He was born at Sallent in Catalonia. After becoming a priest he spent several years preaching to the people throughout Catalonia and also in the Canary Islands. Returning to Spain, he established a missionary order, and founded a great religious library and publishing house in Barcelona which published millions of cheap copies of ancient and modern Catholic works. In 1851 the Pope appointed him Bishop of Santiago de Cuba. The diocese was in a terrible state and everything needed reform and renewal. He reorganised the seminary, enforced clerical discipline, and regularised thousands of marriages. He built a hospital and many schools. This was not done without opposition and he was the subject of fifteen assassination attempts.

Clement was Bishop of Rome after Peter, Linus and Cletus. He lived towards the end of the first century, but nothing is known for certain about his life. Clement’s letter to the Corinthian church has survived. It is the first known Patristic document, and exhorts them to peace and brotherly harmony.

The theological virtue of hope is symbolized by the colour green, just as the burning fire of love is symbolized by red. Green is the colour of growing things, and hope, like them, is always new and always fresh. Liturgically, green is the colour of Ordinary Time, the orderly sequence of weeks through the year, a season in which we are being neither single-mindedly penitent (in purple) nor overwhelmingly joyful (in white).