Bl. Carlos Manuel Rodríguez Santiago

Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, called "Charlie", was born in Caguas, Puerto Rico, in 1918. When he was six a fire destroyed his father's shop and the family home, and they moved in with his devout grandmother.

Ill health, including severe colitis, kept him from finishing university, and he worked as an office clerk. He spent his money and spare time teaching people about the liturgy, the Church's public worship. He translated texts and published leaflets, ran study circles for university students, and pushed for the Easter Vigil to be celebrated properly, years before the Second Vatican Council's reforms. His motto was "We live for that night", meaning Easter.

He died of cancer in 1963, aged forty-four. In 2001 he was beatified, the first Puerto Rican and the first lay person born in the Americas to be declared Blessed.

Carlos Manuel Rodríguez Santiago was beatified in 2001.

Beatification allows public veneration, usually in a particular region or religious family. Canonization extends it to the whole Church.