Saint Martin de Porres

Martin was born in Lima in 1579, the son of a Spanish nobleman and a freed woman of African descent, and was trained as a barber-surgeon. He entered the Dominican priory of the Holy Rosary in Lima, first as a helper and later as a lay brother, and spent his life there caring for the sick and the poor. He died in 1639 and was canonised in 1962.

He is remembered for his humility, his care for anyone who needed healing, and his tenderness to animals. Painters show him in the black and white Dominican habit, usually with a broom, and sometimes with a dog, a cat and a mouse eating peacefully from one dish.