Peter Gonzalez
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The Blessed Peter Gonzalez, sometimes referred to as Pedro González Telmo, Saint Telmo, or Saint Elmo, was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest born in 1190 in Astorga, Spain.
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[edit] Biography
He was educated by his uncle, Bishop of Astorga, who gave him when very young a canonry. Later he entered the Dominican Order and became a renowned preacher; crowds gathered to hear him and numberless conversions were the result of his efforts. He accompanied king Ferdinand III of Leon on his expeditions against the Moors, but his ambition was to preach to the poor.
He devoted the remainder of his life to the instruction and conversion of the ignorant and of the mariners in Galicia and along the coast of Spain. He died on 15 April 1246, at Tuylies and is buried in the cathedral of Tui and was beatified in 1254 by pope Innocent IV.
- Despite the common epithet "Saint," Peter Gonzalez (or Gonzales) was never formally canonized, although his cult was confirmed in 1741 by Pope Benedict XIV, but he has not been canonized as a saint. The diminutive "Elmo" (or "Telmo") belongs properly to the martyr-bishop St. Erasmus (d. c. 303), one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, of whose name "Elmo" is a contraction. However, as St. Erasmus is the patron of sailors generally and Peter Gonzalez of Spanish and Portuguese sailors, they have both been popularly invoked as "St. Elmo."
[edit] See also
St. Elmo's fire is a pale electrical discharge sometimes seen on stormy nights on the tips of spires, about the decks and rigging of ships, in the shape of a ball or brush, singly or in pairs, particularly at the mastheads and yardarms. The mariners believed them to be the souls of the departed, whence they are also called corposant (corpo santo "holy body"). The ancients called them "Helena fire" when seen singly, and "Castor and Pollux" when in pairs.
[edit] Source
- This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia.
