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Biography

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Paschal Baylon, the figure commonly meant by the simple name Saint Paschal in Western Catholic devotion, was born in 1540 at Torrehermosa in the Kingdom of Aragon, in what is now the province of Zaragoza in Spain. Tradition names his parents as Martín Baylon and Isabel Jubera and describes the household as poor and devout. He spent his childhood and youth as a shepherd in the countryside around his village. Early lives compiled for his cause of canonization and later Franciscan chronicles portray a boy of unusual recollection, given to prayer while tending flocks, already devoted to the Eucharist and to the Virgin Mary, and known for sharing food and wages with the poor. He taught himself to read in order to use a breviary and simple pious books. In his mid-twenties he sought admission among the Reformed Franciscans of the strict Alcantarine observance associated with Saint Peter of Alcántara. After an initial refusal he was received as a lay brother at a convent dedicated to Our Lady of Loreto in the Kingdom of Valencia, taking the habit in the mid-1560s.

He never sought ordination and remained a lay brother for the rest of his life. He served in several houses of the order in the Valencian region and occupied the humble offices typical of a converse: porter, cook, gardener, and questor who begged alms for the community. Companions later testified to his obedience, poverty, patience under insult, and to the long hours he spent before the tabernacle. He became famous in his own lifetime for an intense Eucharistic piety, including reported ecstasies during Mass and at exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. Sent into France on business of the order, he is said to have defended Catholic teaching on the Real Presence in encounters with Huguenots and to have suffered insults and blows for that confession. Though without formal theological schooling, he was sought as a spiritual counsellor by religious and laity alike.

Paschal died at the Franciscan convent of Villarreal (Vila-real), in the present province of Castellón, in May 1592, on or about the day after his birthday. Veneration at his tomb began immediately. Miracles were claimed in large numbers, and his cult spread through Spain and later through the Spanish overseas territories, above all the Philippines, where devotion to San Pascual Baylón became deeply rooted. He was beatified by Pope Paul V in 1618 and canonized by Pope Alexander VIII in 1690. In 1897 Pope Leo XIII declared him patron of Eucharistic congresses and of Eucharistic associations, a title that has defined his modern cult. His feast is kept on 17 May.

The principal shrine remains at Villarreal, where a royal convent and sanctuary were raised in his honor. The church and relics suffered severe damage and desecration during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s; surviving fragments of the relics were later recovered and the sanctuary restored. Besides the Eucharistic works named by Leo XIII, he is invoked as patron of shepherds, recalling his youth in the fields, and as a local patron of Villarreal in Spain and of Obando in the Philippines.

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