A loving husband and father, dedicated lawyer and principled politician, Luis de Trelles y Noguerol made it his mission to defend the faith amid rising anti-Catholic sentiment in Spain. “In the face of the denial of God,” he wrote, “there is only one response: the energetic affirmation of the living God … in the Eucharist.”
Trelles was born to a Catholic family in Viveiro, on the northwestern coast of Spain. Like his father and grandfather, Trelles studied law. In 1852, he moved to Madrid and began a short stint in the Spanish legislature, but he withdrew to focus on his law practice. He was called the “lawyer for the poor,” because he represented those with no ability to pay. In 1863, at age 43, he married Adelaida Cuadrado Retana, a widow with a young son; they would have three children of their own, but only one daughter survived childhood.
Trelles first encountered all-night Eucharistic adoration in Paris a year before his marriage. He had long been devoted to the Eucharist, but the experience of praying before the Blessed Sacrament in the quiet of night so moved him that he worked to bring the devotion to Spain. In 1870, he began publishing La Lámpara del Santuario, a monthly magazine about Eucharistic spirituality, and he established Adoración Nocturna Española, an organization promoting nighttime adoration, in 1877.
Seeing political engagement as a way to live out his faith, Trelles returned to the legislature in 1871 to fight against the persecution of Catholic clergy by the revolutionary Spanish government.
Luis de Trelles y Noguerol died July 1, 1891, following a brief illness, while traveling to Zamora, Spain. Remembered as an apostle of the Eucharist and model of charity, he was declared venerable in 2015.







