Blessed Jakob von Ghazir

Jacques Ghazir Haddad, OFM Cap., born Khalil al-Haddad, was a Lebanese Catholic priest and Capuchin friar. He was the founder of the Franciscan Sisters of the Cross, and a noted preacher and founder of various orphanages and schools across Lebanon. Presidents of the state honored him with various awards, while the populace compared him to the likes of Vincent de Paul and John Bosco. His beatification process was opened in 1979 granting him the title Servant of God, and Pope John Paul II declared him Venerable on 21 December 1992. Pope Benedict XVI approved his beatification and delegated Cardinal José Saraiva Martins to preside over the celebration on 22 June 2008 in Beirut. Khalil al-Haddad was born on 1 February 1875 in Lebanon as the third of eight children to the Maronites Boutros Saleh al-Haddad and Shams Yoakim el-Haddad. He was baptized on 21 February 1875 in the Maronite church located in his town and received the sacrament of Confirmation on 9 February 1881. He attended school in Ghazir from 1885 until 1891 and then at the College de La Sagesse in Beirut where he studied the Arabic language in addition to French and Syriac. In 1892 he left Lebanon and served as a teacher of Arabic at the Christian Brothers' College of Saint Mark's in Alexandria in Egypt from 1892 to 1893 where he felt a strong call to the religious life. The negative example of a priest stationed there struck him while the tale of the death of a Capuchin friar moved him. He returned home in 1893 to inform his father of his decision to enter the order to which his father opposed but later accepted as his son's will and that of God's. He entered the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin in Khashbau at Saint Anthony's on 25 August 1893 and received his religious name in honor of Saint James of the Marches; he professed his perpetual vows in 1898. Upon starting his novitiate he made a covenant with God: "I came alive and I will only come out dead". He received the habit on 26 March 1894.