Blessed Emmanuel Domingo y Sol

Manuel Domingo y Sol (1 April 1836 - 25 January 1909) was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest and the founder of the Pontifical Spanish College in Rome and the religious order known as the Diocesan Labour Priests of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (1883). As a new priest he had built a sports arena and a theater to provide a place for adolescents to engage in sport activities and to act. His beatification cause started under Pope Pius XII in 1946 and he was titled as a Servant of God while Pope Paul VI later titled him as Venerable in 1970 upon the confirmation of his heroic virtue; Pope John Paul II beatified him on 29 March 1987 in Saint Peter's Square. Manuel Domingo y Sol was born on 1 April 1836 in Tortosa as the last of twelve children and was baptized in the same month at some point. In 1851 he commenced his studies at Tortosa for the priesthood and was later ordained as such on 2 June 1860; he celebrated his first Mass on 7 June at the church of Saint Blai. The Bishop of Tortosa Benet Vilamitjana i Vila - in 1862 - requested he go to the Valencia college for further studies and in 1865 he obtained a licentiate in theology. He became a religious education teacher in 1864 and a professor at his old seminary in 1865. On 7 March 1862 he was made a pastor of La Aldea and in 1863 sent to the parish of Santiago de Tortosa. On one cold day in February 1873 he met the seminarian Ramón Valero who could not continue his studies because his Tortosa seminary was destroyed during the 1868 revolution. This touched Sol who - in September 1873 - opened "Saint Joseph's House" for seminarians and on 11 April 1879 opened the "College of Saint Joseph for Ecclesiastical Vocations". He became firm in the need for a college in Rome to cater to Spanish seminarians and this idea would later come to fruition after he met Rafael Merry del Val in Rome at Piazza Navona; the latter decided to aid Sol in his mission.