St. Martin de Porres

St. Martin de Porres spent hours in prayer during nights and heard a call to dedicate his life to God in religious life. By Peruvian law, people of African or indigenous heritage were not allowed to become full members of religious orders. Because his mother was a freed slave, Martin was unjustly barred from entering religious life. When he was fifteen, Martin approached the Dominican monastery in Lima to become a donado—a volunteer who took on menial labor and lived with the community. He was, essentially, the community’s servant boy.

Martin worked with a willing heart and took upon himself the work of several servants, tending the laundry and doing kitchen work. Increasingly, Martin was given more and more responsibility. The community entrusted him with distributing food and money to the poor, and he was allowed to use his medical training to assist the sick. At times, the food he gave out seemed to increase miraculously—he fed 160 people every day—and his medical care would sometimes lead to surprising cures and healings: miraculous cures were attributed to him, even when he only offered a simple drink of water.

Eventually, Martin was allowed to become a fully-professed Dominican brother. Out of humility, Martin declined to seek ordination to the priesthood. Once, when the monastery faced serious debts, he offered to be sold as a slave to raise money, saying, “I am only a poor mulatto. I am the property of the order—sell me.” To their credit, the order did not take him up on his offer.

In his care for imprisoned slaves, St. Martin de Porres reached out to the most outcast and rejected people of his society.

He established an orphanage and hospital for abandoned children and reached out to care for slaves who were taken from Africa and being unloaded in Peru after a miserable journey. One day, as Martin passed through the city, he came upon an old man, nearly naked, begging and covered with sores. When the man stretched his hand out, Martin took it and led the man back to the monastery, offering to the homeless beggar his very own bed. He died on November 3rd, 1639.