Confessor Anthony of Portugal

Fernando Martins de Bulhões, known in later devotion as Saint Anthony of Padua and in his native land as Santo António de Lisboa, was born in Lisbon in the Kingdom of Portugal in 1195. Traditional accounts identify his parents as the nobles Martinho de Bulhões and Teresa Pais Taveira, whose house stood near the city’s cathedral. He received his early education at the cathedral school of Lisbon and, at about the age of fifteen, entered the Augustinian Canons Regular at the monastery of São Vicente de Fora. Seeking greater quiet for study and prayer, he transferred to the monastery of Santa Cruz in Coimbra, then Portugal’s principal centre of learning. There he was formed in Scripture and the Fathers and was ordained priest. In 1220 the relics of five Franciscan friars martyred in Morocco were brought to Santa Cruz. Moved by their example, Fernando obtained leave to quit the Canons and join the newly founded Order of Friars Minor, taking the name Anthony.

He set out for Morocco intending to preach and, if God willed, to share the martyrs’ fate, but serious illness ended the mission. On the return voyage a storm carried his ship to Sicily. From there he went to the Franciscan general chapter at Assisi in 1221, where he saw Francis of Assisi. His unassuming manner led at first to humble assignments at a hermitage near Forlì. His learning and eloquence became known only when he was unexpectedly asked to preach at an ordination. Francis thereafter authorized him to teach theology to the friars—the first such commission in the order—provided the office did not extinguish the spirit of prayer. Anthony then preached across northern Italy and southern France, opposing the Cathar movement and drawing large crowds. Later tradition associates with this period the sermon to the fishes at Rimini, when human hearers would not listen, and the recovery of a stolen psalter, an episode that helped establish his popular patronage of lost things.

He served for a time as provincial minister in Emilia-Romagna and from about 1228 made Padua the centre of his work. His Lenten preaching there in 1231 is reported to have produced restitutions of usury, reconciliations, and the freeing of debt prisoners. Worn out by labour and illness, he withdrew to Camposampiero and, sensing death, asked to be taken back toward Padua. He died on 13 June 1231 at the Poor Clare monastery of Arcella, just outside the city, aged about thirty-six. He had remained a celibate religious from his youth and left no descendants.

Pope Gregory IX, who had known him, canonized him at Spoleto on 30 May 1232, less than a year after his death, one of the swiftest canonizations in Catholic history; there was no separate beatification under the later formal process. His remains were later enshrined in the basilica built in his honour in Padua, still a major pilgrimage church; a 1263 opening of the tomb found the tongue incorrupt, an event kept in Franciscan memory. In 1946 Pope Pius XII named him a Doctor of the Church with the title Doctor Evangelicus. In Portugal he is treated as a national saint, and Lisbon marks 13 June with processions, street festivals, and the blessing of marriages. Across the Catholic world he is invoked as finder of lost articles, friend of the poor, and patron of travelers, seafarers, and many places and causes.