Today October 9

Today there is a veritable plethora of feasts, the great St. John Leonardi, who worked in a pharmacy and founded an order, and the great St. Denis, martyr, bishop and patron of Paris. But we are going to go with the great St. Louis Bertrand, O.P. (1526 - 1581). Although he started in Spain, this great Dominican is known for his work in the New World. It's sobering to realize that a full hundred years before Plymouth Rock there were Europeans living and working in the New World.

St. Louis went to Cartegena in Colombia and from there all over Panama (which was then, and for a very long time -- until it interfered with American political needs -- part of Colombia), the mountains of Santa Marta, and the Caribbeans. He went to the Windward Islands, the Virgin Islands (beautiful. I had a friend who lived and worked there) and the notoriously difficult (for a foreign missionary) Leeward Islands. Alban Butler, who was in a position to know, said the Caribs of the Leewards were "the most brutal, barbarous, and unteachable people of the human race." And yet St. Louis made inroads there, as well as in the whole of Colombia. In the course of his 6 glorious years there, he learned the languages, cured the sick, prophesied the future, and baptized no less than 15,00 people! It's just a guess, but I don't think he ever took a "priest's day off"!

He was called back to Spain, where he (unsuccessfully) sought redress against the violent, villainous, and greedy Spanish adventurers in the part of the New World where he'd been. He ended up doing simple parish work and devoting himself to prayer, "for words without works never have power to touch or change hearts," he said. He was struck with paralysis the last year of his life (he'd been painfully ill -- but mobile -- a whole year before that) and died on this date in 1581. He was canonized 90 years later and is the patron of Colombia. St. Louis Bertrand, pray for us.