Saint Peter of Saint Joseph de Betancur

Saint Peter of Saint Joseph de Betancur, known in Guatemala as Hermano Pedro, that is, Brother Peter, was a lay Franciscan tertiary who devoted himself to the sick, the poor, and abandoned children. The Bethlehemite order grew out of his community. The Church commemorates him on April 25.

He was born in March 1626 in Vilaflor on Tenerife, into a poor and deeply believing family of shepherds and farmers. When he heard of the misery of the people of America, he longed to bring them the Gospel and ease their lot. At twenty-three he left Tenerife. Soon after landing in the New World he fell seriously ill, and in 1651, by way of Cuba and Honduras, he reached Santiago de Guatemala, today’s Antigua Guatemala. He lived in poverty, standing in line for bread at the Franciscan friary and working in a textile workshop.

He wanted to become a priest and, on the advice of his spiritual director, began studying at the Jesuit college, but the studies were beyond his abilities and he had to give them up. The Franciscan Fernando Espino, who remained his counselor for the rest of his life, suggested that he enter the order as a brother, but Peter discerned that God wanted him in the world. As a layman he entered the Third Order of Saint Francis and settled at the Calvary hermitage next to the Franciscan friary, where he served as sacristan. He visited hospitals, prisons, and the homes of the poor.

In 1658, in a poor house placed under the protection of Our Lady of Bethlehem, he opened a shelter for homeless children, to whom he taught religion and reading, a hostel for students from out of town, and a place for the poor who still needed care after leaving the hospital. John Paul II called it the first hospital for convalescents in the world. In memory of the poverty of Bethlehem he named the whole work “Belén.” He took in white, mestizo, and black children, and he supported everything with the alms he begged in the streets of the city.

Other tertiaries joined him, sharing his prayer, penance, and service of the sick. He wrote a rule of life for them, which was also adopted by the women who taught the children. From this community grew the Bethlehemite order, for men and for women, approved by the Church only after his death. His spirituality was nourished by contemplating the mysteries of Bethlehem and of the Cross, and in the poor he saw the face of the Child Jesus. He spread the praying of the Rosary; according to accounts, he walked the streets at night with a bell, calling the inhabitants to conversion. In his lifetime he was called the “Mother of Guatemala.”

Worn out by fasting and work, he fell ill with pneumonia and died on April 25, 1667, at the age of forty-one. He rests in the Church of Saint Francis in Antigua Guatemala. John Paul II beatified him on June 22, 1980, in Saint Peter’s Basilica, and canonized him on July 30, 2002, in Guatemala City, calling him the first saint of Guatemala and Tenerife and “the man who was charity.”