Jaime Hilario
Saint (Brother) Jaime Hilario, FSC (January 2, 1889 Enviny, Lleida Province – January 18, 1937) was a Spanish member of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools. Born Manuel Barbal Cosan in Enviny near the Pyrenees in northern Spain, he entered a minor seminary at age 12 for the diocese of Urgel. He soon, however, developed hearing problems and withdrew from the school.
In 1917, he was accepted by the Christian Brothers and began his novitiate in Irun, Spain, where he took the name Jaime Hilario. He spent the next 16 years in various teaching assignments and was regarded as an exceptional teacher. His hearing problems continued to persist and worsen and by the early 1930s he was forced to stop teaching completely and began work as a gardener at the formation house at San José, in Tarragona.
At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, while traveling to visit his family at Enviny, Hilario was arrested for being a religious. By December he was transferred to a prison ship at Tarragona. Although he could have claimed that he was a gardener, he insisted that he was a religious and in January 1937 was tried and convicted for being a member of the Christian Brothers.
When two volleys from a firing squad failed to harm him, the firing squad commander shot Hilario at close range. His last words were: “To die for Christ, my young friends, is to live.” He was the first of 97 Christian Brothers killed in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War.
He was beatified on April 29, 1990, and canonized on November 21, 1999, by Pope John Paul II. The cause for Jaime Hilario was linked to that of the Martyrs of Turon, a group of Brothers killed in a separate incident in 1934, who were canonized on the same day.
His feast day is July 28.
[edit] External links
- Jaime Hilario Integrated School-La Salle - Bagac, Bataan, Philippines: Educational institution named after Jaime Hilario
[edit] References
- Jaime Hilario Barbal at Patron Saints Index
- Biography from Institute of the Christian Brothers
- Vatican report on canonization
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- 1889 births
- 1937 deaths
- People from Pallars Sobirà
- People killed in the Spanish Civil War
- People executed by the Second Spanish Republic
- Spanish people of the Spanish Civil War
- Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools
- Catalan saints
- Catalan Roman Catholic saints
- Spanish saints
- Spanish Roman Catholic saints
- Roman Catholic saints
- 20th-century Christian saints
- 20th-century Roman Catholic martyrs
- Saint stubs
