopped. He preached in Italy and in France, taught theology — he was the first Franciscan to do so, with Francis’s written permission — and ended up in Padua, where the crowds were so large that sermons were given in the fields. He died in Padua on June 13, 1231, at thirty-five. He was proclaimed a saint eleven months later. The Smorfia gave him number thirteen. If your name is Anthony or Antonella, today is your name day.