Saint Philip of Jesus

Felipe de las Casas was born in Mexico City in 1572 to Spanish parents. As a young man he entered the Franciscans in Puebla but left, and his family sent him to Manila in the Philippines to work as a merchant. There he returned to God and entered the Franciscan friary, taking the name Felipe de Jesús.

In 1596, as he sailed back to Mexico to be ordained a priest, his ship, the San Felipe, was driven by storms to the coast of Japan. He joined the Franciscan missionaries in Kyoto just as the ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi turned against Christians. Felipe was arrested with twenty-five others, marched to Nagasaki and crucified on February 5, 1597, the first of the group to die. He was beatified in 1627 and canonized in 1862 with the other Martyrs of Japan, becoming the first saint born in Mexico.

Mexico celebrates San Felipe de Jesús on February 5, the day of his martyrdom, and he is patron of Mexico City, where the Metropolitan Cathedral has a chapel in his honor.

A popular story tells of a dry fig tree in his family's garden; his nanny used to say Felipe would become a saint when it bloomed, and it is said to have blossomed on the day of his death.