BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

February 25, Saturday after Ash Wednesday

BLESSED SEBASTIAN DE APARICIO (b Spain 1502 - d Mexico 1600)
Roadbuilder, Franciscan brother
Beato Sebastian has one of the most unusual biographies. Born in Spain to a poor family, who brought him up in the faith, he fell ill with bubonic plague as a a boy, from which he was miraculously cured after having been isolated to avoid infecting his family. After various migrant jobs all over Spain, he emigrated at age 31 to Mexico where he started as a farm hand and jack of all trades, then decided to build roads that would facilitate commerce in the region. He is considered the father of Mexican highways, as well as Mexico's first 'cowboy' who domesticated wild horses and cattle to be used in farm work. He introduced ox-driven carts to replace the labor carried out by humans before then. By age 50, he was a wealthy man, who had a reputation for unfailing generosity and service to the natives. He then gave up the transport business to devote himself to agriculture and ranching. Part of his personal faith was his early vow to live a chaste life. In his 60s, he married twice - both times to provide his wife's family with a dowry, and with the understanding that it would be a chaste marriage. Both wives died within a year of marriage - the first of an illness, the second because she fell from a tree while picking fruit. He said of them, "God gave me two little doves to care for and send back to him". After this, he decided to become a Franciscan friar, giving away all his goods to the convent and to the poor. He spent his novitiate as cook, porter and gardener in a Poor Clares convent, and finally became a professed friar in 1575. He spent the next 23 years as alms-collector for his community, once again taken to the roads in his horse-drawn carts for a new purpose, and came to be known as the 'fraile de las carretas'. He never learned to read and write, and all his life, his prayers were limited to the Our Father and the Rosary. Many miracles started being attributed to him in the last 10 years of his life, and he died in the odor of sanctity at age 98. His incorrupt body is venerated in the Church of St. Francis in Puebla, Mexico. When he was beatified in 1789, 968 documented miracles were presented in his cause, of which more than 500 beneficiaries testified personally.
Readings for today's Mass: usccb.org/bible/readings/022512.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

The Holy Father met with

- Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops (weekly meeting)

- Mons. Lorenzo Baldisseri, Secretary of the Congregation for Bishops

- Partisipants in the General Assembly of teh Pomntifical Academy for Life. Address in Italian.