Bl. Francesco of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph – November 7 – Carmelite Saints
Summary:
Born in Aytona, Lerida, on December 29, 1811, Blessed Francis Palau y Quer entered the Order in 1832 and was ordained priest in 1836. Civil turmoil forced him into exile outside his community. On his return to Spain in 1851, he founded his “School of Virtue”—which was a model of catechetical teaching—in Barcelona. The school was suppressed, and he was unjustly exiled to Ibiza (1854-1860), where he lived in solitude at El Vedra and experienced the Church's vicissitudes mystically. While in the Balearic Islands, he founded the Congregations of Teresian Carmelite Missionary Brothers and Sisters (1860-1861). He preached popular missions and spread love for Our Lady wherever he went. He died at Tarragona on March 20, 1872, and was beatified by Pope John Paul II on April 24, 1980.
History:
Francisco Palau y Quer was born on December 29, 1811, in Aitona, Spain. He was baptized that same day. The seventh of nine children of Joseph Palau and Maria Antònia Quer, he grew up in a fervently royalist and devoutly Catholic family. The Palaus were active in the parish and devoted to receiving the sacraments. Joseph and his children sang in the parish choir. A humble farming family, they gathered to pray the rosary after their day's labors. Francisco first studied at the town school, where he excelled and showed great desire and aspiration.
At 14, Francisco decided to become a priest. With his sister Rosa's help, he pursued higher education in the City of Lleida to achieve this goal. In October 1828, at 17, he entered the Seminary of Lérida, where he studied philosophy and theology. Carmelite priests there guided the students spiritually and helped awaken his vocation. He was an excellent student and steadfast in his initiatives.
After four years at the seminary, Francisco discerned that his calling was to religious life. Unsure which order to enter, he resolved to make a novena to the prophet Elijah, whom he had devoted himself to since childhood. On the last day of the novena, the statue before which he prayed came to life and covered him with its mantle. The sign left no room for doubt: he would be a Carmelite.
On October 23, 1832, he entered the Discalced Carmelites at St. Joseph Priory in Barcelona. He took the Order's habit on November 14 and the name Br. Francisco of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Although he knew religious life in Spain and throughout Europe faced hard times, he had no doubts about his vocation or the risks it entailed.
With clear interior conviction, Francisco made his solemn religious profession of vows and consecrated himself to God on November 15, 1833. Francisco wrote, “When I made my religious profession, the revolution already held in its hand a burning torch to set all the religious houses ablaze and a dreadful dagger to murder the individuals sheltered in them. I was well aware of the pressing danger I faced … Nevertheless, I dedicated myself by solemn vows to a state whose rules I believed I could practice until death, independently of all human events.”
The community decided he should become a priest, which Francisco humbly accepted. He then began studies at the seminary of Lerida and, on February 22, 1834, was ordained a deacon.
On July 25, 1835, Barcelona succumbed to rioting, including the burning of convents and monasteries. St. Joseph Priory was among those burned down, and all the religious were imprisoned. They were soon released, but civil authorities prohibited them from living as a community. From then on, Br. Francisco Palau lived outside the cloister until his death, faithful to his Carmelite vocation in the manner of St. Elijah, alternating between profound solitude and intense action.
After leaving prison, he returned to his birthplace and settled in a grotto on the city's outskirts. At the time, he was still a deacon, but he kept in contact with his Provincial Prior, who prepared him remotely for ordination as a priest. The Bishop of Barbastro ordained him on April 2, 1836. Because he still could not live in community, he began his ministry as an itinerant preacher.
He remained rooted in the contemplative and apostolic foundations of his Carmelite life. He spent time in solitary prayer and then went out to preach to the people of Spain. His austere life soon drew people to him and led to the founding of the Carmelite Missionaries. As this ministry grew, Fr. Palau became their spiritual father, master, and guide.
In 1837, the city of Berga became the center of the Carlist forces, and Fr. Palau settled there. However, because of his popularity and conflicts with Church authorities, the government there briefly denied him a license to hear confessions and conduct religious services. He then traveled through rural Catalonia and Aragon, preaching the faith and hoping to rekindle enthusiasm for Catholicism among the local populace. He also spent periods of solitude living in the region's caves. In 1840, these efforts led to his appointment as an Apostolic Missionary in the region's various dioceses.
In 1840, the Spanish political situation had worsened, obliging Fr. Palau to take refuge in France. For almost eleven years, he lived in the Dioceses of Perpignan and Montauban, always in secluded grottos. In 1843, he published his first work there, La lucha del alma con Dios (The Soul Struggling with God). As men and women gathered around him, hoping to live similarly solitary lives, he guided them in their desire. During this period, he met Juana Gratias, who later became a pivotal figure in founding congregations of Carmelite Tertiary Brothers and Sisters. These were the first seeds of his future foundation.
During his time in France, Fr. Francesco continued to face persecution from French authorities, forcing him to relocate repeatedly. The small religious community of hermits he had founded also faced hostility, and Doney suppressed the women's community. In 1849, he wrote La vida solitaria (The Solitary Life) and El solitario de Cantayrac (The Solitary of Cambayrac).
Palau returned to Spain on April 13, 1851, after the Spanish government and the Holy See signed a Concordat. One of its provisions, however, was the continuation of the suppression of religious communities. Unable to live again with his Carmelite brothers, Fr. Palau made himself available to the Archbishop of Barcelona, Josep-Domènec Costa i Borràs, who appointed him spiritual director of the local seminarians. From there, a period of intense apostolic activity began, marked by concern for the lack of religious instruction among the faithful and the consequent corruption of customs.
Fr. Palau was assigned to the Parish Church of St. Augustine. There he founded the School of Virtue, a permanent catechesis for adults who sought to confront “error with truth, darkness with light, shadows with reality, falsity with authenticity” and to be “a School that would define and call formal virtue by the names, words and terms proper to it, and to describe the vices by their disastrous and devastating properties.” This undertaking had a profound influence on society. Over time, about two thousand people from all classes, especially workers, gathered on Sundays to hear his teachings.
The School of Virtue's resounding success made it a target of malicious calumnies. Based on false accusations that he was involved in the workers’ strikes that erupted in Barcelona, the civil governor closed the school in 1854. The authorities then arrested and exiled Fr. Palau to Ibiza. Even so, he remained unwavering in his fidelity to his mission and his faith.
Fr. Palau remained banished to that island for six years. There, he found his preferred place of solitude: the small island of Es Vedrà. Francisco Palau had many mystical experiences of the Church as his bride, and he dedicated his entire life to her. “I live and will live for the Church; I live and will die for her,” Francisco exclaimed. His inner world centered on the Church’s mysterious reality.
His great love for the Church would eventually reveal itself as something far beyond the structure he first perceived. He came to understand it as a communion of love between God and neighbor. By 1860, he had found the definitive meaning of his life: service to the Church. The graces he received on the island led him to often return to Es Vedrà to “render accounts to God for my life and to consult the designs of His Providence.”
During this exile, he also established a hermitage in Es Cubells, where he enthroned the image of Our Lady of the Virtues, founded the island's first Marian sanctuary, and promoted devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary among the islanders. He preached popular missions and spread veneration of Our Lady wherever he went.
During 1860 and 1861, he began organizing various groups of women. He founded the Brothers of Charity and a congregation of sisters. In 1860, he began writing Mis relaciones con la Iglesia (My Relations with the Church), an autobiographical journal that conveys his experience of the Church as God and neighbors.
In 1867, the Commissariat of Discalced Carmelite friars in Spain appointed Fr. Palau Director of the nation's Discalced Carmelite tertiaries. In 1868, he initiated the weekly publication of El ermitaño (The Hermit) in Barcelona. In 1872, he wrote a Rule of Life and Constitutions for the members of the Discalced Carmelite Third Order.
Fr. Francisco also practiced exorcism. He was called to this ministry, which he carried out with excellent results, as far as the ecclesiastical authorities permitted. In one of his visions, he heard, “I command you: expel the devils wherever you encounter them.” He proposed a religious order dedicated exclusively to exorcism ministry. After describing the lamentable situation of the possessed, he proposed establishing care centers for these poor souls. At the same time, he asked the Church to establish or reinstate exorcism as a permanent order to heal or relieve them.
In 1865, a new phase marked his supernatural relationship with the Mystical Body of Christ. The Church appeared to him in a vision, represented by Queen Esther. She said: “On various occasions you have given proofs of your love, of your obedience, of your fidelity, of your firmness, of your perseverance and of your loyalty to me; and I have placed my love and my trust in you. From now on, we will deal with the fate and the situation of the Roman Church and your mission in it.”
This began a series of revelations about the internal and external evils assailing the Church and those that would later befall her. Fr. Palau contemplated her immortal glory and definitive victory through the intervention of a man filled with the spirit of Elijah:
“If the true restoration comes, which consists in the conversion of all nations and their kings to God, the restorer cannot be a king, but an apostle; war does not convert, but destroys, and this apostle will be Elijah, the promised Elijah, no matter the name given him when he appears. Whether he is called John, Moses, or Peter matters little: the mission of Elijah will restore human society, because God in His Providence has thus ordained it.”
In his last years, he devoted himself to preaching, exorcism, and the juridical consolidation of his foundations.
In 1872, the Carmelite Sisters he founded asked Fr. Palau for help as they treated a typhus outbreak. After the crisis passed, he set off to return to Barcelona but fell ill on the road. On March 10, 1872, they took him to Tarragona, the last of his foundations, where the illness developed into pneumonia. He died on March 20, 1872, at the age of 60.
His life was anything but tranquil: he endured exile, banishment, and imprisonment, and he traveled tirelessly, driven by evangelistic zeal. A man of great inner restlessness and boundless passion, he felt compelled to find love in a more intense, personal way.
This experience took root in his heart and marked his life with a profound contemplative spirit and, at the same time, an exceptional missionary zeal. Wherever he found someone in need, Bl. Francisco discovered Christ awaiting his hand. Wherever there was silence in adoration and praise of God, he found all of humanity, with its joys and its sufferings.
When the cause for the beatification of Bl. Palau opened on December 13, 1947, his remains were moved from the public cemetery in Tarragona to the chapel of the motherhouse of the Teresian Carmelite Missionaries. Pope St. John Paul II beatified Bl. Francisco Palau on April 24, 1988. The Carmelite Order celebrates his liturgical feast day on November 7.
After the Spanish Civil War ended in 1939, the surviving Carmelite Tertiary Brothers were incorporated into the Discalced Carmelite friars. The Sisters now flourish in two autonomous congregations, both headquartered in Rome: the Teresian Carmelite Missionaries, who serve in Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America; and the Carmelite Missionaries, who serve in about 40 countries worldwide.
Prayer:
O God,
through your Spirit
you filled Bl. Francis, your priest,
with singular gifts of prayer and apostolic charity.
Through his intercession
grant that Christ’s beloved Church,
refulgent with the beauty of the Virgin Mother Mary,
may be an ever more effective universal sacrament of salvation.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit
God, for ever and ever.
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