Blissful Abouna YAACOUB
- It is Khalil Haddad, third of a family of 14 children. He was born in Ghazir 1st of February 1875 in a pious Maronite family. After solid studies, he got a job as an Arabic teacher in Alexandria-Egypt. The meeting of a good priest led him to say: “I will be a priest like him”. The unimpressive life of another priest confirmed him in his vocation: “I will be a priest in his place”.
- He joined the Capuchins in 1893, ordained priest on 1st of November 1901 and took the name of Yaacoub. He was appointed general director of the 5 schools of the mission, he developed them and he reached 164 working village schools. He propagated the Third Order and was the counselor of his 10,000 tertiary brothers and sisters. As a Superior of the Mission, during the Great War, he had to suffer persecutions, arrests and the throes of starvation and typhus. He did everything to keep the poor people clinging to God. After the war, he rescued the hungry, the orphans and all the unfortunate.
- On the 4th of October 1926, the seventh centenary of the death of Saint Francis, he sheltered an old, sick and helpless priest, then other priests and homeless people. Young girls generously offered to serve them. They were the nucleus of a new congregation. On the 8th of December 1930, feast of the Immaculate Conception, the Ordinary recognized them as nuns under the name of “Franciscans of the Cross of Lebanon”.
- In 1937, Abouna Yaacoub started his social work helped by the new congregation nuns and supported by the Lebanese government. He founded the Psychiatric Hospital of the Cross, the only one of its kind in the Middle East. He added a home for the elderly, an orphanage for girls and a home for beggars. All his achievements where under the same slogan: ” Serving the most abandoned without distinction of nationality or religion ”.
- His spirituality was based on the cult of the Cross, devotion to the Virgin Mary and unlimited trust in Divine Providence. His Charity work was admired by all Lebanese. Christians and Muslims admired this model of a priest. He lived in humility. In the twilight of his life he writes: “One thought tortures me: do I love God with all my heart, with all my strength and with my entire mind? The Most High has given me more than five talents. Did I put them to service enough? I do not know the answer’’.
- He added to his charitable work the high monuments in honor of the Cross and the Virgin. The Sanctuary of Christ the King is the best of his projects, where he buried the beloved of his heart, the old priests. Abouna Yaacoub is a popular preacher imbued with Holy Scripture, he preached throughout Lebanon and was called to Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Iraq and even Turkey. He considered himself “the clarion of God”.
- He died on Saturday 26th of June 1954 at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, he was 80 years old. Faced with the rising fame of his holiness, his cause of beatification was presented to Rome who recognized the heroic virtues and declared him Venerable in 1992. On December 17th 2007, the Holy Father Benedict XVI recognized the miracle attributed to intercession of the Venerable Father Jacques and signed the Decree for his beatification which was celebrated for the first time outside the Vatican, in Lebanon on the 22th of June 2008.
- He is admired and esteemed by all Lebanese who see him as a model priest, the lover of the Cross, the tireless apostle, the pioneer of charity towards the most destitute. His Capuchin brothers and sisters, the Franciscans of the Cross of Lebanon, are inspired by his spirit to continue his beneficent action.
