Cristobal of Santa Catalina

Cristóbal of Saint Catherine (Spanish: Cristóbal de Santa Catalina), born Cristóbal López de Valladolid y Fernández, was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest and Franciscan tertiary of the seventeenth century. He was born on 25 July 1638 in Mérida, in the province of Badajoz in Extremadura, Spain. His father, Francisco López de Valladolid, practiced as a surgeon, and his mother was María Fernández. Raised in a devout household, he received his first education in Mérida, studying grammar and later philosophy. Accounts of his youth emphasize an early attraction to prayer, penance, and the service of the poor.

He was ordained to the priesthood in the mid-seventeenth century and served in pastoral ministry in several Spanish localities. Desiring a more evangelical form of life, he entered the Third Order of Saint Francis and took the name Cristóbal of Saint Catherine. In the early 1670s he established himself in Córdoba, in Andalusia. There he became keenly aware of the plight of the sick poor, particularly those who, after leaving the city's hospitals, lacked a place in which to recover. In 1673 he founded the Hospital of Jesus of Nazareth (Hospital de Jesús Nazareno) to receive convalescents and other destitute sick persons.

Around this hospital he formed a community of men who wished to live in poverty, prayer, and service to the infirm. The community became known as the Congregation of the Hospitaller Brothers of Jesus of Nazareth (Congregación de Hermanos Hospitalarios de Jesús Nazareno). The new institute followed a Franciscan spirituality and devoted itself to hospital work. Cristóbal directed the house with a combination of practical care for the sick and a personal life marked by austerity, nocturnal prayer, and a reputation for mystical gifts. He was regarded in Córdoba as a priest of unusual charity toward the abandoned.

Cristóbal died in Córdoba on 7 April 1690. Devotion to him continued after his death, and a canonical process was in due course opened. He was beatified on 7 April 2013 during a ceremony held in Córdoba; Cardinal Angelo Amato, then prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, presided in the name of Pope Francis. His feast is celebrated on 7 April. He is remembered in the Catholic Church as the founder of a hospitaller congregation and as an example of priestly dedication to the sick and the poor in Baroque Spain.