‘Behold, I send you as sheep among wolves; be you therefore as cunning as serpents and as simple as doves’ (Matt, x, 16).

Our Lord spoke these words to the apostles when he was sending them out for their first piece of apostolic work, and the Dominican order is quite explicitly and openly an apostolic order. It was founded by St Dominic to carry on the work of the apostles, the work of preaching the gospel. All the different branches of the order, the second and third orders as much as the first, are all caught up in this apostolic function, but of course in different ways and degrees. In the fullest way it is the priests and brothers of the first order who are given this apostolic function. Officially and authoritatively it is our business, not yours, to preach the gospel by the spoken and written word and by all our priestly activities.

On Wednesday in Holy Week 1783, an emaciated, tattered ragbag of a young beggar-man collapsed on the steps of Sta Maria dei Monti where he had attended mass. At eight o'clock that night he was dead and with the morning light a scrabble of urchins went shouting in the gutters of Rome, ‘E tnorte il santo!'. The fiercely enthusiastic scenes and circumstances surrounding his death seemed prescient of an early official recognition of his sanctity. No doubt the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars delayed this and he was beatified in May 1860 and canonized in December 1883.

It is more than unfortunate that his name has become synonymous with eccentricity, exaggeration and squalor. Perhaps this most humble of men, for whom none had greater contempt than he had for himself, would prefer it that way. He is in the splendour of the saints.