Blessed José Olallo

José Olallo Valdés, OH (12 February 1820 – 7 March 1889) was a Cuban professed religious and a professed member from the Brothers Hospitallers of Saint John of God. Olallo was dubbed as the "Poor People's Priest" even though Olallo was not an ordained priest - he was even encouraged to become one but refused. Olallo served as a nurse for his entire life and dedicated himself to the care of the ill and the poor and remained a pivotal figure in the hospital that he worked at. Pope Benedict XVI approved his beatification and delegated Cardinal José Saraiva Martins to preside over it in Cuba on 29 November 2008. José Olallo was born in 1820 and found abandoned on 13 March 1820 at the Saint Joseph orphanage in Havana where he was then raised until 1827. The infant was left in a small bundle with his birthdate attached and a note explaining he had not been baptized. He was then transferred to the Benefencia orphanage in Havana. He was baptized on 15 March 1820. In 1834 he applied for admission to the Brothers Hospitallers of Saint John of God who managed the Hospital of Saints Philip and James in Havana and was soon received into the order. He finished his novitiate in April 1835 and was assigned to serve at the order's Hospital of Saint John of God in Puerto Príncipe (now modern Camagüey). He would spend the rest of his life there nursing the sick and the poor and in 1845 was made the head nurse of the hospital. In 1856 he was named as the prior of the group. Olallo was often dubbed the "Poor People's Priest" despite not being an ordained priest and even refused an offer to become one from the Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba upon the belief that he would no longer be able to work in the hospital that he came to love. He tended to victims of a cholera epidemic in 1833.