Reliquary / Relic：Bl. Diégo Josef of Cádiz

Description: Size：cm Material：brass 1 class Wax seal：Capuchin Memorial：24 March22 May on some calendars5 January on some calendars Profile： He was born in the city of Cádiz on 30 March 1743 to José López Caamaño and Maria de Ocaña y García, both from noble families. Since his mother died when he was nine, he had a sad childhood with a pitiless step-mother. In his first years of religious life, after novitiate, he lived in quite an easy going way, if we believe what he wrote. He contented himself with the bare minimum in his studies. He felt more attracted to Castellan poetic literature. In class one day, however, during a theology lesson, he had another spiritual start. “I was aware of a notable interior devotion combined with a great desire to see those exalted things in the same Lord with the blessed. I was aware of the need to abandon everything to follow him and I felt determined to do it.” He was ordained priest at Cardona on 24 May 1766. “I was committed then to mental prayer. Apart from the two hours of community prayer, I dedicated at least an hour to mental prayer during the night.” For six years he immersed himself in Biblical studies and devout books. Faced with the relentless attacks against the Church and the Pope by the French Enlightment, he felt that he could not remain idle. He had to reply with all his strength. “Unable to read such writings,” he told his spiritual director, “I had no desire to learn French because of the disgust I felt for the books that came from there on the subject. How necessary holiness is to be able to placate God with prayer and to support holy Church! What a desire to go public to openly confront the libertines! What an urge to preach to the learned and educated people! What ardour to pour out my blood in the defence of everything we have believed until now!” He was realising his apostolic and missionary aspiration. In 1768 he began to preach in Ubrique with great fruit. After fifteen years of discord and argument among the people of Estepona he brought peace in 1773. For a decade he travelled throughout Andalucía preaching missions, Lenten courses and novenas. He was in Granada at Guadix, Baza, and Jerez, in 1779. 1780 saw him in Porto de Santa Maria, Jaén and elsewhere. He was unstoppable. In Lent of 1775 he preached in San Roque at Gibraltar. This year was fundamental in his life because he met Fr. Francisco Javier González , a minim of San Franceso di Paola. For nine years he would be Diego’s spiritual director and prudent counsellor, who steered his apostolic undertakings. He is an indicator of Diego’s mission within the spiritual history of his century. In fact he will write to Br. Diego on 26 June 1778: “Yes, God wants to use you, ignorantissimo, and attracted you to the Capuchin Order and to the ministry. Armed with His omnipotence, wisdom and strength, you can declare war on the bullying libertinism and blinding Enlightenment of this dark age. The world contradicts and tries with its hellish Enlightenment to destroy the wisdom of the Gospel and the Christian spirit.” After the death of Francisco Javier on 29 February 1784, Diego chose Juan José Alcover y Higueras, the abbot of the collegial church of El Salvador in Granada, to be his new spiritual director. In 1776, at thirty three years of age, he preached a mission in Sevilla. The course of sermons was interrupted by a serious illness. When he had recovered he returned to Sevilla and preached in many churches of the city. In one sermon dedicated to Saint Mary Magdalene, later published various times, he resolutely attacked the incredible temerity of the libertines and the Enlightenment philosophers. His talks against the atheism of the Enlightenment given at the University of Granada in 1779, and in Madrid and in Alcalá de Henares in 1783, and the funeral sermons in honour of his spiritual director in 1784 and of a celebrated Carmelite in 1786 are famous. His stirring speeches were also directed against elements in the press, horse racing, dances, comedies and comedians then at the height of their popularity. Often his words had little effect because of the popular frenzy that accompanied these things, considered works of art at the time. Diego was thinking of the poor as in 1778 when he was speaking to the Town Council of Écija: “I am staggered at the very costly comedy theatre, while this town has no hospital for the sick, no hospice for orphans, no adequate barracks for the soldiers.” In his mission in Antequera Diego told how “as an outcome of the preaching, the principle lords decided to form a congregation to help poor prisoners who died of hunger due to the lack of assistance.” In 1782 at Toledo in the royal estate of Aranjuez he moved everyone. The following year he want to Madrid and to Alcalà de Henares. Following an impassioned sermon in the cathedral of Sevilla on Good Friday 1784 in favour of the poor defrauded by Church wealth, some informers managed to have him exiled from the city for many months. He travelled through Andalucía again. In the winter of 1786 he preached a mission for a month in Cuenca. A Zaragoza he reported to the Inquisition various propositions of a poisonous book against religious vows, thus opening a tin of worms. From 1787 many Spanish cities listened to him in wonder: Abálate, Alcañiz, Caspe, Barcelona, Valencia, Alicante, Cartagena, Totana and Motril. He also intervened with noteworthy apologetic and spiritual books. His works were published in five volumes in Madrid from 1796-1799. His adversaries though forced him into silence for a few years when he was confined to the friary of Casares until 1792 when he took up again his apostolic itinerary in Andalucía. Two years later he was in Portugal and the provinces of Pontevedra, Coruna and Lugo, then from Oviedo to León, Astorga, Zamora and Salamanca. His health would no longer permit him to maintain the same rhythm. He had to reduce the number of his apostolic excursions. After yet another popular mission in Malaga he crossed the strait to Ceuta in 1799. He had begun his first series of preaching there twenty seven years earlier. He spent his last months outside the friary with a devout family in Ronda where he used to retire to rest after the fatigue of his preaching tours and where he had written most of his precious correspondence. Born：30 March 1747 in Cádiz, Seville, Spain as Francisco José López-Caamaño García-PérezDied：24 March 1801 in Ronda, Malaga, Spain of natural causesinterred in the sanctuary of Our Lady of Peace church in Ronda, Spain Venerated：10 February 1884 by Pope Leo XIII (decree of heroic virtues)Beatified：22 April 1894 by Pope Leo XIII

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End Time: 2024-10-18T07:38:22.000Z

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