August 31 - Raymond Nonnat, born in 1204 in Portell, Catalonia, was nicknamed nonnat (from the Latin non natus, meaning unborn), because he was born just after his mother's death in childbirth.

His father, allied with the houses of Foix and Cardona, refusing to accept the idea of having lost both his wife and child, asked a family member to cut open his dead wife's belly with his dagger, thus allowing the child to be born, in a way, by caesarean section.

Ordained a priest in 1222, at the age of 18, young Raymond entered the Order of Mercy, known as the Order of Mercedaries, which came to the aid of Christians who were prisoners of Muslims in North Africa and enslaved. The rule of the Order was that mercenary monks would freely and voluntarily take the place of Christian slaves and act as hostages until the ransom money could be collected.

This is how Saint Raymond gave himself up to the Muslims to obtain the liberation of several captive slaves. He was treated harshly, without any consideration. In spite of everything, he took the opportunity to encourage and evangelize his fellow slaves and to baptize some Muslims who had converted. In front of these acts, his jailers whipped him with blood, pierced his lips with a red-hot iron and put a padlock in them, which was only removed from his lips when they wanted to give him food.

St. Peter Nolasque, founder of the Mercenary Order, finally succeeded in collecting the ransom demanded, and Raymond was able to return to Spain. It was then that Pope Gregory IX called him to meet Saint Louis and encouraged him to go on a crusade. For his personal merits and his service to the Church, the Pope made him a Cardinal. But Raymond, exhausted from so many trials and tribulations, died in 1240, at the age of 36, near Barcelona, before arriving in Rome to receive the cardinal's hat.