Portugal's old Alfama district in Lisbon set the stage for St. Anthony of Padua
A walk near Santo Antonio's birthplace
Monday, September 8, 2014
*Tom Tracy
Lisbon, PORTUGAL | During a morning climb up the twisting streets of the Alfama, the ancient section of Portugal’s capital, our “Lisbon Walker” tour guide stopped to point out an “ex-voto” created locally for Santo Antonio.
It was July and just a month earlier the entire country — but Lisbon especially, and Alfama quarter most specifically — had held its annual 13 days of St. Anthony festivals and church events celebrating the life of their native son and doctor of the church.
His real name was Fernando de Bulhoes, and although St. Anthony of Padua did eventually live much of his life and die in Italy, where his renowned preaching and command of scripture brought him to the attention of Pope Gregory IX, he was a Portuguese missionary with his sights set on Northern Africa who arrived in Italy somewhat by accident.
He was born circa 1191 in Lisbon, where electric trolleys still pass the Santo Antonio Church, marking the place of his crypt. The church is a stone’s throw from what is now the Patriarchal Cathedral of St. Mary Major — a starting point for exploring the Alfama and where it is believed Fernando was baptized.
Our guide pointed out that the little altar we saw was a petition for “pennies for St. Anthony,” a reference to the long-ago-completed rebuilding effort (finished 200 years ago) of the Santo Antonio Church after it was mostly destroyed in the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755. Donations are still left for charity in gratitude for answered prayers or by newly married couples wishing for a happy marriage.
Hiking further up the hill from the Santo Antonio Church and the neighborhood ex-voto is the magnificent church of Sao Vicente de Fora, site of an Augustinian monastery where the future saint first entered religious life and studies.
From there he transferred to the old Portuguese capital of Coimbra (not far from today’s Fatima Shrine) where he later joined the Franciscans. It was then that he took on the name Anthony before setting out on missionary journeys to Morocco and then — ill and driven off course by a storm while trying to return to Portugal — arrived instead in Italy, never returning to Portugal.
The popular associations with St. Anthony are many, some well-known (advocate of lost objects, Patron of Fishermen) and others more local (Patron of Lisbon, of the disappeared or missing, and a matchmaker saint with a special day in Portugal still set aside as “St. Anthony’s Weddings.”)
The St. Anthony Museum exhibition, opened in 1998, notes that further afield, in South America especially, St. Anthony remains a deeply embedded element of the Portuguese evangelization, along with his deep associations within the Italian communities worldwide.
