You're listening to Catholic Sprouse, the daily podcast for Catholic kids that strives to plant seeds of faith.

Hey there, Sprouse.

Today is Wednesday, December 2nd, 2020.

This week on the Catholic Sprouds podcast, we are talking about great black Catholics,

people with dark skin that love Jesus, that love the church and did incredible things for Jesus and the church.

We've already talked about venerable Augustus Tolton.

We talked about venerable Henriette DeLille.

And today we are going all the way to South Africa to talk about Blessed Benedict Deswa.

Now, Benedict, he lived in South Africa and he did not grow up Catholic.

In fact, in South Africa, there are various religious belief.

His family grew up vaguely practicing Judaism, but more than anything, they practice

types of superstition. Many people in South Africa believe in witches and magic and charms,

and even those that have converted to Catholicism still hold on to these ancient beliefs.

And a lot of what they are motivated by is fear.

If something bad happens, they think that perhaps there is a bad witch out there casting spells.

Or if they have a big event coming up, they will try to use magic and charms to have

the event go their way. So this is the world that Blessed Benedict grew up in. He also grew up

very, very poor. But he was a very bright man, and even from an early age, he was very interested in helping those that needed help.

Soon, this characteristic inside of him led him to be a teacher and a principal.

He worked hard to make sure that his younger siblings got educated and then he was always trying

to bring education to those in his village and around him that were poor

or that didn't value education. When he was a young adult, he went to a large city, and it was there

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