From Instant Popular Cult to a Much Later Doctorate

Anthony was born in Lisbon as Fernando and joined the Augustinian canons before transferring to the recently founded Franciscans, a decision that placed him at the center of the new order's early growth. His gift for preaching was reportedly discovered almost by accident when he was called on to speak at an ordination with no other speaker prepared, and Francis himself is said to have recognized and encouraged his teaching ability, one of the few individuals the founder is recorded praising in this way.

What is unusual about Anthony's path to sainthood is its speed relative to almost every other figure of the period: he was canonized within roughly a year of his death in 1231, among the fastest canonizations in the Church's history, a pace that reflects an immediate and overwhelming popular cult rather than a slow institutional evaluation of his life. That popular devotion, particularly his later reputation as the saint to invoke for lost objects and lost people, developed early and has never really faded. The formal recognition of his intellectual and doctrinal contribution came far later and on an entirely different timetable: he was not declared a Doctor of the Church until 1946, more than seven centuries after his death, showing a wide gap between an instantly popular folk devotion and the Church's much slower formal judgment of his theological standing.