Much can be said about St. Anthony Mary Claret, our saint for today, the founder of the Claretians, but due to our limited space we shall concentrate only on the most essentials.Anthony Mary Claret was born in Sallent, Barcelona, Spain on December 23, 1807. As a child, he was educated in his village. His father was a weaver so at eighteen, Anthony specialized as a loom programmer, at the same time, he studied Latin, French and engraving. He wished to become a Carthusian monk but finally entered the diocesan seminary at Vic in 1829, was ordained on June 13, 1835 and continued to study theology. Desiring to be a missionary, he went to Rome and entered the Jesuit novitiate but due to ill health, he did not persevere and instead returned to Spain for his pastoral ministry. His Bishop then sent him as an Apostolic Missionary in Catalonia. After preaching in the pulpit, he would spend hours hearing confession. In 1848, he was sent to Canary Islands where he gave retreats for 15 months. He drew many people to listen to him. He would often preach from an improvised pulpit before the church to accommodate the people. When he returned to Spain in 1849, he established the Congregation of the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (The Claretians) on July 16, 1849. He was afterwards appointed as archbishop of Santiago, Cuba. As archbishop, he established the Seminary, strengthened clerical discipline, validated 9,000 marriages, erected hospitals, schools, visited prisoners and the sick, defended the poor and the marginalized, denounced racism and visited the entire diocese three times. On August 25, 1855, he founded the Religious of Mary Immaculate, the first women religious institute in Cuba. His sermons and many apostolic works met oppositions wherever he worked. Once a man stabbed him on the cheek, but he forgave him and obtained for him a commutation from death sentence to life imprisonment. In 1857, Archbishop Claret was requested by Queen Isabella II to be her Confessor. He resigned from his work in Cuba and went to Spain. When a revolution sent the Queen and her family to exile, he accompanied them to France. Consequently, he was able to preach in