Blessed André Hibernon

Andrés Hibernón Real (1534 – 18 April 1602) was a Spanish, Roman Catholic, professed religious from the Order of Friars Minor. Hibernón was born to nobles who fell poor, and he was robbed when he sought to provide funds for his parents. This occurrence prompted him to revise his approach to material and spiritual goods and so he became a lay brother to cultivate his spiritual nature. His beatification received formal approval from Pope Pius VI in mid-1791. Although Andrés Hibernón Real was born in 1534 at his uncle's house in Murcia, he spent his childhood in Alcantarilla where his parents lived. He was baptized in the Murcia Cathedral where his uncle was a chaplain. Hibernón came from an old noble house that was reduced to poverty due to a range of adverse circumstances. His family had some land and Hibernón helped them with agricultural tasks. But after a few years of drought they had to send him to work with another uncle in Valencia who raised cattle. This uncle assumed charge of his initial education in order to relieve his parents of their economic burden. In his late childhood and into adolescence he endeavored to earn funds that would support his parents and siblings. From the age of 14 he dedicated himself to caring for livestock and similar tasks. He frequented Marian shrines and had an ardent devotion to the Eucharist. By the age of twenty, he had saved eighty silver ducats and travelled back home to Murcia to help provide for his sister's impending marriage. En route home a group of thieves attacked him and stripped him of all he had. Hibernón interpreted this as a sign of how much he depended on material goods and so resolved to labor for the remainder of his life for other goods that people could not take from him. In Albacete in 1556 he sought admission to a convent of the Order of Friars Minor and was admitted on 1 November 1557 where he commenced his period of novitiate and received the habit.