Saint Who?
Saints Who Established Schools
Blessed Francisco Palau y Quer
Priest and founder († 1872)Feast: November 7
“In the face of anti-social and anti-Catholic schools, alternative schools must be opened whose mission is to direct, to define and distinguish good and evil; schools that may disarm the enemies by giving the true definition.” Francisco Palau y Quer came from a devout Catholic farming family in Spain. He discerned a vocation by the age of fourteen and entered the Carmelites in Barcelona in his early twenties. Civil unrest and religious persecution forced Francisco into exile but did not shake his commitment. He was ordained, returned to Barcelona, and began an active ministry.
He became convinced of the need to oppose “self-styled rationalist philosophers” who “have made a mockery of the logic and called good evil and evil good.” To this end, he established a catechetical program at his parish called the School of Virtue. The teaching emphasized apologetics and formal definition of virtues. Open to all, with classes held on Sundays, it regularly attracted as many as two thousand participants.
But the school was shut down, unjustly targeted as the source of a violent labor strike. Sent into exile again, Father Palau increased his time of prayer. “Providence had prepared for me the solitude such as my heart desired.” Before his death in 1872, he received mystical revelations about the nature of the Church. He was beatified in 1988.
Heavenly Father, through the prayers and teachings of Blessed Francisco Palau, may all catechetical programs be true schools of virtue and ornaments of the Church.
