St. Pedro de San José Betancur

St. Pedro de San José Betancur was born in 1626 on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, of poor family, and died on 25 April 1667 at Santiago de Guatemala. As a young man, tending sheep, he felt a call to serve God across the sea, and after a hard journey he reached Guatemala so destitute that he had to wait in a bread line; unable, for lack of learning, to become a priest, he became instead a Third Order Franciscan and gave himself entirely to the poorest of the poor.

In Guatemala City he founded a hospital for the convalescent poor, shelters for the homeless, and schools for poor children, and he went through the streets by night ringing a bell and calling the people to pray for souls and to repent. From his charitable work grew a new congregation, the Bethlehemite Brothers, and later Sisters, to carry on the care of the sick and the teaching of the poor. Honored as a father of the poor and sometimes called the "St. Francis of the Americas," he was canonized in 2002 as the first saint of Central America, and his memory is kept on 26 April.