TOMMASO da TOLENTINO, martyr, blessed. — Born at Tolentino in the Marche around 1260, died in India in 1321.
Having entered the Franciscan Order, he became part of the group of the Spirituals of Angelo Clareno. Around 1274 he was confined to a hermitage in the Marche and then condemned to perpetual imprisonment. Released in 1289, the following year he went to Armenia. In 1291, King Hethum II sent him to Pope Niccolò IV and to the kings of France and England to solicit aid against the Saracens. He returned to Italy in 1295 to defend the Clareni before the Minister General Giovanni di Morovalle. He came to the West once again in 1307, bearing letters from the founder of the mission in Beijing, Giovanni di Montecorvino, in which he requested missionaries; he went to Poitiers to Pope Clement V and pleaded the cause of the Chinese mission in consistory. Toward the end of 1320, he embarked at Hormuz, bound for China, with the Franciscans Pietro di Siena, Giacomo di Padova, and Demetrio, and the Dominican Giordano Cathala. Against their will, they were put ashore in March of the following year on the island of Salsette, near Bombay (India), and received at Thana by the Nestorians; but shortly afterward, they were seized by the Muslims and killed on 9 and 11 April 1321; the Dominican escaped death because he had gone to visit some Christians at Sopara. In 1326 Odorico da Pordenone transported his body to Zaiton in China. Leo XIII confirmed his cult in 1894. Feast at Tolentino on 6 April (minor patron); in his Order on 5 September.