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7 January: Saint Raymond of Peñafort

A jurist at the service of evangelization

Raymond of Peñafort cofounded the Order of the Mercedarians, served as Master General of the Dominicans, and above all, was a renowned expert in canon law. Born between 1175 and 1185 in Villafranca del Panadés, Raymond studied at the Cathedral of Barcelona, where he later taught rhetoric and logic.

Raymond moved to Bologna in 1210 to study civil and canon law, where he met.

Saint Dominic. After obtaining his doctorate in 1216, he became a professor, offering his courses for free and living on a pension provided by the city. During a visit to Bologna in 1218, the Archbishop of Barcelona asked Raymond to return to his country. When he returned in 1220, Raymond served as Canon of the Cathedral and later Provost of the Chapter. He joined the Order of Preachers on Good Friday 1222, after the Dominicans had opened a convent in Barcelona.

In 1223, he cooperated with Saint Peter Nolasco in founding the Order of the Mercedarians, dedicated to ransoming slaves. He wrote a Summa Iuris and a Summa Pœnitentia or Summa Casuum, in which he offered solutions to the most common cases of conscience presented to confessors.

When the Papal Legate, Jean Abbeville, was passing through Barcelona in 1229, he took Raymond as his assistant and recommended him to Pope Gregory IX.

The Pope summoned him to Rome and appointed him Penitentiary, charging him with the task of compiling the decisions made by the Popes over the past century. The Decretals of Gregory IX, promulgated in 1234, were thus collected into the first official collection of ancient ecclesiastical law, which served as the Church's Code of Canon Law until 1917.

Raymond was elected Master General of the Dominican Order in 1238, succeeding Blessed Jordan of Saxony, and worked on developing new Constitutions for the Order. He encouraged Saint Thomas Aquinas to write the Summa contra Gentiles to assist missionaries. At the age of 70, he retired from all official positions and returned to his country, where he dedicated himself to evangelization. He died at the age of 100 in 1275 and was buried in the Cathedral of Barcelona.

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