by Pope Alexander VIII. Calasanz, who died on 25 August 1648, was beatified in 1748, and canonized in 1767. He was declared "Universal Patron of all the Christian popular schools in the world" by Pope Pius XII, in 1948, because he had the glory of opening "the first free tuition, popular, public school in Europe" (Von Pastor) and had proclaimed the right to education of all children, fought for it, and was persecuted because of this. Expansion of the order The Piarists first established a community outside the continent of Europe in 1767 when the Piarist Father Basilio Sancho was appointed as the 17th Archbishop of Manila in 1765, having been recommended for the position by King Charles III. Sancho and four other Piarists arrived in Manila in March 1767. The four other Piarists helped Sancho plan the First Provincial Synod of Manila. Sancho established a diocesan seminary in which the first native diocesan priests were trained. The Piarists worked in the seminary as well as at St. Joseph's School, which had previously been run by the Jesuits. Following Sancho's death in 1787, the Piarists returned to Spain. They wouldn't return to the Philippines until 1995, and they now have communities on the islands of Luzon, Cebu, and Mindanao. Two attempts were made to establish a Piarist presence in the Caribbean in the 19th century. Following the Spanish War of Independence, which ended in 1812, many Piarists left Spain and went to Cuba, where they worked in various ministries. Bishop Anthony M. Claret asked the Piarists to establish a college for the formation of Cuban teachers in Guanabacoa, and the first canonical foundation established in the Americas was in Cuba in 1857. In 1941, the first Piarist Cuban novitiate was opened in Guanabacoa, all previous Cuban novices having gone to Spain for their novitiate. In 1897, the Piarists established the first teacher's college in Puerto Rico in Santurce, but the fathers returned to Spain following the Spanish–American War. The Piarists would return to Puerto Rico in June 1956 to work at Our Lady of Montserrat parish in Salinas and at The Catholic University of Puerto Rico in 1960. The parish was quite large with 20,000 parishioners, and after the Piarists left the parish in 1961, eight Piarists began teaching Cuban refugee children. The Provincial Delegation of New York and Puerto Rico was erected on 30 August 1960, and the House