Saint Martin de Porres, A Brother to the Forgotten

St. Martin de Porres

 Martin de Porres was born in Lima, Peru, in 1579. His father, Juan de Porres, was a Spanish nobleman, and his mother, Ana Velázquez, was a free Black woman from Panama. Martin and his sister, Juana, spent their early childhood largely in their mother’s care. Poverty and racial prejudice shaped those years. His father eventually acknowledged the children and provided for their education, but Martin had already encountered hardships that would help him understand the needs of others.

At about twelve, Martin became an apprentice to a barber surgeon. In that period, the trade included cutting hair and providing basic medical treatment. He learned skills that would become central to his vocation. His knowledge of remedies and care for wounds gave him practical ways to relieve suffering. The young apprentice also developed a deep life of prayer, spending long hours with God as his desire to enter religious life grew.

Martin approached the Dominicans at the Priory of the Holy Rosary in Lima. His ancestry placed obstacles before his admission, and he was initially received as a lay helper. He worked in the kitchen, cleaned, washed clothes, and continued using his skills to care for others. These duties became part of his offering to God. The broom associated with his image recalls the humble work through which he served the community day after day.

In 1603, Martin made religious profession as a Dominican brother. His vocation united the Order’s life of prayer with practical service. He continued performing ordinary tasks and caring for people whose needs required patience and attention. His commitment to the Blessed Sacrament and the Passion of Christ shaped that work. Within the Dominican community, Brother Martin’s service became a witness to the Gospel, expressed through the care he gave to those around him.

Assigned to the infirmary, Martin cared for sick and elderly friars. His ministry also reached beyond the priory, extending to people of different races and social conditions, including both noble families and enslaved people. He obtained food, clothing, and medicine for those in need. He also helped provide a home and education for orphaned and abandoned children. The skills learned in his youth now supported a broad work of mercy among the people of Lima.

One remembered account describes Martin bringing a beggar covered with sores into his room to care for him. Another friar objected to the man’s dirt and condition. Martin’s reply placed the suffering person first. “Compassion, my brother, is preferable to cleanliness.” The story preserves the priorities that marked his ministry. A person in distress needed care, and Martin was willing to accept the inconvenience that came with offering it.

His charity drew strength from prayer. Martin spent long periods adoring Christ in the Eucharist and meditating on the Passion. He loved the Blessed Virgin Mary as his mother. At his canonization, Pope John XXIII emphasized the connection between his love for God and his love for other people. Martin forgave insults, encouraged sinners to return to God, and cared for the sick. The people’s name for him, Martin of Charity, expressed what they had encountered in his life.

Dominican accounts also preserve reports of extraordinary healings, bilocation, and other wonders associated with Martin. Stories of his gentleness toward animals became especially beloved. One tradition tells of him leading troublesome rodents outside and promising to feed them if they stayed away from the priory’s rooms. These accounts form part of the devotional memory surrounding him. They portray the same compassionate brother whose concern extended to suffering people and the creatures around him.

Martin died in Lima on November 3, 1639. Pope Gregory XVI beatified him in 1837, and Pope John XXIII canonized him on May 6, 1962. His feast day is November 3. His life remains a cherished example within the Dominican family. Through nursing, cleaning, prayer, and generosity, Brother Martin gave his faith a daily expression. The child who had known poverty became a source of relief for others, serving Christ through the people placed in his care.

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Venerable Jean Thierry Ebogo, OCD, A Young Life Offered to Christ

 Venerable Jean Thierry Ebogo

Jean Thierry Ebogo was born in Cameroon on February 4, 1982, into a Christian family. While still a child, he began expressing a desire to become a priest. For him, that vocation meant becoming like Jesus. His First Communion deepened his spiritual life, and devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, especially through the Rosary, accompanied his growing desire to give himself to God.

His father’s work required the family to move frequently, but Jean Thierry carried his vocation through those changes. He was intelligent, determined, and drawn to prayer. He also enjoyed volleyball, basketball, and athletics, and took small jobs to help his parents. His character had its struggles. He could become irritated, but was ready to apologize. The young man seeking holiness was learning to bring his temperament, energy, and ambitions into the service of Christ.

His path into religious life included disappointment. An initial experience with the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate ended when his vocation was judged unsuited to their particular charism. With help from a cousin who was a religious sister, he approached the Discalced Carmelites. In July 2003, he entered their community at Nkoabang, near Yaoundé. There, the spirituality of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux and her little way of trust helped shape his life of prayer.

As he prepared to continue his formation in 2004, pain in his right knee revealed a malignant bone tumor. Treatment followed, but the disease required the amputation of his right leg in November. Jean Thierry faced the loss with remarkable courage. He understood his suffering as something he could offer to God for the Carmelite mission and the Church. Even during illness, he tried to give joy to those who visited him.

After surgery and chemotherapy, there was hope that his condition had improved. In August 2005, he traveled to Italy, where the Carmelites hoped he could receive further care and continue his formation. Examinations revealed that the cancer had spread. He underwent treatment in Legnano and at the cancer institute in Candiolo. When the doctors explained that their efforts had failed, a Carmelite who accompanied him recalled his composed response and his gratitude for everything they had done.

Jean Thierry still deeply desired to belong fully to Carmel. With special permission, he made his solemn religious profession in his hospital room on December 8, 2005, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. His mother was present. Wearing the Carmelite habit, he took the religious name Jean Thierry of the Child Jesus and of the Passion. The profession fulfilled his desire to give his life to God within the religious family he had come to love.

He continued to hope for priesthood, even imagining that he might serve from a wheelchair. As death approached, however, he entrusted that unfinished vocation to God. His Carmelite biography records his hope that he would fulfill his mission in heaven by interceding for vocations to Carmel and the Church. The desire to serve remained with him as the possibility of a long earthly ministry slipped away.

Jean Thierry died in Legnano on January 5, 2006, aged twenty three. Those who had encountered him remembered his patience, strength, and concern that visitors should leave encouraged. His cause for beatification opened in the Archdiocese of Milan in 2013, and the diocesan inquiry concluded in September 2014. His brief life continued to draw attention, particularly among young people and families.

On May 22, 2026, under Pope Leo XIV, the Church recognized him as Venerable. His remains rest at the Carmelite convent in Nkolbisson, Cameroon, where his tomb has become a place of pilgrimage. His story offers a witness to the Christian meaning of redemptive suffering. Through treatment, loss, religious profession, and approaching death, he sought to unite his life with Christ and offer it for the good of others.

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MaGabriel Mokhosi, a Mother of Faith

 

Servant of God MaGabriel Mokhosi

In the village of Tlokoeng in Lesotho, Eulalia Malebaka Mokhosi lived a faith that her community would remember long after her death. Affectionately known as MaGabriel or Nkhono MaGabriel, she was a Catholic mother whose devotion centered on the Eucharist and the Rosary. Local accounts remember her making the long journey from her home to Saint Gabriel Parish in Quthing to attend Mass.

The Senqu River lay along that journey. Stories preserved among the faithful describe her crossing it even during floods and arriving untouched by rain. These belong to the devotional traditions surrounding her life. They express the community’s belief that God protected a woman determined to reach the Holy Eucharist.

Her devotion was sometimes misunderstood. Local accounts report that neighbors accused her of witchcraft because of her use of sacramentals and the protection they believed her fields received. Those same accounts credit her with helping establish Bethel Parish in Phamong, bringing the life of the Church closer to her community.

MaGabriel died in 1932, but her influence continued within her family. A historical study of Catholicism in Lesotho records that, during a pilgrimage to her grave in 1944, her son Abraham heard a priest speak about his mother’s holiness. Having spent several years away from the faith, he expressed his desire to return.

Her cause for canonization was initiated under Cardinal Sebastian Khoarai, and the Church recognizes her as a Servant of God. Each year, pilgrims gather at her burial place in Tlokoeng to pray for her beatification. At the gathering in March 2026, Bishop John Joale Tlhomola remembered her mercy, charity, humility, and trust in God. Her story continues to call others toward the faith that shaped her own life.

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