St Dominic

As a theology student, this Spaniard sold his books to help others during a famine, and later held positions at the Osma Cathedral, where community life followed the Rule of St. Augustine.

Dominic and his bishop went to southern France on a papal mission to fight the Albigensian heresy.

He remained in Toulouse, as head of a preaching mission that evolved into the Order of Preachers, or Dominicans.

Dominic always preferred persuasion to establish orthodoxy and was said by a friar to have “a lively sympathy with any suffering.”

Text: Catholic News Service. Image: Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain