(VEE) MEXICO CITY INSTITUTE HOSTS ST. BENEDICT THE MOOR LECTURE

(VELINO) Roma, 15 Mar - A lecture on "San Benedetto il Moro dalla Sicilia al Nuovo Mondo" - St Benedict the Moor from Sicily to the New World - is being hosted by the Italian Cultural Institute (IIC) in Mexico City. It will be given by Professor Giovanna Fiume of the University of Palermo on March 17 at 7 pm. Benedict, son of two African slaves who converted to Christianity, was born in Sicily in 1524 and joined a Franciscan hermit congregation. In 1562 he went to the Santa Maria di Gesu Monastery, near Palermo. He was venerated by the city's noble families and ordinary people as a "living saint", to whom everyone turned for miracles and especially for the healing of the sick. After his death in 1589 his canonisation started, but well ahead of him being proclaimed a saint Benedict was worshipped in Italy and in the Americas. It is the Franciscan friars that promoted his model of sanctity - that is as a docile and obedient slave although suffering in slavery - among the Africans victims of the trade that brought an ever-increasing number of slaves to Central and Latin America. The "Black Brotherhoods", organised under his aegis, were important in establishing his veneration, which showed many traits of African culture. This happened long before the Pope proclaimed him blessed first, in 1743, and then a saint, in 1807. vel
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