Joseph Vaz
A local legend has it that while Vaz was serving as a parish priest, a few Hindus arrived in the night, asking him to accompany them to administer final sacraments to a sick parishioner.
The men had conspired to slay the priest, due to his tireless missionary activities. When they reached the top of the Hill, the men tried to kill him. The serene Vaz knelt down on the rock and held his stick straight on the ground. A light flashed in their midst and the men could see water gushing from the spots where he knelt. Owing to this miracle, the men fled from the scene and Vaz returned to the parish unharmed.
There was a prolonged drought in Kandy and the King sent some of his Catholic courtiers to Vaz inviting him to pray for rain. Realising that this was more or less a challenge to test his powers of intercession with God, he sent back word that if the king had faith and if it was to the glory of God rain would assuredly come down. Vaz set up an altar in the public square opposite to the Palace, placed a cross on it, and prayed to God to glorify His Name by sending down rain. Before he rose from his knees, rain fell in abundance but not a drop fell on Vaz.
In 1995, Joseph Vaz was beatified by Pope John Paul II in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Labour MP Keith Vaz, who served as the Member of Parliament for Leicester East for 32 years from 1987 to 2019, is a distant relative of Joseph.
Vaz quotes
“Help one another with the generosity of the Lord and despise no one. When you have the opportunity to do good, do not let it go by.”
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St Joseph Vaz Patron Saint Block with gift bag
Piran of Cornwall
St. Piran “is known as the merriest, hardest drinking, hardest living holy man Cornwall ever knew”, resulting in the Cornish phrase “As drunk as a Perraner.”
He laboured to build himself a church, which still exists near Perranporth: St. Piran’s Oratory, or praying-place, the oldest Christian church in Britain.
One story told of him is that a local chieftain stole a young nun from a convent of which Piran had care, and wanted to keep her to marry her. St Piran had to try to get her back. He did so, by by performing another miracle. The chief would not let her go, he said, unless he were woken up the next morning by a cuckoo calling. It was November, but Piran prayed all night, and the next morning a cuckoo appeared on the barn roof of the chief’s house and called loudly. The nun was returned, none the worse for her experience.
The Cross of St. Piran, a white cross on a black ground, symbolises the light of God in a dark world, and also the white tin metal against the black rock.
Piran quotes
Baring-Gould says of Piran’s death that ‘at length, failing through infirmity of body, having convoked the brethren, he gave them instructions concerning the Kingdom of God. Then he ordered his grave to be prepared, and into it he descended, and there expired on the third of the Nones of March’.
Trelawny records the death as ‘Piran calmly commanded his grave to be dug, and with a resolute step descended into it, he kneeled down there, with clasped hands and uplifted eyes, he meekly surrendered his soul into the hands of his Creator’.
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