SAINT PETER NOLASCO. — He was born in southern France in the last quarter of the 12th century; still a young man, around 1213 he moved to Spain, which was largely under Saracen domination. Having visited the famous shrine of Montserrat in Catalonia as the beginning of his divine mission (an act later imitated by St. Ignatius, St. Joseph Calasanz, and other saints), he made his way to Valencia, which had not yet been freed from the Moorish yoke, to devote himself there to the redemption of Christians reduced to slavery.
Divinely inspired and under the patronage of the Virgin Mary, with the cooperation of St. Raymond of Peñafort and King James I of Aragon, he founded in Barcelona—according to the most common opinion in 1218, or in 1223, or better still in 1228, as some writers claim—the Order of Our Lady of Mercy for the redemption of captives held by the Moors. The cradle of the new religious family was the hospital of St. Eulalia, donated for this purpose by the aforementioned monarch, who also granted the religious knights the arms of Aragon, which they still bear on their white habit, similar to that of the Dominicans. Like the Dominicans, they adopted the Rule of St. Augustine, to which were added some simple constitutions. Their co-founder, St. Raymond, obtained the confirmation of the Order in 1235 through a very brief bull of Gregory IX. Notable is the Saint’s expedition to the African lands; in 1247 or 1248 he is found in Seville with King St. Ferdinand, the conqueror of that city.
When the Saint died a few years later, he left his Order established in Catalonia, Aragon, Valencia, and southern France. Alexander VII in 1655 had his name inserted in the Roman Martyrology and his Office in the Universal Breviary.