Venerable Francisco Coll Guitar

Francisco Coll Guitart, OP (Catalan: Francesc Coll i Guitart;18 May 1812 – 2 April 1875) was a Spanish Catholic priest of the Order of Preachers and founder of the Dominican Sisters of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin. He was beatified on 29 April 1979 and canonized as a saint of the Catholic Church on 11 October 2009. Francisco Coll Guitart was born in Gombrèn (Ripoll) in 1812 as the tenth and last son of a wool carder. His Father died when Francisco was four years old. He entered the seminary at Vic when he was just 10 years old. He would later meet and become friends with Antonio Maria Claret. As was customary among poor seminarians, he earned food and lodging in a country house, in exchange for helping with the literary and religious instruction of the children of the family. In 1830 he decided to join the Order of Preachers at the Dominican convent in Girona. His studies for the priesthood and Dominican religious life were interrupted with the suppression of religious orders in 1835 by the Spanish government. During this time all religious were ejected from their properties. However he did not give up on his vocation and continued to pursue the priesthood. On 28 March 1836 he was ordained as a Dominican priest. Coll's pastoral mission was all the more difficult due to the lack of social life and the support of fellow friars that existed before the suppression of the religious orders. From 1839 to 1849, he was curate at Moià, Catalonia, Spain, where he started charitable organizations to feed and house refugees from the Carlist Wars. In 1850 he was appointed as the director of the Dominican Third Order; he was able to reopen a suppressed Dominican convent, which gave him a base for his mission as a priest. In 1854 he worked with those struck with cholera. For more than thirty years he exercised his ministry, first in the parishes of Artés and Moyá, and then as a missionary in various dioceses of Catalonia. His fame as a preacher grew rapidly.