Bl. Pere Tarres I Claret

While studying to become a doctor, Pere Tarres I Claret, of Manresa, Spain, served as president of a Catholic lay apostolate, the Federation of Young Christians of Catalonia. Sustained by devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and the Blessed Virgin Mary, Pere zealously spoke about the Catholic faith to other young people and to those he met in the streets. His automobile became what he termed his "instrument of work" which he used to seek out souls to convert. After earning his medical degree, he co-founded in Barcelona a clinic for those unable to afford medical care. The horrors of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) persuaded Pere that he should become a "doctor of souls." Following the war, he entered Barcelona's diocesan seminary and was ordained in 1942 on his thirty-seventh birthday. After serving as a priest for seven and a half years, he was found to have lymphatic cancer. Father Tarres offered his illness for the sanctification of his fellow priests, seeing his approaching death as an opportunity "to die in a continual act of love and suffering... worthy of the heavenly Father." He died on August 31, 1950.