Roman Catholic Saint. Fuenllana born Tomás García y Martínez was raised in Villanueva de los Infantes, Province of Ciudad Real, where his parents owned a prosperous estate. Receiving his education there, in spite of his family's wealth as a young boy he often ran around naked, freely distributing whenever necessary his clothing to the poor. Studying arts and theology at the University of Alcalá de Henares of which he was soon appointed to the teaching staff, he decided to enter the Augustinian Order in Salamanca in 1516, being ordained priest two years later. In his Order, he held the positions of prior, general visitor and provincial for Andalusia and Castile. University professor as well as counsellor and confessor to the Spanish King Charles V, he was well known for his great personal austerity, selling even the straw mattress on which he slept in order to give money to the poor. His untiring charitable efforts, especially towards orphans, poor women without a dowry and the sick, had some four to five hundred souls receiving their meals at his hands daily. Sending out the first Augustinian Friars to Mexico in 1533, he began to experience mystical ecstasies during mass and when reading the psalms. The named Charles V offered him the archbishopric of Granada but he would not accept such a position. In 1544, he was nominated archbishop of Valencia but he continued to refuse the office until he was ordered to accept it by his superior. There, aided by his auxiliary, Bishop Juan Segriá, he organized his see, which had not had direct pastoral government for almost a century. Initiating a special college for Moorish converts and an effective plan for social assistance, welfare, and charity, he composed beautiful sermons, among which stands out the 'Sermon on the Love of God', one of the great examples of sacred oratory of the sixteenth century. Enjoying great fame as a preacher with a plain and simple style, Charles V upon hearing him preach exclaimed, "This Monsignor can move even the stones!". Many were the public conversions brought on due to his oratory. Holding a great devotion to the Virgin Mary whose heart he compared to the burning bush that is never consumed, he died in 1555 of angina pectoris at the termination of mass in his bedroom, with his last words being the versicles: "In manus tuas, Domine". Canonized by Pope Alexander VII on November 1, 1658, his liturgical feast day is celebrated on September 22. The author of various tracts, among which is included the 'Soliloquy between God and the soul' on the topic of communion, his complete writings were published in six volumes as 'Opera omnia' in Manila in 1881. The namesake and patron saint of Villanova University, a suburb northwest of Philadelphia which was founded and is administered by the Friars of his Order; the Universidad Católica de Santo Tomás de Villanueva in Havana, Cuba; St. Thomas University in Miami Gardens, Florida; and Villanova College, a Catholic school for boys located in Brisbane, Australia, are also named after him. Originally entombed at the convent church of Our Lady of Help of his Order outside the city walls of Valencia, at a later date his remains were brought to the local cathedral where his skull and other bones remain housed in a lateral chapel dedicated to him to this day.