Venerable Jaime Hilario

Jaime Hilario Barbal, FSC (born Manuel Barbal i Cosán; 2 January 1898 – 18 January 1937) was a Spanish Catholic and professed Brother of the Christian Schools. He served for almost two decades as a teacher in the schools that his order managed until being caught up in the turmoil of the Spanish Civil War, which saw the forces of the Second Spanish Republic execute him. His beatification was celebrated on 29 April 1990 after it was confirmed that Barbal was killed in odium fidei ("in hatred of the faith"). The confirmation of a miracle attributed to his intercession allowed for Pope John Paul II to canonize him as a saint of the Catholic Church on 21 November 1999. Manuel Barbal i Cosán was born in Lleida. He began his ecclesiastical studies at a religious school where seminarians were educated in 1911 for the Diocese of Urgel. But he soon developed hearing problems and was forced to withdraw from the institute and could not pursue a path to the priesthood as he had intended. In 1917 he entered the novitiate of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools in Irun where he was given the religious name of "Jaime Hilario" and the habit on 24 February. Until 1933 he was sent on various teaching assignments and was regarded as an exceptional teacher and catechist; he taught Latin and was a believer in universal education with an emphasis on the poor. His hearing problems continued to persist and worsen and, at the beginning of the 1930s, he was forced to stop teaching and began work as a gardener at the college of Saint Joseph in Tarragona. The outbreak of the civil war in mid-1936 while traveling to visit his relations saw him arrested for being a member of a religious congregation. In December 1936, he was transferred to the prison ship Mahon at Tarragona. Although he could have claimed that he was a gardener, he insisted that he was a religious brother and, on 15 January 1937, he was tried and convicted for being a member of the De La Salle Brothers.