Today is the feast of St. Raymond of Peñafort (+1275).
What you see below might leave you slightly puzzled.
The painting is in the Spanish church in Rome, Santa Maria in Monserrato.
Here is another view.
This is St. Raymond Penafort (+1275), whose tomb you visit in Barcelona. He was a great canonist and is patron of canon lawyers. With St. Peter Nolasco he founded the Mercedarians.
St. Raymond had gone to Majora (lower left corner of the higher painting and the left side on the lower) to convert the Moors. As it happened King James I of Aragon was hanging out there with his mistress. Channeling his inner John the Baptist, St. Raymond demanded that King send her away. The King refused and Raymond said that he would return to Barcelona. However, the King blocked Raymond’s departure, forbidding any boat to bear him away. In the presence of a Dominican as a witness, Raymond went to the shore, took off his clock and put the end over his staff as a sail, stepped on to the trailing part and zoomed off 160 miles to Barcelona. The King was impressed, it seems, and mended his ways.
St. Raymond pray for us and for politicians who support and are involved in intrinsically evil things that cause public scandal.
I have been reading your blog on my Android cell phone recently while my computer was on the fritz, and I noticed that there is a suggestion of supporting your work by donating through PayPal. Out of curiosity, now that my computer is fixed, I searched this page and found one mention of donation by PayPal, Zelle, or Wise, but in another spot, like the Android content, found only PayPal is mentioned.
Is this more proof that Dominicans are superior to Jesuits? ; )
St Raymond pray for us. May we have your faith, fortitude and zeal!
Viva Christo Rey
Fr. Z:
Thanks for covering St. Raymond of Penafort. I remember years ago when St. Raymond’s of Penafort Catholic Church was established in the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia. I also recall when Fr. James Gould became the pastor there.
Anyway, one reason I like your posts about saints is the last several years I have taken more interest in learning particularly about male Saints. I grew up Catholic in the 1970s/1980s and I don’t recall many discussions on feast days (the parish I attended as a kid most of my life was St. Paul’s and even though I was an altar boy I was oblivious to his travels), or much discussion in religious education pertaining to saints.