Suggest an Edit — Peter of Saint Joseph Betancur

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Biography

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Peter of Saint Joseph Betancur (Pedro de San José de Betancur y Gonzáles) was born on 21 March 1626 in Vilaflor, on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, then part of the Spanish Empire. He came from a modest shepherding family and is traditionally described as a descendant of Jean de Béthencourt, the Norman captain associated with the early fifteenth-century conquest of the Canaries. From childhood he worked as a shepherd in the countryside around Vilaflor. Drawn to a religious vocation and to missionary work in the Indies, he left Tenerife around 1650. After a difficult Atlantic crossing that included a period of illness in Havana, he reached Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala (present-day Antigua Guatemala) in 1651.

He hoped to become a priest and entered the Jesuit college of San Borja, but he was unable to complete the required studies. In 1655 he joined the Third Order of Saint Francis and thereafter lived as a Franciscan tertiary rather than as a cleric. He devoted himself to the poorest people of the colonial capital: the sick, prisoners, abandoned children, and the homeless. He begged alms in the streets, often ringing a bell to call people to prayer and to collect donations. In the later 1650s he established a hospital dedicated to Our Lady of Bethlehem, together with a shelter, a school for poor children, and an oratory. From that work grew the Order of Our Lady of Bethlehem (the Bethlehemites), generally regarded as the first male religious order founded in the Americas. He also promoted popular catechesis and Christmas customs that recalled the Holy Family's search for lodging.

Known in his lifetime as Hermano Pedro, he became famous for personal austerity, long hours of prayer, and practical charity, and later hagiography often calls him the Saint Francis of the Americas. He remained a lay brother and founder, never ordained and never married. He died in Antigua Guatemala on 25 April 1667, at the age of forty-one. His remains are venerated in the Church of San Francisco in Antigua Guatemala.

Devotion to Hermano Pedro took root in Guatemala and in the Canary Islands. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 22 June 1980 in Saint Peter's Square and canonized by the same pope on 30 July 2002 during an outdoor Mass in Guatemala City. He is the first canonized saint born in the Canary Islands and the first saint closely identified with Guatemala and Central America. His liturgical feast is kept on 24 April (in some places on 25 April, the anniversary of his death). He is invoked as patron of Guatemala, of the Canary Islands, of Central America, of catechists, of the homeless, and of those who care for the sick.

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