Bl. Tommaso da Olera

Tommaso Acerbis was born in 1563 in Olera, near Bergamo, to a peasant family, and worked as a shepherd as a boy with no schooling. At seventeen he joined the Capuchin friars in Verona as a lay brother, and there he learned to read and write.

For most of his life he went from village to village begging alms for the friars, talking with the people he met about God. He also served as doorkeeper of the friary in Padua. Without formal education he wrote spiritual works. He said he had never read a syllable of books but had tried to read Christ crucified. His reputation drew him to the Habsburg court at Innsbruck, where he died in 1631. He was beatified in 2013.

Tommaso da Olera was beatified in 2013 by Angelo Amato.

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