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Lima Newsroom, May 20, 2025 / 09:21 am (CNA).

Perhaps many Catholics wonder who Pope Leo XIV’s favorite saint is. A Peruvian missionary priest who is a close friend and confidant of the pontiff said he knows the answer in this little-known devotion of the Holy Father, who used to pray to this saint on his knees in a small chapel near Chiclayo in northern Peru.

“St. Nicholas of Tolentine is, without a doubt, his favorite saint. He is the protector of his perpetual vows, his great devotion within Augustinian spirituality,” said Peruvian priest Father David Farfán Guerrero, whom the Holy Father met in 1985 in Chulucanas in the Piura district of the country.

Farfán, who has served as pastor of St. Turibius of Mogrovejo Parish for about 10 years, welcomed ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, to San Nicolás, a small settlement located outside of Chiclayo, specifically to the humble chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas of Tolentine, considered the first saint of the Order of St. Augustine and who lived in the 13th century.

“This place is very special in the life of His Holiness because this is where, as I often say, ‘he put his knees to the test.’ He had hardly arrived when he would go in and pray to the patron saint of his perpetual profession,” said the priest, a former missionary in Canada and the Philippines.

The then-Friar Robert Prevost — now Pope Leo XIV — professed his solemn (or perpetual) vows with the Augustinians on Aug. 29, 1981, taking this Italian mystic as his patron saint. Years later, his brothers in the order appointed Prevost prior general during the 2001 ordinary general chapter and renewed their trust in him for a second term in 2007.

Adopting a saint when making vows — also called “patron” or “intercessor” — is a common custom in some religious orders. It consists of choosing a saint whose life serves as an example and spiritual aid to better live one’s devotion to God and fulfill one’s commitments.

According to Farfán, the then-Bishop Prevost, who served as bishop of the Diocese of Chiclayo from 2015 to 2023, “never imagined that, in Chiclayo, within the diocese, he would find a chapel and a village dedicated precisely to this saint.”

“When he arrived as bishop, he discovered its existence and then adopted the custom of asking for the key to the chapel, entering alone, and praying there before the image of the saint. Right here,” he recounted with emotion.

The connection with this chapel was further strengthened when Prevost was put in charge of the formation of the Augustinians in Trujillo.

“He used to have the novices make the pilgrimage on foot from the Guadalupe district to here [more than 30 miles], and then continue on to Pomalca and Tumán [about 25 miles], where there was also an Augustinian presence,” the priest said.

The image of St. Nicholas in the village of San Nicolás (a little over 1.25 miles from the town of Zaña) not only bears witness to centuries of faith but also represents a visible symbol of the devotion that has accompanied Pope Leo XIV since his beginnings as a friar.

History of the image

Discussing the image of St. Nicholas of Tolentine inside the chapel, Farfán explained that it is the oldest in the Zaña area. According to a restorer who worked on it, the priest explained, it is more than 450 years old, which directly links it to the arrival of the Augustinians in this region.

The history of the Augustinian presence in Zaña dates back to the 16th century, when St. Augustine Convent, one of the most important centers of devotion to St. Nicholas of Tolentine in northern Peru, was founded.

“This indicates that the Augustinians who arrived [to establish] St. Augustine Convent in Zaña brought it from Europe; the image already existed there; it was simply transferred. We don’t know who made it or the exact year it arrived, but since we know the date the convent was founded, we assume it came with the first friars who settled there,” he explained.

According to the chronicler Friar Antonio de la Calancha, through the intercession of St. Nicholas of Tolentine, represented by the statue in the chapel, numerous miracles were performed in the town of Zaña, attracting great popular devotion and generous alms for the Augustinian order.

Both an approachable and austere saint

St. Nicholas of Tolentine was a humble Augustinian friar who dedicated his life to comforting the sick, preaching by example, and praying for the souls in purgatory.

The Italian saint is considered the first saint of the Augustinian order. He was born around 1245 in Sant’Angelo in Pontano, Italy, but his name was forever linked to Tolentine, where he lived and served for 30 years. At a young age, he joined the Augustinian community in his town, where he began his journey as a novice and student. He was ordained a priest around 1273 and shortly afterward sent to Tolentine, a city that would become the center of his intense pastoral work.

According to the Order of St. Augustine, Nicholas was not known for his erudition or for writing great works but for something much more important: his closeness to the people, his profound life of prayer, and his total dedication to those most in need.

He traveled through the poor neighborhoods, comforted the sick and dying, heard confessions tirelessly, and always sought to alleviate suffering, both physical and spiritual. He lived austerely, but with a contagious joy. Shortly before his death, when asked why he seemed so happy, he calmly replied: “Because my God and Lord Jesus Christ, accompanied by His Holy Mother and my Holy Father Augustine, is saying to me: Come! Good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Lord.”

Throughout his life — and even after his death in 1305 — he was credited with numerous miracles. He is the patron saint of the souls in purgatory and protector against the plague, fires, and stuttering. His canonization was celebrated by Pope Eugene IV in 1446, on the solemnity of Pentecost, and for many, he remains a model of silent devotion, constant prayer, and boundless charity.

Pope Leo XIV’s profound devotion to St. Nicholas of Tolentine not only reveals his Augustinian roots but also the soul of a pastor who, like the 13th-century saint, consoles, prays, and walks humbly alongside his people.

Here is a prayer to St. Nicholas of Tolentine:

O glorious wonderworker and protector of the souls in purgatory, St. Nicholas of Tolentine! With all the affection of my soul, I beseech you to intervene with your powerful intercession on behalf of these blessed souls, obtaining from divine clemency the remission of all their crimes and punishments, so that, upon emerging from that dark prison of suffering, they may go to enjoy the beatific vision of God in heaven. And for me, your devoted servant, obtain, O great saint, the most lively compassion and the most ardent charity toward these beloved souls. Amen.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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Madrid, Spain, May 20, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV carries on his pectoral cross, among others, a relic of an Augustinian martyr bishop, Anselmo Polanco, who was executed during the 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War. 

In addition to bearing bone fragments of St. Augustine and his mother, St. Monica, the pontiff’s cross includes two relics of Spanish Augustinian bishops: St. Thomas of Villanova, archbishop of Valencia and a reformer of the Church in the 15th and 16th centuries, and Polanco, the martyred Spanish bishop of Teruel.

Polanco was born in 1881 in a small town in Palencia, northern Spain, and educated at the Royal Seminary College of Valladolid. At the age of 15, he received the Augustinian habit, one of the mendicant orders along with the Trinitarians, Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, Mercedarians, and Servites.

After receiving his formation in Germany, he was appointed prior of the Augustinian Province of the Philippines. In 1935, he was appointed bishop of Teruel and apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Albarracín.

When the Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936, after months of persecution against Catholics by the government of the Second Republic and despite having the option of leaving the diocese, he decided to remain.

The Battle of Teruel took place from December 1937 to February 1938 within his ecclesiastical jurisdiction, in which nearly 40,000 soldiers from both sides died.

On Jan. 1, 1938, Polanco celebrated his last Mass at the Teruel seminary and was arrested eight days later, remaining a prisoner of the Republican forces for 13 months.

On Feb. 7, 1939, with less than two months left until the end of the war, he was bound and taken in a truck with other prisoners to the Can Tretze ravine, where he was shot dead.

Polanco thus became the 13th Spanish prelate executed during those years of religious persecution. He was beatified on Oct. 1, 1995, by Pope John Paul II, and his remains rest in the Teruel cathedral alongside those of his vicar general, also a martyr, Father Felipe Ripoll.

A visit with young people to the Valley of the Fallen

In 2003, the International Meeting of Augustinian Youth took place at the Friar Luis de León Convention Center in Guadarrama, a town in the mountains northwest of Madrid and very close to the Valley of the Fallen. The theme was “Making These Times Better Together,” and the order’s prior general, Father Robert Prevost, now Leo XIV, participated in the event.

The youth gathering is highlighted as part of the history of the Spanish Augustinian Federation on its website. During those summer days, one of the activities was a visit to the Valley of the Fallen, the monumental complex built after the Spanish Civil War to pray for peace and reconciliation among Spaniards.

The future Pope Leo XIV attended with several dozen young Augustinians and a photo was taken with him and the group on the steps leading to the basilica’s entrance. In the picture he can be seen wearing a white shirt in the front row, surrounded by young people wearing blue T-shirts.

The fact that the priest, now the pope, visited the Valley of the Fallen has been perceived by some as opening a door to hope for the future of the monumental complex, especially given that the Spanish government has launched a controversial process of “resignifying” its nature.

Thousands of combatants from both sides, including numerous martyrs, are buried in the rock-hewn papal basilica, atop which stands the world’s largest cross.

An agreement, with Cardinal José Cobo acting as interlocutor, between the Spanish government and the Holy See to implement alterations to the complex has sparked opposition from a portion of the Spanish faithful.

When the specifications for taking bids on the project, which would include modifications to the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, were announced, the prelates emphasized that “the terms of the agreement between the government and the Holy See are general and the details or specifics were never gone into.”

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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