Saint Josep Manyanet i Vives

Josep Manyanet i Vives, SF (7 January 1833 – 17 December 1901) was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest and the founder of the Sons of the Holy Family and the Missionary Daughters of the Holy Family. He served in a range of capacities as a parish priest before establishing both religious orders in order to spread devotion to the Holy Family to whom he fostered an intense devotion. The sainthood cause commenced under Pope Pius XII on 25 November 1956 – in which he was titled as a Servant of God – while Pope John Paul II named him as Venerable in 1982. The same pope beatified him on his trip to Paris in 1984 and later canonized him as a saint in mid-2004 in Saint Peter's Square. Josep Manyanet i Vives was born in Tremp in 1833. His baptism was celebrated on the date of his birth. His father died while he was an infant in September 1834. In 1888 his mother offered him up to the Madonna as a special consecration and the parish priest Valentín Lledós helped him cultivate his religious calling. He received his education with the Piarists in Barbastro and then went on to be trained in the seminaries at Lleida and La Seu d'Urgell. He was ordained to the priesthood on 9 April 1859 and went on to become the aide of the Bishop of Urgel Josep Caixal Estradé. Other tasks he had been assigned to included being the librarian at one of the seminaries. On 28 June 1864 he founded a male religious order and followed that up on 19 March 1874 with a female branch. The male order received diocesan approval on 3 February 1894 and then the papal approval of Pope Pius XII well after his death on 16 December 1950 while the female order received the decree of praise from Pope Leo XIII on 30 April 1887 and papal approval from him on 22 June 1901 not long before the priest died. He worked for the construction of a church in Barcelona that the noted architect Servant of God Antoni Gaudí built. He also founded a school in Barcelona in 1895.