Beato is a notion that comes from the Latin word beātus. As an adjective, you can qualify that person blessed or who was beatified by a pope of the Catholic Church.
The idea can also be used as a noun to name the devout individual who attends a temple frequently; the subject who, without settling in a community, wears a religious habit; and to women who wear a religious habit and who carry out activities on behalf of their community.
In general, a deceased person is called blessed and can be honored through a cult once the pope has certified his virtues. Beatification is one of the steps towards canonization: before being considered a saint, the individual in question is declared a servant of God, then venerable, and in a third stage, blessed.
The Congregation for the Causes of Saints is the organism of the Holy See that has the function of analyzing the possible beatification of a person. This entity studies the virtues, the works and the miracles of the potential blessed to, finally, specify the declaration in question.
Throughout history, there have been many individuals considered blessed by the Catholic Church, both women and men. One of the many examples was Marianna Biernacka, born in Lipsk, Poland, in 1888, one of the hundred and eight people that John Paul II beatified just a century after his birth, in 1999.
Marianna Biernacka was born into an Orthodox Christian family, but at the age of seventeen she converted to Catholicism. Three years later she married Ludwik Biernacki and had six children. After being widowed, he stayed with one of his sons.
In 1943, when the Nazis invaded Lipsk and carried out a cruel mass execution to avenge the deaths of their soldiers in a nearby village, they tried to capture his son and his wife, who was pregnant, but Marianna begged to be executed. instead; and so they did, taking the life of the fifty-five-year-old with a shot in cold blood.
On the other hand we have the story of Sebastián de Aparicio Prado, a Spanish Franciscan born in the Kingdom of Galicia in 1502, whose work as a missionary was worthy of admiration. At the age of thirty-one he moved to New Spain, a viceroyalty located in North America in charge of the Crown when the New World was under its control, from the 16th to the 19th centuries. There he carried out various tasks that boosted livestock and economic growth, until four decades later he gave himself fully to religious life.
Charles de Blois, for his part, was born in the French city of Blois in 1319 and held the titles of baron, lord, count and duke. The Catholic Church nicknamed him “Charles the Holy”, although he has not been sanctified. Among the reasons for which he was recognized were his way of being and his virtues. After his death, various miracles began to take place at the site of his tomb, according to the pilgrims.
On the other hand, the codices made in the Middle Ages that reproduce the comments made by the monk known as Beato de Liébana about the Apocalypse are called blessed.
There are more than thirty blesseds that are at least partially preserved. These codices were written between the 10th and 13th centuries to copy the “Commentarium in Apocalypsin” by Beato de Liébana.
Among the best-known blesseds are the “Beatus of Fernando I and Doña Sancha”, the “Beatus of San Miguel de Escalada” and the “Beatus of San Millán de la Cogolla. “
