Also known as
- Andrew Oexner of Riun
Profile
Orphaned at age two, Andrew was given to his uncle Mayer to raise. Soon afterward the child was found dead, hanging from a tree, covered in knife wounds. Mayer was arrested for the murder. He claimed he had sold the toddler to Jewish peddlers, and was judged insane.
In 1475 a group of Jews near Trent, Italy, admitted, under torture, that they had killed a Christian boy due to their hatred of the faith. The people of Rinn believed they had also killed Andrew. They declared him a martyr, his place of death was made into a shrine, and miracles began to be reported.
The poor boy was one of a number of children who have been murdered, and whose deaths were unjustly pinned on Jews, often with horror stories about cannibalism.
Born
- Pope Benedict XIV permitted local devotion
- several efforts were put forth to widen the devotion and to canonize Andrew, but Benedict XIV ordered that they not be considered or approved
Additional Information
- Book of Saints, by the Monks of Ramsgate
- Catholic Online
- New Catholic Dictionary
- Our Sunday Visitor’s Encyclopedia of Saints
MLA Citation