St. Charbel Makhlouf

St. Charbel Makhlouf was born Youssef Antoun Makhlouf on 8 May 1828 in the mountain village of Bekaa Kafra in northern Lebanon and died on 24 December 1898 at the hermitage of Saints Peter and Paul near the monastery of Annaya. Raised in a devout Maronite Catholic family, he left home as a young man to enter the Lebanese Maronite Order, taking the name Charbel after a second-century martyr, and was ordained a priest in 1859.

After sixteen years of monastic life he received permission to live as a hermit, and for the last twenty-three years of his life he dwelt in almost complete solitude, silence, and penance, devoted above all to the Holy Eucharist and to unceasing prayer. Renowned for his humility and austerity, he became after his death a source of countless reported miracles and healings, and his body was found to remain incorrupt. He was beatified in 1965 and canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1977, becoming one of the most beloved saints of the Eastern Catholic Churches.