Et álibi aliórum plurimórum sanctórum Mártyrum et Confessórum, atque sanctárum Vírginum.
And elsewhere in divers places, many other holy martyrs, confessors, and holy virgins.
Пресвятая Богородице спаси нас!  (Santíssima Mãe de Deus, salva-nos!)
RDeo grátias. R.  Thanks be to God.
January is the month of the Holy Name of Jesus since 1902;
2023
22,260 lives saved since 2007

The Twelfth Day in the Octave of Christmas
THE EPIPHANY OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST
Armenian Church CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS
Ethiopian and Russian Orthodox Churches treat 6 January as the eve of the festival, which is celebrated on 7 January.

January 6 – Epiphany of the Lord – The Adoration of the Magi 
The Mother of God accepted all this in humble thanksgiving   
The words of the Kings—the Magi—and their companions were full of touching simplicity. Bowing down and offering him their gifts, they said in essence: "We have seen his star. We know he is the King of all Kings. We just love him and offer him our homage and our presents…"
They were close to ecstasy, and—in their naive and loving prayers—they recommended themselves, their families, their country, their property and anything that was dear to them on this earth, to the Child Jesus... They were filled with happiness; they believed that they had reached that star towards which for thousands of years, their ancestors had directed their gaze and their sights with such a constant desire. All the joy of the promise fulfilled after so many centuries was in them.
The Mother of God accepted all this in humble thanksgiving... She received each present with such kind and gentle gratitude! She who needed nothing, who had Jesus with her—humbly welcomed all their offerings of charity… There was such goodness in Mary and Joseph. They kept little for themselves and distributed the rest to those in need.
Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich Visions, volume 1, Chapter XXV
 


Our Bartholomew Family Prayer List

Acts of the Apostles
Nine First Fridays Devotion to the Sacred Heart From the writings of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque
How do I start the Five First Saturdays?
Mary Mother of GOD 15 Promises of the Virgin Mary to those who recite the Rosary
Pope Benedict XVI to The Catholic Church In China whole article here

January 6 – Our Lady of Cana
 
Wear the Miraculous Medal visibly around your neck
During the German occupation in Belgium, a religious nurse visited a prison camp in Verviers. She told this story: "One day I met a 20 year-old Russian girl, who had been sentenced to death and was plunged into a deep depression.
"Are you Catholic?" I asked her. She said that she was, so I gave her a Miraculous Medal (a medal of the Virgin Mary from the chapel of apparitions at the Rue du Bac in Paris). I asked her to wear it visibly around her neck and to put into practice the words of Saint Joan of Arc: Nothing ventured, nothing gained...
This gave her the courage to escape. Pursued by a young officer, she ran away terribly frightened, clutching her Miraculous Medal and praying. The officer caught up with her—he was an American!
The officer helped her get across the border and took her to the United States, where they were married.
I heard the story from her, a year later, at the baptism of their first child."
 Sister Catherine  Notre Dame des Temps Nouveaux, March 1968
Story told by Brother Albert Pfleger, in Fioretti de la Vierge Marie, Ephèse Diffusion


The saints are a “cloud of witnesses over our head”, showing us that a life of Christian perfection is not impossible.

The Twelfth Day in the Octave of Christmas
THE EPIPHANY OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST
Armenian Church CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS
Ethiopian and Russian Orthodox Churches treat 6 January as eve of the festival, celebrated 7 January.
390 St. Gregory Nazianzen “the Theologian.”
1358 BD GERTRUDE OF DELFT, VIRGIN stigmata knowledge of people’s thoughts, distant and future events
1373 St. Andrew Corsini regarded as a prophet and a thaumaturgus miracles were so multiplied at his death that Eugenius IV permitted a public cult immediately; Feast kept on February 04
1937  Blessed André Bessette (b. 1845) expressed a saint’s faith by a lifelong devotion to St. Joseph.

January 6 - Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord
A Sudden Burst of Joy
On January 6, 1412, Archbishop Debout wrote that the residents of Domrémy, France, went home after attending the services of the great feast of the Epiphany.Suddenly, in every home, for no apparent reason for it to take place, a burst of joy permeated people's hearts. Startled, the villagers wondered what was happening, opened their doors and stood on the threshold of their cottages, looking up to the sky. Their efforts were in vain: nothing in the sky explained why they all felt such happiness. And then even animals that cannot reason began to share the exuberance: roosters flapped their wings and went cock-a-doodle-doo for two hours.
What was going on? Joan of Arc was born.
She was the divine answer to the supplications that kings and the people had been making for a century. "I came to the King of France from the Blessed Virgin Mary," Joan said to her judges. Her childhood home is a rustic shrine outside Domrémy: Our Lady of Bermont.The Virgin Mary in the History of France by the Marquis de la Franquerie

Called in the Gospel "the Mother of Jesus," Mary is acclaimed by Elizabeth, at the prompting of the Spirit and even before the birth of her son, as "the Mother of my Lord" (Lk 1:43; Jn 2:1; 19:25; cf. Mt 13:55; et al.).
In fact, the One whom she conceived as man by the Holy Spirit, who truly became her Son according to the flesh,
was none other than the Father's eternal Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity.
Hence the Church confesses that Mary is truly "Mother of God" (Theotokos).

Catechism of the Catholic Church 495, quoting the Council of Ephesus (431): DS 251.

Saint John, Son of Mary (VI)  January 6 - Our Lady of Cana
The discovery of "Meryem Ana," the "Holy House of the Blessed Virgin Mary" in Ephesus following the visions of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, took place during the reign of Leo XIII (1878-1903). When the pope was informed of the discovery, he openly showed his satisfaction, and after him Pius X, Benedict XV and Pius XI have also shown great interest in this discovery. Since then, Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI have made pilgrimages to the shrine, indicating that the contemplative life of John with the Blessed Virgin Mary in Ephesus is a model for all: the Holy Spirit guides the efforts of the Church, urging her to adopt the same behavior as Mary.
In the story of the birth of Our Lord, Luke notes that his mother "kept all these things, pondering them in her heart", thus seeking to "put together" in a more profound manner, (in Greek: symballousa),
all the events that she was the privileged witness to see.

Similarly, God's people are also prompted by the same Spirit to understand in depth what is said about Mary, to better understand the meaning of her mission, so closely tied to the mysteries of Christ. The mystery of Mary urges all Christians, in union with the Church, to meditate in their hearts what the Gospel reveals about the Mother of Christ. (John Paul II)
Also in Ephesus, Heraclites popularized the concept of Logos, and certainly with Mary, he must have written the Prologue of his Gospel there too, as well as his other teachings that focus on the mystery of the Incarnation, which the Virgin Mary had disclosed to him in depth and John had such a great desire to transmit.
Pope John Paul II Adapted from the General Audience September 13, 1995
 
"At the end of my novitiate, my superiors showed me the door, and I stayed there for forty years."
Bl. Andre Bessette
Think of some service you longed to perform for God and God's people, but that you thought was too overwhelming for you.
What small bit can you do in this service? If you can't afford to give a lot of money to a cause, just give a little.
 If you can't afford hours a week in volunteering, try an hour a month on a small task.
It is amazing how those small steps can lead you up the mountain as they did for Brother Andre.

THE EPIPHANY OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST

EPIPHANY, which in Creek signifies appearance or manifestation, is a festival principally solemnized in honour of the revelation Jesus Christ made of Himself to the Magi, or wise men; who, soon after His birth, by a par­ticular inspiration of Almighty God, came to worship Him and bring Him presents. Two other manifestations of our Lord are jointly commemorated on this day in the office of the Church that at His baptism, when the Holy Ghost descended on Him in the visible form of a dove, and a voice from Heaven was heard at the same time, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, and that of His divine power at the doing of His first miracle, the changing of water into wine at the marriage of Cana, by which He manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him. Upon all these accounts this festival lays claim to a more than ordinary regard and veneration but from none more than us Gentiles, who in the person of the wise men, our first-fruits and forerunners, were on this day called to the faith and worship of the true God.
Several whom the Bible mentions under the name and title of Magi, or wise men is silent as to their number, obeyed the summons of the Gentiles to Bethlehem to pay homage to the world’s Redeemer. The general opinion, supported by the authority of St Leo, Caesarius, Bede and others, declares for three. However, the number was small in comparison with those many others who saw that star no less than the wise men, but paid no regard to it; admiring, no doubt, its unusual brightness, but indifferent to its divine message, or hardening their hearts against any salutary impression, enslaved by their passions and self love. Steadfast in the resolution of following the divine call and fearless of danger, the Magi inquire in Jerusalem with confidence and pursue their inquiry in the very court of Herod himself; Where is He that is born King of the Jews
.
The whole nation of the Jews on account of Jacob’s and Daniel’s prophecies was in expectation of the Messiah’s appearance among them, and the circumstances having been also foretold, the wise men, by the interposition of Herod’s authority, quickly learned from the Sanhedrin, or great council of the Jews, that Bethlehem was the place which was to be honoured with His birth, as had been pointed out by the prophet Micheas many centuries before.

The wise men readily comply with the voice of the Sanhedrin, notwithstanding the little encouragement these Jewish leaders afford them by their own example to persist in their search for not one single priest or scribe is disposed to bear them company in seeking after and paying homage to their own king. No sooner had they left Jerusalem but, to encourage their faith, God was pleased again to show them the star which they had seen in the East, and it continued to go before them untill it conducted them to the very place where they were to see and worship their Saviour. The star, by ceasing to advance, tells them in its mute language, “Here shall you find the new-born King.” The holy men entered the poor place, rendered more glorious by this birth than the most stately palace in the universe and finding the Child with His mother, they prostrate themselves, they worship Him, they pour forth their souls in His presence. St Leo thus extols their faith and devotion “When a star had conducted them to worship Jesus, they did not find Him commanding devils or raising the dead or restoring sight to the blind or speech to the dumb, or employed in any divine action; but a silent babe, dependent upon a mother’s care, giving no sign of power but exhibiting a miracle of humility.” The Magi offer to Jesus as a token of homage the richest produce their countries afforded—gold, frankincense and myrrh. Gold, as an acknowledgement of His regal power; incense, as a confession of His Godhead; and myrrh, as a testimony that He was become man for the redemption of the world. But their far more acceptable presents were the dispositions they cherished in their souls their fervent charity, signified by gold; their devotion, figured by frankincense; and the unreserved sacrifice of themselves, represented by myrrh.
The earliest mention of a Christian festival celebrated on January 6 seems to occur in the Stromata (i, 21) of Clement of Alexandria, who died before 216. He states that the gnostic sect of the Basilidians kept the commemoration of our Saviour’s baptism with great solemnity on dates held to correspond with the 10th and 6th of January respectively. The notice might seem of little importance were it not for the fact that in the course of the next two centuries there is abundant evidence that January 6 had come to be observed throughout the East as a festival of high importance, and was always closely associated with the baptism of our Lord. In a document known as the “Canons of Athanasius, whose text may in substance belong to the time of St Athanasius, say AD 370, the writer recognizes only three great feasts in the year—Easter, Pentecost and the Epiphany. He directs that a bishop ought to gather the poor together on solemn occasions, notably upon “the great festival of the Lord (Easter); Pentecost, “when the Holy Ghost came down upon the Church” ; and “the feast of the Lord’s Epiphany, which was in the month Tubi, that is the feast of Baptism” (canon 16) ; and he specifies again in canon 66, “the feast of the Pasch, and the feast of the Pentecost and the feast of the Epiphany, which is the 11th day of the month Tubi.”

According to oriental ideas it was through the divine pronouncement “this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased that the Saviour was first manifested to the great world of unbelievers. In the opinion of the Greek fathers, the Epiphany (showing forth), which is also called manifesta­tion of the deit) an(illumination), was identified primarily with the scene beside the Jordan. St John Chrysostom, preaching at Antioch in 386, asks, “How does it happen that not the day on which our Lord was born, but that on which He was baptized, is called the Epiphany?” And then, after dwelling upon certain details of liturgical observance, particularly the blessing of water which the faithful took home with them and preserved for a twelvemonth—he seems to suggest that the fact of the water remaining sweet must be due to some miracle— the saint comes back to his own question: “We give, he says, “the name Epiphany to the day of our Lord’s baptism because He was not made manifest to all when he was born, but only when He was baptized; for until that time He was unknown to the people at large.” Similarly St Jerome, living near Jerusalem, testifies that in his time only one feast was kept there, that of January 6, to com­memorate both the birth and the baptism of Jesus nevertheless he declares that the idea of “showing forth” belonged not to His birth in the flesh, “for then He was hidden and not revealed”, but rather to the baptism in the Jordan, “when the heavens were opened upon Christ”.

With the exception, however, of Jerusalem, where the pilgrim lady, Etheria (395) bears witness, like St Jerome, to the celebration of the birth of our Lord together with the Epiphany on one and the same day (January 6), the Western custom of honouring our Saviour’s birth separately on December 25 came into vogue in the course of the fourth century, and spread rapidly from Rome over all the Christian East.* {* But to this day the non-Catholic Armenians celebrate Christmas with the Epiphany on January 6. And it is to be remarked that even in the Western church the liturgical rank of the Epiphany feast, with Easter and Pentecost, is above that of Christmas.}

We learn from St Chrysostom that at Antioch December 25 was observed for the first time as a feast somewhere about 376. Two or three years later the festival was adopted at Constantinople, and, as appears from the funeral discourse pronounced by St Gregory of Nyssa over his brother St Basil, Cappadocia followed suit at about the same period.

On the other hand, the celebration of January 6, which undoubtedly had its origin in the East, and which from a reference in the passio of St Philip of Heraclea may perhaps already be recognized in Thrace at the beginning of the fourth century, seems by a sort of exchange to have been adopted in most Western lands before the death of St Augustine. It meets us first at Vienne in Gaul, where the pagan historian Am­mianus Marcellinus, describing the Emperor Julian’s visit to one of the churches, refers to “the feast-day in January, which Christians call the Epiphany”. St Augustine in his time makes it a matter of reproach against the Donatists that they had not adopted this newer feast of the Epiphany as the Catholics had done. We find the Epiphany in honour at Saragossa C. 380, and in 400 it is one of the days on which the circus games were prohibited.

Still, although the day fixed for the celebration was the same, the character of the Epiphany feast in East and West was different. In the East the baptism of our Lord, even down to the present time, is the motif almost exclusively emphasized, and the great blessing of the waters, on the morning of the Epiphany still continues to be one of the most striking features of the oriental ritual.

In the West, on the other hand, ever since the time of St Augustine and St Leo the Great, many of whose sermons for this day are still preserved to us, the principal stress has been laid upon the journey and the gift-offerings of the Magi. The baptism of our Lord and the miracle of Cana in Galilee have also, no doubt from an early period, been included in the conception of the feast, but although we find clear references to these introduced by St Paulinus of Nola at the beginning of the fifth century, and by St Maximus of Turin a little later, into their interpre­tation of the solemnities of this day, no great prominence has ever been given in the Western church to any other feature but the revelation of our Lord to the Gentiles as represented by the coming of the Magi.

See H. Leclercq in DAC., vol. v, pp. 197—201 Vacandard, Études de critique et d’histoire religieuse, vol. iii, pp. 1-56 Hugo Kehrer, Die heiligen Drei Könige (1908), vol. i, pp. 46—52 and 22—35 Duchesne, Christian Worship, pp. 257-265 Usener-Lietzmann, Religions­geschichtliche Untersuchungen, Part I; Kellner, Heortology, pp. 166—173 G. Morin in Revue Bénédictine, vol. v (1888), pp. 257—264 F. C. Conybeare in Rituale Armenorum, pp. 165—190; and especially Dom de Puniet in Rassegna Gregoriana, vol. v (1906), p. 497-514. See also Riedel and Crum, The Canons of Athanasius, pp. 27, 131 Anecdota Maredsolana, t. iii, pp. 396—397; Rassegna Gregoriana, vol. x (1911), pp. 51—58; and Migne, PG., vol. xlix, p. 366 (Chrysostom), and PL., vol. xxv, CC. 18—19 (Jerome), vol. xxxvii, c. 1033 (Augustine).
 210 In Africa commemorátio plurimórum sanctórum Mártyrum     
 287 St. Macra Virgin martyr of Reims France

4th v. St. Anastasius VIII Martyr at Syrmium 
        St. Nilammon, anchoret
 390 St. Gregory Nazianzen “the Theologian.”
 511 St. Melani a monk helped draw up the canons of the Council of Orleans in 511
 516 St. Hywyn Welsh founder patron of churches-western England
 535 St. Melanius bishop of Rennes France when Franks invaded Gaul
 607 St. Peter of Canterbury  Benedictine 1st abbot monastery Sts. Peter/Paul - Canterbury
6th v. St. Merinus Titular patron of churches in Wales /Brittany
6th v. St. Schotin hermit disciple of St. David of Wales
6th v. St. Edeyrn hermit patron of a church in Brittany, France 
6th v. St. Eigrad Founder of a church in Anglesey Wales
 658 St. Diman Abbot-bishop Connor Ireland 
 986 St. Wiltrudis Widow Benedictine nun wife of Duke Berthold - Bavaria 
1121 St. Erminold Benedictine abbot A large number of miracles are recorded at his tomb after death.
1150 ST GUARINUS, OR GUÉRIN, BISHOP of SI0N esteemed by St Bernard
1275 St Raymond of Pennafort canon of Barcelona Dominican, Archbishop
1358 BD GERTRUDE OF DELFT, VIRGIN stigmata knowledge of people’s thoughts, distant and future events
1373 St. Andrew Corsini regarded as a prophet and a thaumaturgus miracles were so multiplied at his death that Eugenius IV permitted a public cult immediately; Feast kept on February 04
1611  St. John de Ribera Archbishop Vice-roy of Valencia deported Moors Many miracles attributed his intercession
1925 BD RAPHAELA MARY, VIRGIN, FOUNDRESS OF THE HANDMAIDS OF THE SACRED HEART  her answer to misery was, I see clearly that God wants me to submit to all that happens to me as if I saw Him there commanding it.”
                           Bd Raphaela Mary

1937  Blessed André Bessette (b. 1845) expressed a saint’s faith by a lifelong devotion to St. Joseph.

Armenian Church CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS
Draper.org 24/12/2006 - The festival generally called Armenian Christmas is a holy day celebrated as the Holy Nativity of Jesus Christ. Christmas is celebrated in the Armenian Church around the main them of the revelation and incarnation of God, "Asdvadz-a-haydnootyoon."
       The most important observances of the Armenians in the Christmas period are of the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem and his baptism in the Jordan River at the age of thirty. The Holy Nativity of Christ is celebrated in the Armenian Church on 6 January. At the end of the Divine Liturgy, Christ's baptism is celebrated in the Tchrorhnek (Water Blessing) ceremony.
   A question often asked is why Armenians do not celebrate Christmas on 25 December, as the rest of the world generally does. Just as chronologically there is no clear date for Christ's Holy Nativity, the Gospels also do not contain one. But historically all Christian Churches up until the fourth century celebrated the Festival of Christ's Nativity on 6 January.
       According to the Roman Catholic Church, the date of 6 January was changed because the pagan traditional festival celebrated on 25 December that marked the birth of the Sun was declared invalid. But Christians continued to hold to those kinds of pagan festivals on that date. In order to break their influence, the Church hierarchy defined 25 December as Christmas, that is, as the Festival of the Holy Nativity of Christ, while 6 January was defined as the visit of the three magi to the newly born Christ.
       Because the Armenians did not experience the problem of Saturnalia, i.e. the Festival of the Birth of the Sun, and because the Armenian Church was not a satellite of the Roman Church, Armenians were unaffected by this change.
       According to church traditions, Armenians continue to celebrate Christmas on 6 January.
The Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt carries on with the same tradition together with the Armenians. However, the Ethiopian and Russian Orthodox Churches treat 6 January as the eve of the festival, which is celebrated on 7 January.

Armenians greet each other as follows on the Festival of the Holy Nativity:
--Christos dzenav yev haydnetsav! (Christ is born and revealed!)
--Orhneal eh dzenuntn u haydnuteunn Christosi! (Blessed be Christ's birth and revelation!)

 210 In Africa commemorátio plurimórum sanctórum Mártyrum, qui, in persecutióne Sevéri, ad palum ligáti sunt et igne consúmpti.       In Africa, the commemoration of many holy martyrs who were burned at the stake in the persecution of Severus.
St. Macra Virgin martyr of Reims France.
 In território Rheménsi pássio sanctæ Macræ Vírginis, quæ, in persecutióne Diocletiáni, jubénte Rictiováro Præside, cum in ignem esset præcipitáta et permansísset illæsa, dehinc, mamíllis abscíssis et squalóre cárceris afflícta, super testas étiam acutíssimas ac prunas volutáta, tandem orans migrávit ad Dóminum.
      In the diocese of Rheims, the martyrdom of St. Macra, virgin, who, in the persecution of Diocletian, was cast into the fire by order of the governor Rictiovarus.  As she remained uninjured, she had her breasts cut away, was imprisoned in a foul dungeon, rolled upon broken earthenware and burning coals, and finally she gave up her soul while engaged in prayer.
tortured cruelly and martyred at Tismes, Champagne, in the persecutions conducted by Emperor Diocletian.
4th v. St. Anastasius VIII Martyr at Syrmium
Anastasius was a Christian who was arrested, tortured, and slain at Syrmium, Pannonia.

  Geris, in Ægypto, sancti Nilammónis reclúsi, qui, dum ad Episcopátum traherétur invítus, in oratióne spíritum Deo réddidit.
       At Geris in Egypt, St. Nilammon, anchoret, who, while he was carried to a bishopric against his will, gave up his soul to God in prayer.

390 St. Gregory Nazianzen “the Theologian.”
Born 329: After his baptism at 30, Gregory gladly accepted his friend Basil’s invitation to join him in a newly founded monastery. The solitude was broken when Gregory’s father, a bishop, needed help in his diocese and estate. It seems that Gregory was ordained a priest practically by force, and only reluctantly accepted the responsibility. He skillfully avoided a schism that threatened when his own father made compromises with Arianism. At 41, Gregory was chosen suffragan bishop of Caesarea and at once came into conflict with Valens, the emperor, who supported the Arians. An unfortunate by-product of the battle was the cooling of the friendship of two saints. Basil, his archbishop, sent him to a miserable and unhealthy town on the border of unjustly created divisions in his diocese. Basil reproached Gregory for not going to his see.

When protection for Arianism ended with the death of Valens, Gregory was called to rebuild the faith in the great see of Constantinople, which had been under Arian teachers for three decades. Retiring and sensitive, he dreaded being drawn into the whirlpool of corruption and violence. He first stayed at a friend’s home, which became the only orthodox church in the city. In such surroundings, he began giving the great sermons on the Trinity for which he is famous. In time, Gregory did rebuild the faith in the city, but at the cost of great suffering, slander, insults and even personal violence. An interloper even tried to take over his bishopric.

His last days were spent in solitude and austerity. He wrote religious poetry, some of it autobiographical, of great depth and beauty. He was acclaimed simply as “the Theologian.”
Comment:  It may be small comfort, but post-Vatican II turmoil in the Church is a mild storm compared to the devastation caused by the Arian heresy, a trauma the Church has never forgotten. Christ did not promise the kind of peace we would love to have—no problems, no opposition, no pain. In one way or another, holiness is always the way of the cross.
Quote:  “God accepts our desires as though they were a great value. He longs ardently for us to desire and love him. He accepts our petitions for benefits as though we were doing him a favor. His joy in giving is greater than ours in receiving. So let us not be apathetic in our asking, nor set too narrow bounds to our requests; nor ask for frivolous things unworthy of God’s greatness.”
511 St. Melani a monk helped draw up the canons of the Council of Orleans in 511
 Rhédonis, in Gállia, sancti Melánii, Epíscopi et Confessóris; qui, post innumerabílium signa virtútum, júgiter cælo inténtus, gloriósus migrávit a sæculo.
       At Rennes in France, St. Melanius, bishop and confessor, who, after a life remarkable for innumerable virtues, with his thoughts constantly fixed on heaven, gloriously departed from this world.
Born in Placet Brittany, he was a monk when called to succeed St. Amand in the see of Rennes. He wiped out idolatry in his diocese , helped draw up the canons of the Council of Orleans in 511 and was highly revered by King Clovis.
516 St. Hywyn Welsh founder patron of churches-western England
He was a disciple of St. Cadfan-founded monasteries in Wales. Hywyn founded Aberdaron in Gwynedd, Wales. He is sometimes called Ewen or Owen. No other details of his Ire extant.

535 St. Melanius bishop of Rennes France when Franks invaded Gaul
 Rhédonis, in Gállia, sancti Melánii, Epíscopi et Confessóris; qui, post innumerabílium signa virtútum, júgiter cælo inténtus, gloriósus migrávit a sæculo.
      At Rennes in France, St. Melanius, bishop and confessor, who, after a life remarkable for innumerable virtues, with his thoughts constantly fixed on heaven, gloriously departed from this world.
Also called Mullion. He was a Breton by birth, much respected by the Frankish ruler Clovis.
Bl. Andre Bessette "At the end of my novitiate, my superiors showed me the door, and I stayed there forty years."
   When Alfred Bessette came to the Holy Cross Brothers in 1870, he carried with him a note from his pastor saying, "I am sending you a saint." The Brothers found that difficult to believe. Chronic stomach pains had made it impossible for Alfred to hold a job very long and since he was a boy he had wandered from shop to shop, farm to farm, in his native Canada and in the United States, staying only until his employers found out how little work he could do. The Holy Cross Brothers were teachers and, at 25, Alfred still did not know how to read and write. It seemed as if Alfred approached the religious order out of desperation, not vocation.
   Alfred was desperate, but he was also prayerful and deeply devoted to God and Saint Joseph. He may have had no place left to go, but he believed that was because this was the place he felt he should have been all along.
   The Holy Cross Brothers took him into the novitiate but soon found out what others had learned -- as hard as Alfred, now Brother Andre, wanted to work, he simply wasn't strong enough. They asked him to leave the order, but Andre, out of desperation again, appealed to a visiting bishop who promised him that Andre would stay and take his vows.
    After his vows, Brother Andre was sent to Notre Dame College in Montreal (a school for boys age seven to twelve) as a porter. There his responsibilities were to answer the door, to welcome guests, find the people they were visiting, wake up those in the school, and deliver mail. Brother Andre joked later, "At the end of my novitiate, my superiors showed me the door, and I stayed there for forty years."
    In 1904, he surprised the Archbishop of Montreal if he could, by requesting permission to, build a chapel to Saint Joseph on the mountain near the college. The Archbishop refused to go into debt and would only give permission for Brother Andre to build what he had money for. What money did Brother Andre have? Nickels he had collected as donations for Saint Joseph from haircuts he gave the boys. Nickels and dimes from a small dish he had kept in a picnic shelter on top of the mountain near a statue of St. Joseph with a sign "Donations for St. Joseph." He had collected this change for years but he still had only a few hundred dollars. Who would start a chapel now with so little funding?

   Andre took his few hundred dollars and built what he could ... a small wood shelter only fifteen feet by eighteen feet. He kept collecting money and went back three years later to request more building. The wary Archbishop asked him, "Are you having visions of Saint Joseph telling you to build a church for him?" Brother Andre reassured him. "I have only my great devotion to St. Joseph to guide me."
   The Archbishop granted him permission to keep building as long as he didn't go into debt. He started by adding a roof so that all the people who were coming to hear Mass at the shrine wouldn't have to stand out in the rain and the wind. Then came walls, heating, a paved road up the mountain, a shelter for pilgrims, and finally a place where Brother Andre and others could live and take care of the shrine -- and the pilgrims who came - full-time. Through kindness, caring, and devotion, Brother Andre helped many souls experience healing and renewal on the mountaintop. There were even cases of physical healing. But for everything, Brother Andre thanked St. Joseph.
    Despite financial troubles, Brother Andre never lost faith or devotion. He had started to build a basilica on the mountain but the Depression had interfered. At ninety-years old he told his co-workers to place a statue of St. Joseph in the unfinished, unroofed basilica. He was so ill he had to be carried up the mountain to see the statue in its new home. Brother Andre died soon after on January 6, and didn't live to see the work on the basilica completed. But in Brother Andre's mind it never would be completed because he always saw more ways to express his devotion and to heal others. As long as he lived, the man who had trouble keeping work for himself, would never have stopped working for God.
In His Footsteps: Brother Andre didn't mind starting small.
Think of some service you have longed to perform for God and God's people, but that you thought was too overwhelming for you. What small bit can you do in this service? If you can't afford to give a lot of money to a cause, just give a little. If you can't afford hours a week in volunteering, try an hour a month on a small task. It is amazing how those small steps can lead you up the mountain as they did for Brother Andre.

Prayer:   Blessed Brother Andre, your devotion to Saint Joseph is an inspiration to us. You gave your life selflessly to bring the message of his life to others. Pray that we may learn from Saint Joseph, and from you, what it is like to care for Jesus and do his work in the world. Amen Copyright 1996-2000 by Terry Matz. All Rights Reserved.

6v St. Merinus Titular patron of churches in Wales /Brittany. He was a hermit of Bangor a disciple of Abbot Dunawd.
6v St. Eigrad Founder of a church in Anglesey Wales. the brother of St. Samson of York, trained by St. Illtyd.
6v St. Edeyrn hermit patron of a church in Brittany, France
Tradition states that he was a Briton who was a companion of King Arthur before becoming a recluse in Armonica, an area in Brittany.

6v St. Schotin hermit disciple of St. David of Wales
Also Scarthin,. Born in Ireland, he left the island to become a student of David. Returning home, he lived for many years as a hermit and is traditionally believed to have established a boy's school in Kilkenny.

607 St. Peter of Canterbury  Benedictine 1st abbot monastery Sts. Peter/Paul - Canterbury
Peter was originally a monk in the monastery of St. Andrew’s, Rome, and was chosen by Pope St. Gregory I the Great {Doctor of the Church; b. Rome 540; d.12 March 604}to embark with St. Augustine of Canterbury and other monks on the missionary enterprise to England in 596.  Peter became the first abbot of the monastery of Sts. Peter and Paul at Canterbury in 602.  He died by drowning at Ambleteu, near Boulogne while on a mission to France.

658 St. Diman Abbot-bishop Connor Ireland
also called Diman Dubh or “Diman the Black,” Dimas, or Dima. He was a monk under St. Columba. Diman was one of the bishops who received a letter from the Roman Church in 640, concerning the Easter controversy and the Pelagian heresy.

986 St. Wiltrudis Widow Benedictine nun wife of Duke Berthold - Bavaria
she became a nun after her husband's death (c. 947) and founded the convent of Bergen, near Neuburg, Germany, on the Danube about 976. She was well-known for her goodness and her abilities as an artisan.

986 ST WILTRUDIS, WIDOW
RADERUS in his Bavaria Sancta describes Wiltrudis as a maiden who obtained the consent of her brother, Count Ortulf, to refuse the proposals of marriage, which had been made for her. The truth, however, appears to be that she was the wife of Berthold, Duke of Bavaria, who, after her husband’s death, about the year 947, became a nun. Even in the world she had been renowned for her piety and for her skill in handicrafts. After she gave herself to God her fervour redoubled and she eventually founded, about 976, an abbey of Benedictine nuns that became famous as that of Bergen, or Baring, bei Neuburg. She became the first abbess, and died about 986.

See Rietzler, Geschichte Bayerns, vol. i, pp. 338 and 381 and Raderus, Bavaria Sancta, vol. iii, p. 137.
1121 St. Erminold Benedictine abbot A large number of miracles are recorded at his tomb after death.
Erminold was given to Hirschau Monastery, in Wurzburg Germany, as a small child. In 1110, he became the abbot of Lorsch, resigning and returning to Hirschau when his election was disputed. In 1117, Erminold became abbot of Pruffening There he was assaulted by a lay brother and slain on January 7.

1121 ST ERMINOLD, ABBOT A large number of miracles are recorded at his tomb after death.
THE medieval Life of St Erminold represents a. rather unsatisfactory type of spiritual biography. The writer seems to have been intent only on glorifying his hero, and we cannot be quite satisfied as to his facts. Erminold, brought to the monastery of Hirschau as a child, spent all his life in the cloister. Being conspicu­ous for his strict observance of rule, he was chosen abbot of Lorsch, but a dispute about his election caused him to resign within a year. In 1114, at the instance of St Otto of Bamberg, he was sent to the newly founded monastery of Prufening, and there he exercised authority, first as prior, and from 1117 onwards as abbot. He is described in local calendars and martyrologies as a martyr, but his death, which took place on January 6, 1121, resulted from the conspiracy of an unruly faction of his own subjects who resented the strictness of his government. One of them struck him on the head with a heavy piece of timber, and Erminold, lingering for a few days, died on the Epiphany at the hour he had foretold. He was famed both for his spirit of prayer and for his charity to the poor. A large number of miracles are recorded at his tomb after death.

See Acta Sanctorum, January 6 and also the MCH., Scriptores, vol. xii, pp. 481—500.

1150 ST GUARINUS, OR GUÉRIN, BISHOP of SION esteemed by St Bernard.
No formal biography of St Guarinus seems to have been left us by any of his contemporaries, but a considerable local cult has been paid to him ever since his death. He was originally a monk of Molesmes, but having been appointed abbot of St John of Aulps (de Alpibus), in the diocese of Geneva, he some years later wrote to St Bernard, then at the height of his fame, to ask that he and his community might be affiliated to Clairvaux. One of St Bernard’s letters in reply is still preserved, and from this and another letter of his it is evident how highly he esteemed Guarinus. This second letter was written to console the community of Aulps when their abbot was taken from them to be made bishop of Sion in the Valais.

See Acta Sanctorum, January 6 and J. F. Gonthier, Vie de St Guérin (1896).

1275 St Raymond of Pennafort canon of Barcelona Dominican, Archbishop
 Barcinóne, in Hispánia, item natális sancti Raymúndi de Pénafort, ex Ordine Prædicatórum, Confessóris, doctrína et sanctitáte célebris.  Ipsíus vero festum décimo Kaléndas Februárii celebrátur.
      At Barcelona in Spain, St. Raymond of Pennafort, of the Order of Preachers, celebrated for sanctity and learning.  His festival is kept on the 23rd of this month.
1175-1275) encouraged assisted and confessor for Peter Nolasco -- requested by the Blessed Virgin in a vision to found an order especially devoted to the ransom of captives from the Moors.
St. Raymond of Peñafort

Born at Villafranca de Benadis, near Barcelona, in 1175; died at Barcelona, 6 January, 1275. He became professor of canon law in 1195, and taught for fifteen years. He left Spain for Bologna in 1210 to complete his studies in canon law. He occupied a chair of canon law in the university for three years and published a treatise on ecclesiastical legislation which still exists in the Vatican Library.

Raymond was attracted to the Dominican Order by the preaching of Blessed Reginald, prior of the Dominicans of Bologna, and received the habit in the Dominican Convent of Barcelona, whither he had returned from Italy in 1222. At Barcelona he was co-founder with St. Peter Nolasco of the Order of Mercedarians. He also founded institutes at Barcelona and Tunis for the study of Oriental languages, to convert the Moors and Jews.

At the request of his superiors Raymond published the Summa Casuum, of which several editions appeared in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 1229 Raymond was appointed theologian and penitentiary to the Cardinal Archbishop of Sabina, John of Abbeville, and was summoned to Rome in 1230 by Gregory IX, who appointed him chaplain and grand penitentiary.

The reputation of the saint for juridical science decided the pope to employ Raymond of Peñafort's talents in re-arranging and codifying the canons of the Church. He had to rewrite and condense decrees that had been multiplying for centuries, and which were contained in some twelve or fourteen collections already existing. We learn from a Bull of Gregory IX to the Universities of Paris and Bologna that many of the decrees in the collections were but repetitions of ones issued before, many contradicted what had been determined in previous decrees, and many on account of their great length led to endless confusion, while others had never been embodied in any collection and were of uncertain authority.

The pope announced the new publication in a Bull directed to the doctors and students of Paris and Bologna in 1231, and commanded that the work of St. Raymond alone should be considered authoritative, and should alone be used in the schools. When Raymond completed his work the pope appointed him Archbishop of Tarragona, but the saint declined the honour. Having edited the Decretals he returned to Spain. He was not allowed to remain long in seclusion, as he was elected General of the Order in 1238; but he resigned two years later.
During his tenure of office he published a revised edition of the Dominican Constitutions, and it was at his request that St. Thomas wrote the Summa Contra Gentiles. St. Raymond was canonized by Clement VIII in 1601. His Summa de Poenitentia et Matrimonio is said to be the first work of its kind. His feast is 23 January.

1358 BD GERTRUDE OF DELFT, VIRGIN stigmata knowledge of people’s thoughts, distant and future events.
MUCH interest attaches to the life of this mystic, who was first a servant-maid and afterwards a béguine at Delft in Holland. Béguines are not, strictly speaking, members of a religious order, though they dwell in a settlement apart, perform their religious exercises in common, and make profession of chastity and obedience. But they are not vowed to poverty, and they live in little separate houses, each with one or two companions, occupied for the most part in active good works in her early days Gertrude had been engaged to be married to a man who left her for another girl, causing great anguish of mind to the betrothed he had forsaken. Seeing the providence of God in this disappointment, she turned her thoughts to other things, and afterwards generously befriended the rival who had somewhat treacherously stolen her lover.

As the crown of a life now spent in contemplation and austerity, our Lord was pleased to honour her, on Good Friday 1340, with the marks of His sacred wounds. We read that a holy friend named Lielta had already foretold this privileged state to her, and also that she had experienced a very curious bodily manifestation in the Christmas season of the previous year. When the stigmata were thus given her, apparently as a permanent mark of God’s favour, they used to bleed seven times every day. She confided to her fellow béguine Diewerdis the news of this strange wonder.

Naturally the tidings spread, and very soon crowds came, not only from Delft, but from all the country round to behold the marvel. This destroyed all privacy and recollection, and so Gertrude implored our Lord to come to her aid. The stigmata consequently ceased to bleed, but the marks persisted. For the eighteen years she remained on earth she led a very suffering life, but she seems, like other mystics who have been similarly favoured with these outward manifestations, to have possessed a strange knowledge of people’s thoughts and of distant and future events, of which her biographer gives instances. The name “van Oosten, by which she is known in the place of a surname, is stated to have come to her from her fond repetition of an old Dutch hymn beginning, Het daghet in den Oosten (“The day is breaking in the east”). There seems a curious appro­priateness in the fact that she died (1358) on the feast of the Epiphany when the wise men came from the east to greet their infant Saviour. “I am longing”, she said a few minutes before her death, “I am longing to go home.”

See the life in the Acts Sanctorum, January 6. A short Dutch text was published at Amsterdam in 1879 by Alberdingk Thijm in Verspreide Verhalen in Prosa, vol. i, pp. 54—60. The hymn, Het daqhet in den Oosten, has been printed by Hoffmann von Fallersieben in his Horae Belgicae.

1373 St. Andrew Corsini regarded as a prophet and a thaumaturgus; miracles were so multiplied at his death that Eugenius IV permitted a public cult immediately His feast is kept on 4 February.
 Floréntiæ natális sancti Andréæ Corsíni, civis Florentíni, ex Ordine Carmelitárum, Epíscopi Fæsuláni et Confessóris; quem, miráculis clarum, Urbánus Papa Octávus in Sanctórum númerum rétulit.  Ejus autem festívitas recólitur prídie nonas Februárii.
       At Florence, St. Andrew Corsini, a Florentine Carmelite and bishop of Fiesole.  Being celebrated for miracles, he was ranked among the saints by Urban VIII.  His festival is kept on the 4th of February.


He was born in Florence on November 30, 1302, a member of the powerful Corsini family. Wild in his youth, Andrew was converted to a holy life by his mother and became a Carmelite monk. He studied in Paris and Avignon, France, returning to his birthplace. There he became known as the Apostle of Florence. He was called a prophet and miracle worker. Named as the bishop of Fiesole in 1349, Andrew fled the honor but was forced to accept the office, which he held for twelve years. He was sent by Pope Urban V to Bologna to settle disputes between the nobles and commoners, a mission he performed well. Andrew died in Fiesole on January 6, 1373. So many miracles took place at his death that Pope Eugenius IV permitted the immediate opening of his cause.


1373 ST ANDREW CORSINI, BISHOP OF FIESOLE
THIS saint was called Andrew after the apostle of that name, upon whose festival he was born in Florence in 1302. He came of the distinguished family of the Corsini, and we are told that his parents dedicated him to God before his birth; but in spite of all their care the first part of his youth was spent in vice and extravagance, amongst bad companions.
   His mother never ceased praying for his conversion, and one day in the bitterness of her grief she said, “I see you are indeed the wolf I saw in my sleep,” and explained that before he was born she dreamt she had given birth to a wolf which ran into a church and was changed into a lamb. She added that she and his father had devoted him to the service of God under the protection of the Blessed Virgin, and that they expected of him a very different sort of life from that which he was leading.
   These rebukes made a very deep impression. Overwhelmed with shame, Andrew next day went to the church of the Carmelite friars, and after having prayed fervently before the altar of our Lady he was so touched by God’s grace that he resolved to embrace the religious life in that convent. All the artifices of his former companions, and the solicitations of an uncle who tried to draw him back into the world, were powerless to change his purpose: he never fell away from the first fervour of his conversion.

In the year 1328 Andrew was ordained; but to escape the feasting and music which his family had prepared according to custom for the day on which he should celebrate his first Mass, he withdrew to a little convent seven miles out of the town, and there, unknown and with wonderful devotion, he offered to Almighty God the first fruits of his priesthood.
After some time employed in preaching in Florence he was sent to Paris, where he attended the schools for three years. He continued his studies for a while at Avignon with his uncle, Cardinal Corsini, and in 1332, when he returned to Florence, he was chosen prior of his convent.

God honoured his virtue with the gift of prophecy, and miracles of healing were also ascribed to him. Amongst miracles in the moral order and conquests of hardened souls, the conversion of his cousin John Corsini, a confirmed gambler, was especially remarkable.
When the bishop of Fiesole died in 1349 the chapter unanimously chose Andrew Corsini to fill the vacant see. As soon, however, as he was informed of what was going on, he hid himself with the Carthusians at Enna: the canons, despairing of finding him, were about to proceed to a second election when his hiding-place was revealed by a child.
After his consecration as bishop he redoubled his former austerities. Daily he gave himself a severe discipline whilst he recited the litany, and his bed was of vine branches strewed on the floor. Meditation and reading the Holy Scriptures he called recreation from his labours. He avoided talking with women as much as possible, and refused to listen to flatterers or informers. His tenderness and care for the poor were extreme, and he was particularly solicitous in seeking out those who were ashamed to make known their distress: these he helped with all possible secrecy. St Andrew had, too, a talent for appeasing quarrels, and he was often successful in restoring order where popular disturbances had broken out. For this reason Bd Urban V sent him to Bologna, where the nobility and the people were miserably divided. He pacified them after suffering much humiliation, and they remained at peace during the rest of his life. Every Thursday he used to wash the feet of the poor, and never turned any beggar away without alms.

St Andrew was taken ill whilst singing Mass on Christmas night in 1373 and died on the following Epiphany at the age of seventy-one. He was immediately proclaimed a saint by the voice of the people, and Pope Urban VIII formally canonized him in 1629. Andrew was buried in the Carmelite church at Florence; and Pope Clement XII, who belonged to the Corsini family, built and endowed a chapel in honour of his kinsman in the Lateran basilica. The architect of this chapel, in which Clement himself was buried, was Alexander Galilei, who lived for some years in England. The same pope added St Andrew Corsini to the general calendar of the Western church, in 1737.  

The two principal Latin lives of St Andrew are printed in the Acta Sanctorum, January, vol. ii. See also S. Mattei, Vita di S. Andrea Corsini (1872), and the biography by P. Caioli (1929), who makes use of certain unpublished Florentine documents.  

1611 St. John de Ribera Archbishop Vice-roy of Valencia deported Moors Many miracles attributed to his intercession
Spain. He was the son of the duke of Alcala, and was born in Seville, Spain. Ordained a priest in 1557, he became archbishop in 1568, serving for more than four decades until he died on January 6, in Valencia. John ordered the Moors deported from his see. He was revered by Pope Pius V and King Philip II of Spain. Pope John XXIII canonized him in 1959.

1611 ST JOHN DE RIBERA, archbishop of Valencia

PETER DE RIBERA, the father of Don John, was one of the highest grandees in Spain; he was created duke of Alcalá, but already held many other titles and important charges. Among the rest, he for fourteen years governed Naples as viceroy. But above all, he was a most upright and devout Christian. His son, therefore, was admirably brought up, and during a distinguished university career at Salamanca and elsewhere, divine Providence seems perceptibly to have intervened to shield his virtue from danger. Realizing the perils to which he was exposed, he gave himself up to penance and prayer in preparation for holy orders. In 1557, at the age of twenty-five, Don John was ordained priest; and after teaching theology at Salamanca for a while, he was preconized bishop of Badajoz, much to his dismay, by St Pius V in 1562. His duties as bishop were discharged with scrupulous fidelity and zeal, and six years later, by the desire both of Philip II and the same holy pontiff, he was reluctantly constrained to accept the dignity of archbishop of Valencia. A few months later, filled with consternation at the languid faith and relaxed morals of this province, which was the great stronghold of the Moriscos, he wrote begging to be allowed to resign, but the pope would not consent; and for forty-two years, down to his death in 1611, St John struggled to support cheerfully a load of responsibility which almost crushed him. In his old age the burden was increased by the office of viceroy of the province of Valencia, which was imposed upon him by Philip III.

The archbishop viewed with intense alarm what he regarded as the dangerous activities of the Moriscos and Jews, whose financial prosperity was the envy of all. Owing to the universal ignorance of the principles of political economy, which then prevailed, the Moriscos seemed to Ribera to be “the sponges which sucked up all the wealth of the Christians”. At the same time, it is only fair to note that this was the view of nearly all his Christian countrymen, and that it was shared even by so enlightened a contemporary as Cervantes. In any case, it is beyond dispute that St John de Ribera was one of the advisers who were mainly responsible for the edict of 1609 that enforced deportation of the Moriscos from Valencia. We can only bear in mind that a decree of beatification pronounces only upon the personal virtues and miracles of the servant of God so honoured, and that it does not constitute an approbation of all his public acts or of his political views. The archbishop did not long survive the tragedy of the deportation. He died, after a long illness most patiently borne, at the College of Corpus Christi, which he himself had founded and endowed, on January 6, 1611. Many miracles were attributed to his intercession, He was beatified in 1796 and canonized in 1960.

See V. Castillo, Vita del B. Giovanni de Ribera (1796); M. Belda, Vida del B. Juan de Ribera (1802) and P. Boronat y Barrachina, Los Moriscos españoles y su Expulsion (1901).

 1925 BD RAPHAELA MARY, VIRGIN, FOUNDRESS OF THE HANDMAIDS OF THE SACRED HEART  her answer to misery was, I see clearly that God wants me to submit to all that happens to me as if I saw Him there commanding it.”

RAPHAELA P0IRAS was born in the small Spanish town of Pedro Abad, some way from Cordova, in 1850.
When she was four she lost her father, the mayor of the place, who died of cholera Caught when looking after the sick during an epi­demic
; at nineteen her mother followed, and Raphaela was left with her elder sister, Dolores, in charge of the household, which included several brothers and sisters.

In 1873 both announced that they wished to become nuns.
Their retiring way of life had already provoked opposition from the family; but it was eventually arranged for them to be received as novices by the nuns of Marie Réparatrice who had been invited to Cordova at the suggestion of a priest named Joseph Antony Ortiz Urruela (he had at one time studied in England under Bishop Grant of Southwark). Difficulties, however, at once arose— partly because the nuns were “foreign
, partly because of the high-handed behaviour of Don Ortiz Urruela—and the bishop asked the nuns to leave, Sixteen novices, including the two Porras girls, were given permission to remain in Cordova, and carry on as best they could under the headship of Sister Raphaela Mary-of-the-Sacred-Heart.

Early in 1877, just before Sister Raphaela and five others were to take their vows, Bishop Ceferino Gonzalez informed them that he had drawn up an entirely new rule for the community. This put the novices in an awkward position. The new rule was quite different from that in which they had been trained; on the other hand, if they refused it they all would be sent back to their homes. The course they decided on was a surprising one—no less than flight. And they carried it out. Leaving Cordova by night, they went to Andujar, where Don Ortiz Urruela had arranged for them to be sheltered by the nuns at the hospital. Naturally, there was great excitement. The civil authorities took a hand, and the bishop declared Don Ortiz Urruela suspended”; but that enterprising priest was already in Madrid, seeing what he could do for his protegees there, and the bishop could really do little, as the fugitives were not a canonically-erected community.
Then Don Ortiz Urruela suddenly died; but the sisters were sent a new friend in Father Cotanilla, a Jesuit, and they were allowed by the ecclesiastical authorities to settle in Madrid. In the summer of 1877 the first two, Raphaela and her sister Dolores, made their profession.

That was the startling beginning of the congregation of the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart, whose work was to be the education of children and helping with retreats. It soon began to develop and spread, and houses were opened at Jerez, Saragossa, Bilbao and Cordova—this last with the full approval of Bishop Ceferino. To-day its sisters are found in a dozen other countries besides Spain, including England and the United States. But troubles did not end with the difficulty of its birth, nor even with the granting of approval by the Holy See in 1877, when Bd Raphaela was elected mother general. Unhappily her sister Dolores, now Mother Mary-del-Pilar, did not see eye-to-eye with Raphaela in matters of adminis­tration, and there were others who supported Mother Mary: in 1893 the foundress resigned from her office as mother general, and Mary-del-Pilar was elected in her place. For the remaining thirty-two years of her life Bd Raphaela filled no office whatever in her congregation, but lived in obscurity in the Roman house, doing the housework.

It cannot be doubted that it was in these years that she earned her halo of holiness.
The woman that inaugurated a religious congregation in the circum­stances that she did cannot have found such self-abnegation easy. Attention has several times been drawn in these pages to people who were popularly canonized because they accepted, not formal martyrdom, but simply an unjust death: Mother Raphaela is a beata who lived nearly half her life cheerfully carrying a weight of unjust treatment. Courage and sweetness shone out from her face in old age. The surgeon who operated on her in her last days said it all in a sentence:
Mother, you are a brave woman”; but she had said long before,
“I see clearly that God wants me to submit to all that happens to me as if I saw Him there commanding it.”
                           Bd Raphaela Mary died on the Epiphany in 1925, and she was beatified in 1952.

In English there is a good summary in pamphlet form, In Search of the Will of God (1950), by Fr William Lawson.

1937  Blessed André Bessette (b. 1845) expressed a saint’s faith by a lifelong devotion to St. Joseph.

Sickness and weakness dogged André from birth. He was the eighth of 12 children born to a French Canadian couple near Montreal. Adopted at 12, when both parents had died, he became a farmhand. Various trades followed: shoemaker, baker, blacksmith—all failures. He was a factory worker in the United States during the boom times of the Civil War.

At 25, he applied for entrance into the Congregation of the Holy Cross. After a year’s novitiate, he was not admitted because of his weak health. But with an extension and the urging of Bishop Bourget (see Marie-Rose Durocher, October 6), he was finally received. He was given the humble job of doorkeeper at Notre Dame College in Montreal, with additional duties as sacristan, laundry worker and messenger. “When I joined this community, the superiors showed me the door, and I remained 40 years.”

In his little room near the door, he spent much of the night on his knees. On his windowsill, facing Mount Royal, was a small statue of St. Joseph, to whom he had been devoted since childhood. When asked about it he said, “Some day, St. Joseph is going to be honored in a very special way on Mount Royal!”

When he heard someone was ill, he visited to bring cheer and to pray with the sick person. He would rub the sick person lightly with oil taken from a lamp burning in the college chapel. Word of healing powers began to spread.

When an epidemic broke out at a nearby college, André volunteered to nurse. Not one person died. The trickle of sick people to his door became a flood. His superiors were uneasy; diocesan authorities were suspicious; doctors called him a quack. “I do not cure,” he said again and again. “St. Joseph cures.” In the end he needed four secretaries to handle the 80,000 letters he received each year.

For many years the Holy Cross authorities had tried to buy land on Mount Royal. Brother André and others climbed the steep hill and planted medals of St. Joseph. Suddenly, the owners yielded. André collected 200 dollars to build a small chapel and began receiving visitors there—smiling through long hours of listening, applying St. Joseph’s oil. Some were cured, some not. The pile of crutches, canes and braces grew.

The chapel also grew. By 1931 there were gleaming walls, but money ran out. “Put a statue of St. Joseph in the middle. If he wants a roof over his head, he’ll get it.” The magnificent Oratory on Mount Royal took 50 years to build. The sickly boy who could not hold a job died at 92.  He is buried at the Oratory and was beatified in 1982.

André Bessette, also called Blessed Brother Andre, (French: Frère André, born Alfred Bessette) (9 August 1845 – 6 January 1937) was a Holy Cross Brother and a significant figure of the Roman Catholic Church among French-Canadians, credited with thousands of reported miraculous healings.

Early life
Bessette was born in Saint-Grégoire d'Iberville, Quebec (then Canada East), a small town situated 40 kilometers east of Montreal. His was a working class family — his father, Isaac Bessette, was a carpenter and lumberman and his mother, Clothilde Foisy Bessette, saw to the education of her ten children (two others died in infancy). When Bessette was nine years old, Isaac was killed in a lumbering accident. Clothilde died of tuberculosis just a few years later, and Bessette was orphaned at age twelve. He was sent to live with his mother's sister, Rosalie Nadeau and her husband Timothée, who attempted to establish Bessette in various trades, but the boy's fragile health (which would afflict him throughout his life) made sustained manual labor difficult.

From his earliest days, Bessette exhibited an unusually intense spirituality. He would often spend his scant free time praying before a crucifix or evangelizing his friends, and his many self-imposed penances drew the admiring rebuke of his gentle aunt, who was concerned that the boy was endangering his already poor health.

When Bessette was twenty years old, he joined many Canadians who were emigrating to the United States to work in the mills of New England. When, in 1867, the Canadian Confederation was formed, he returned to his native country.

He was given the task of doorkeeper at Notre Dame College in Côte-des-Neiges, Quebec. He fulfilled this function for some 40 years while at the same time doing innumerable odd jobs for the community.

Call to devotion
The Pastor of his parish, Fr. André Provençal, noticed the devotion and generosity of the young man. He decided to present Bessette to the Congregation of Holy Cross in Montreal, writing a note to the superior, "I'm sending you a saint." Although he was initially rejected by the order because of frail health, Archbishop Ignace Bourget of Montreal intervened on his behalf, and in 1872, Bessette was accepted, made his temporary vows, and became known as Brother André. He made his final vows on 2 February 1874, at the age of twenty-eight.

Bessette's great confidence in Saint Joseph inspired him to recommend this saint's devotion to all those who were afflicted in various ways. Many claimed that they were cured through the prayers of Bessette and Saint Joseph, and they were grateful that their prayers had been heard. Bessette steadfastly refused to take any credit for these cures, and although usually a gentle man, he was known to become enraged at those who suggested that he possessed any healing powers. Because he wanted Saint Joseph to be honoured, in 1904 Bessette began the construction of a small chapel on the side of Mount Royal, facing the College.

Bessette's reputation grew and soon he was known as the miracle-worker of Mount Royal. He had to face the attacks and the criticism of numerous adversaries. He had the strong support, however, of the diocesan Church, and thousands of cures without apparent medical explanation made him the object of popular acclaim.
In 1924 construction of Saint Joseph's Oratory began on the side of the mountain, near Bessette's chapel.
Friday, January 06, 2012
St. André Bessette
(1845-1937)
 
Brother André expressed a saint’s faith by a lifelong devotion to St. Joseph.
Sickness and weakness dogged André from birth. He was the eighth of 12 children born to a French Canadian couple near Montreal. Adopted at 12, when both parents had died, he became a farmhand. Various trades followed: shoemaker, baker, blacksmith—all failures. He was a factory worker in the United States during the boom times of the Civil War.


At 25, he applied for entrance into the Congregation of the Holy Cross. After a year’s novitiate, he was not admitted because of his weak health. But with an extension and the urging of Bishop Bourget (see Marie-Rose Durocher, October 6), he was finally received. He was given the humble job of doorkeeper at Notre Dame College in Montreal, with additional duties as sacristan, laundry worker and messenger. “When I joined this community, the superiors showed me the door, and I remained 40 years,” he said.

In his little room near the door, he spent much of the night on his knees. On his windowsill, facing Mount Royal, was a small statue of St. Joseph, to whom he had been devoted since childhood. When asked about it he said, “Some day, St. Joseph is going to be honored in a very special way on Mount Royal!”

When he heard someone was ill, he visited to bring cheer and to pray with the sick person. He would rub the sick person lightly with oil taken from a lamp burning in the college chapel. Word of healing powers began to spread.

When an epidemic broke out at a nearby college, André volunteered to nurse. Not one person died. The trickle of sick people to his door became a flood. His superiors were uneasy; diocesan authorities were suspicious; doctors called him a quack. “I do not cure,” he said again and again. “St. Joseph cures.” In the end he needed four secretaries to handle the 80,000 letters he received each year.


For many years the Holy Cross authorities had tried to buy land on Mount Royal. Brother André and others climbed the steep hill and planted medals of St. Joseph. Suddenly, the owners yielded. André collected 200 dollars to build a small chapel and began receiving visitors there—smiling through long hours of listening, applying St. Joseph’s oil. Some were cured, some not. The pile of crutches, canes and braces grew.

The chapel also grew. By 1931 there were gleaming walls, but money ran out. “Put a statue of St. Joseph in the middle. If he wants a roof over his head, he’ll get it.” The magnificent Oratory on Mount Royal took 50 years to build. The sickly boy who could not hold a job died at 92.

He is buried at the Oratory. He was beatified in 1982 and canonized in 2010. At his canonization in October 2010, Pope Benedict XVI said that St. Andre "lived the beatitude of the pure of heart."

Comment:  Rubbing ailing limbs with oil or a medal? Planting a medal to buy land? Isn’t this superstition? Aren’t we long past that?
Superstitious people rely only on the “magic” of a word or action. Brother André’s oil and medals were authentic sacramentals of a simple, total faith in the Father who lets his saints help him bless his children.  Quote:  “It is with the smallest brushes that the artist paints the most exquisitely beautiful pictures,” said St. André Bessette.

Death and beatification
Bessette died in 1937, at the age of 91. A million people filed before his coffin.
The remains of Bessette lie in the oratory he helped build. His body lies in a tomb built below the oratory's main chapel, except for his heart, which is preserved in a monstrance in the oratory. The heart was stolen in March 1973, but recovered in December 1974.
Brother André was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 23 May 1982. The miracle cited in the beatification was the healing in 1958 of Giuseppe Carlo Audino, who suffered from cancer. In the dioceses of the United States, he is commemorated by an optional memorial on 6 January.
On 19 December 2009, Pope Benedict XVI promulgated a decree recognizing a second miracle at Bessette's intercession. The Church and the Oratory decline requests for interviews from the press until the decree is announced officially in 2010.
    
    


THE PSALTER OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY PSALM 227

O Lady, may thy light be the splendor of my countenance: and let the serenity of thy grace shine upon my mind.

Raise up my head: and I will sing a psalm to thy name.

Turn not away thy face from me: for from my youth up I have greatly desired thy beauty and thy grace.

I have loved thee and sought after thee, O Queen of Heaven: withdraw not thy mercy and thy grace from thy servant.

I will give praise to thee in the nations: and I will honor the throne of thy glory.

Let every spirit praise Our Lady


For thy spirit is kind: thy grace fills the whole world.

Thunder, ye heavens, from above, and give praise to her: glorify her, ye earth, with all the dwellers therein.


Rejoice, ye Heavens, and be glad, O Earth: because Mary will console her servants and will have mercy on her poor.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost as it was in the beginning and will always be.


God loves variety. He doesn't mass-produce his saints. Every saint is unique, for each is the result of a new idea. 
As the liturgy says: Non est inventus similis illis--there are no two exactly alike. It is we with our lack of imagination, who paint the same haloes on all the saints. Dear Lord, grant us a spirit that is not bound by our own ideas and preferences. 
Grant that we may be able to appreciate in others what we lack in ourselves.
O Lord, grant that we may understand that every saint must be a unique praise of Your glory. Catholic saints are holy people and human people who lived extraordinary lives.  Each saint the Church honors responded to God's invitation to use his or her unique gifts.   God calls each one of us to be a saint in order to get into heavenonly saints are allowed into heaven.
The more "extravagant" graces are bestowed NOT for the benefit of the recipients so much as FOR the benefit of others.
There are over 10,000 named saints beati  from history
 and Roman Martyology Orthodox sources

Patron_Saints.html  Widowed_Saints htmIndulgences The Catholic Church in China
LINKS: Marian Shrines  
India Marian Shrine Lourdes of the East   Lourdes 1858  China Marian shrines 1995
Kenya national Marian shrine  Loreto, Italy  Marian Apparitions (over 2000Quang Tri Vietnam La Vang 1798
 
Links to Related MarianWebsites  Angels and Archangels  Saints Visions of Heaven and Hell

Widowed Saints  html
Doctors_of_the_Church   Acts_Of_The_Apostles  Roman Catholic Popes  Purgatory  UniateChalcedon

Mary the Mother of Jesus Miracles_BLay Saints  Miraculous_IconMiraculous_Medal_Novena Patron Saints
Miracles by Century 100   200   300   400   500   600   700    800   900   1000    1100   1200   1300   1400  1500  1600  1700  1800  1900 2000
Miracles 100   200   300   400   500   600   700    800   900   1000  
 
1100   1200   1300   1400  1500  1600  1700  1800   1900 Lay Saints

The great psalm of the Passion, Chapter 22, whose first verse “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
Jesus pronounced on the cross, ended with the vision: “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord;
and all the families of the nations shall worship before him
For kingship belongs to the LORD, the ruler over the nations. All who sleep in the earth will bow low before God; All who have gone down into the dust will kneel in homage. And I will live for the LORD; my descendants will serve you. The generation to come will be told of the Lord, that they may proclaim to a people yet unborn the deliverance you have brought.
Pope Benedict XVI to The Catholic Church In China {whole article here} 2000 years of the Catholic Church in China
The saints “a cloud of witnesses over our head”, showing us life of Christian perfection is possible.

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Saint Frances Xavier Seelos  Practical Guide to Holiness
1. Go to Mass with deepest devotion. 2. Spend a half hour to reflect upon your main failing & make resolutions to avoid it.
3. Do daily spiritual reading for at least 15 minutes, if a half hour is not possible.  4. Say the rosary every day.
5. Also daily, if at all possible, visit the Blessed Sacrament; toward evening, meditate on the Passion of Christ for a half hour, 6.  Conclude the day with evening prayer & an examination of conscience over all the faults & sins of the day.
7.  Every month make a review of the month in confession.
8. Choose a special patron every month & imitate that patron in some special virtue.
9. Precede every great feast with a novena that is nine days of devotion. 10. Try to begin & end every activity with a Hail Mary

My God, I believe, I adore, I trust and I love Thee.  I beg pardon for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not
O most Holy trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly.  I offer Thee the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the Tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifference by which He is offended, and by the infite merits of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  I beg the conversion of poor sinners,  Fatima Prayer, Angel of Peace
The voice of the Father is heard, the Son enters the water, and the Holy Spirit appears in the form of a dove.
THE spirit and example of the world imperceptibly instil the error into the minds of many that there is a kind of middle way of going to Heaven; and so, because the world does not live up to the gospel, they bring the gospel down to the level of the world. It is not by this example that we are to measure the Christian rule, but words and life of Christ. All His followers are commanded to labour to become perfect even as our heavenly Father is perfect, and to bear His image in our hearts that we may be His children. We are obliged by the gospel to die to ourselves by fighting self-love in our hearts, by the mastery of our passions, by taking on the spirit of our Lord.
   These are the conditions under which Christ makes His promises and numbers us among His children, as is manifest from His words which the apostles have left us in their inspired writings. Here is no distinction made or foreseen between the apostles or clergy or religious and secular persons. The former, indeed, take upon themselves certain stricter obligations, as a means of accomplishing these ends more perfectly; but the law of holiness and of disengagement of the heart from the world is general and binds all the followers of Christ.
God loves variety. He doesn't mass-produce his saints. Every saint is unique each the result of a new idea.
As the liturgy says: Non est inventus similis illis--there are no two exactly alike.
It is we with our lack of imagination, who paint the same haloes on all the saints.

Dear Lord, grant us a spirit not bound by our own ideas and preferences.
 
Grant that we may be able to appreciate in others what we lack in ourselves.

O Lord, grant that we may understand that every saint must be a unique praise of Your glory.
 
Catholic saints are holy people and human people who lived extraordinary lives.
Each saint the Church honors responded to God's invitation to use his or her unique gifts.
The 15 Promises of the Virgin Mary to those who recite the Rosary ) Revealed to St. Dominic and Blessed Alan)
1.    Whoever shall faithfully serve me by the recitation of the Rosary, shall receive signal graces. 2.    I promise my special protection and the greatest graces to all those who shall recite the Rosary. 3.    The Rosary shall be a powerful armor against hell, it will destroy vice, decrease sin, and defeat heresies. 4.    It will cause virtue and good works to flourish; it will obtain for souls the abundant mercy of God; it will withdraw the hearts of people from the love of the world and its vanities, and will lift them to the desire of eternal things.  Oh, that soul would sanctify them by this means.  5.    The soul that recommends itself to me by the recitation of the Rosary shall not perish. 6.    Whoever shall recite the Rosary devoutly, applying themselves to the consideration of its Sacred Mysteries shall never be conquered by misfortune.  God will not chastise them in His justice, they shall not perish by an unprovided death; if they be just, they shall remain in the grace of God, and become worthy of eternal life. 7.    Whoever shall have a true devotion for the Rosary shall not die without the Sacraments of the Church. 8.    Those who are faithful to recite the Rosary shall have during their life and at their death the light of God and the plentitude of His graces; at the moment of death they shall participate in the merits of the Saints in Paradise. 9.    I shall deliver from purgatory those who have been devoted to the Rosary. 10.    The faithful children of the Rosary shall merit a high degree of glory in Heaven.  11.    You shall obtain all you ask of me by the recitation of the Rosary. 12.    I shall aid all those who propagate the Holy Rosary in their necessities. 13.    I have obtained from my Divine Son that all the advocates of the Rosary shall have for intercessors the entire celestial court during their life and at the hour of death. 14.    All who recite the Rosary are my children, and brothers and sisters of my only Son, Jesus Christ. 15.    Devotion to my Rosary is a great sign of predestination.
His Holiness Aram I, current (2013) Catholicos of Cilicia of Armenians, whose See is located in Lebanese town of Antelias. The Catholicosate was founded in Sis, capital of Cilicia, in the year 1441 following the move of the Catholicosate of All Armenians back to its original See of Etchmiadzin in Armenia. The Catholicosate of Cilicia enjoyed local jurisdiction, though spiritually subject to the authority of Etchmiadzin. In 1921 the See was transferred to Aleppo in Syria, and in 1930 to Antelias.
Its jurisdiction currently extends to Syria, Cyprus, Iran and Greece.
Aramaic dialect of Edessa, now known as Syriac
The exact date of the introduction of Christianity into Edessa {Armenian Ourhaï in Arabic Er Roha, commonly Orfa or Urfa, its present name} is not known. It is certain, however, that the Christian community was at first made up from the Jewish population of the city. According to an ancient legend, King Abgar V, Ushana, was converted by Addai, who was one of the seventy-two disciples. In fact, however, the first King of Edessa to embrace the Christian Faith was Abgar IX (c. 206) becoming official kingdom religion.
Christian council held at Edessa early as 197 (Eusebius, Hist. Ecc7V,xxiii).
In 201 the city was devastated by a great flood, and the Christian church was destroyed (“Chronicon Edessenum”, ad. an. 201).
In 232 the relics of the Apostle St. Thomas were brought from India, on which occasion his Syriac Acts were written.

Under Roman domination martyrs suffered at Edessa: Sts. Scharbîl and Barsamya, under Decius; Sts. Gûrja, Schâmôna, Habib, and others under Diocletian.
 
In the meanwhile Christian priests from Edessa evangelized Eastern Mesopotamia and Persia, established the first Churches in the kingdom of the Sassanides.  Atillâtiâ, Bishop of Edessa, assisted at the Council of Nicæa (325). The “Peregrinatio Silviæ” (or Etheriæ) (ed. Gamurrini, Rome, 1887, 62 sqq.) gives an account of the many sanctuaries at Edessa about 388.
Although Hebrew had been the language of the ancient Israelite kingdom, after their return from Exile the Jews turned more and more to Aramaic, using it for parts of the books of Ezra and Daniel in the Bible. By the time of Jesus, Aramaic was the main language of Palestine, and quite a number of texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls are also written in Aramaic.
Aramaic continued to be an important language for Jews, alongside Hebrew, and parts of the Talmud are written in it.
After Arab conquests of the seventh century, Arabic quickly replaced Aramaic as the main language of those who converted to Islam, although in out of the way places, Aramaic continued as a vernacular language of Muslims.
Aramaic, however, enjoyed its greatest success in Christianity. Although the New Testament wins written in Greek, Christianity had come into existence in an Aramaic-speaking milieu, and it was the Aramaic dialect of Edessa, now known as Syriac, that became the literary language of a large number of Christians living in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire and in the Persian Empire, further east. Over the course of the centuries the influence of the Syriac Churches spread eastwards to China (in Xian, in western China, a Chinese-Syriac inscription dated 781 is still to be seen); to southern India where the state of Kerala can boast more Christians of Syriac liturgical tradition than anywhere else in the world.

680 Shiite saint Imam Hussein, grandson of Islam's Prophet Muhammad Known as Ashoura and observed by Shiites across the world, the 10th day of the lunar Muslim month of Muharram: the anniversary of the 7th century death in battle of one of Shiite Islam's most beloved saints.  Imam Hussein died in the 680 A.D. battle fought on the plains outside Karbala, a city in modern Iraq that's home to the saint's shrine.  The battle over a dispute about the leadership of the Muslim faith following Muhammad's death in 632 A.D. It is the defining event in Islam's split into Sunni and Shiite branches.  The occasion is the source of an enduring moral lesson. "He sacrificed his blood to teach us not to give in to corruption, coercion, or use of force and to seek honor and justice."  According to Shiite beliefs, Hussein and companions were denied water by enemies who controlled the nearby Euphrates.  Streets get partially covered with blood from slaughter of hundreds of cows and sheep. Volunteers cook the meat and feed it to the poor.  Hussein's martyrdom recounted through a rich body of prose, poetry and song remains an inspirational example of sacrifice to many Shiites, 10 percent of the world's estimated 1.3 billion Muslims.
Meeting of the Saints  walis (saints of Allah)
Great men covet to embrace martyrdom for a cause and principle.
So was the case with Hazrat Ali. He could have made a compromise with the evil forces of his time and, as a result, could have led a very comfortable, easy and luxurious life.  But he was not a person who would succumb to such temptations. His upbringing, his education and his training in the lap of the holy Prophet made him refuse such an offer.
Rabia Al-Basri (717–801 C.E.) She was first to set forth the doctrine of mystical love and who is widely considered to be the most important of the early Sufi poets. An elderly Shia pointed out that during his pre-Partition childhood it was quite common to find pictures and portraits of Shia icons in Imambaras across the country.
Shah Abdul Latif: The Exalted Sufi Master born 1690 in a Syed family; died 1754. In ancient times, Sindh housed the exemplary Indus Valley Civilisation with Moenjo Daro as its capital, and now, it is the land of a culture which evolved from the teachings of eminent Sufi saints. Pakistan is home to the mortal remains of many Sufi saints, the exalted among them being Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai, a practitioner of the real Islam, philosopher, poet, musicologist and preacher. He presented his teaching through poetry and music - both instruments sublime - and commands a very large following, not only among Muslims but also among Hindus and Christians. Sindh culture: The Shah is synonymous with Sindh. He is the very fountainhead of Sindh's culture. His message remains as fresh as that of any present day poet, and the people of Sindh find solace from his writings. He did indeed think for Sindh. One of his prayers, in exquisite Sindhi, translates thus: “Oh God, may ever You on Sindh bestow abundance rare! Beloved! All the world let share Thy grace, and fruitful be.”
Shia Ali al-Hadi, died 868 and son Hassan al-Askari 874. These saints are the 10th and 11th of Shia's 12 most revered Imams. Baba Farid Sufi 1398 miracle, Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki renowned Muslim Sufi saint scholar miracles 569 A.H. [1173 C.E.] hermit gave to poor, Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti greatest mystic of his time born 533 Hijri (1138-39 A.D.), Hazrat Ghuas-e Azam, Hazrat Bu Ali Sharif, and Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia Sufi Saint Hazrath Khwaja Syed Mohammed Badshah Quadri Chisty Yamani Quadeer (RA)
1236-1325 welcomed people of all faiths & all walks of life.
801 Rabi'a al-'Adawiyya Sufi One of the most famous Islamic mystics
(b. 717). This 8th century saint was an early Sufi who had a profound influence on later Sufis, who in turn deeply influenced the European mystical love and troubadour traditions.  Rabi'a was a woman of Basra, a seaport in southern Iraq.  She was born around 717 and died in 801 (185-186).  Her biographer, the great medieval poet Attar, tells us that she was "on fire with love and longing" and that men accepted her "as a second spotless Mary" (186).  She was, he continues, “an unquestioned authority to her contemporaries" (218).
Rabi'a began her ascetic life in a small desert cell near Basra, where she lost herself in prayer and went straight to God for teaching.  As far as is known, she never studied under any master or spiritual director.  She was one of the first of the Sufis to teach that Love alone was the guide on the mystic path (222).  A later Sufi taught that there were two classes of "true believers": one class sought a master as an intermediary between them and God -- unless they could see the footsteps of the Prophet on the path before them, they would not accept the path as valid.  The second class “...did not look before them for the footprint of any of God's creatures, for they had removed all thought of what He had created from their hearts, and concerned themselves solely with God. (218)
Rabi'a was of this second kind.  She felt no reverence even for the House of God in Mecca:  "It is the Lord of the house Whom I need; what have I to do with the house?" (219) One lovely spring morning a friend asked her to come outside to see the works of God.  She replied, "Come you inside that you may behold their Maker.  Contemplation of the Maker has turned me aside from what He has made" (219).  During an illness, a friend asked this woman if she desired anything.
"...[H]ow can you ask me such a question as 'What do I desire?'  I swear by the glory of God that for twelve years I have desired fresh dates, and you know that in Basra dates are plentiful, and I have not yet tasted them.  I am a servant (of God), and what has a servant to do with desire?" (162)
When a male friend once suggested she should pray for relief from a debilitating illness, she said,
"O Sufyan, do you not know Who it is that wills this suffering for me?  Is it not God Who wills it?  When you know this, why do you bid me ask for what is contrary to His will?  It is not  well to oppose one's Beloved." (221)
She was an ascetic.  It was her custom to pray all night, sleep briefly just before dawn, and then rise again just as dawn "tinged the sky with gold" (187).  She lived in celibacy and poverty, having renounced the world.  A friend visited her in old age and found that all she owned were a reed mat, screen, a pottery jug, and a bed of felt which doubled as her prayer-rug (186), for where she prayed all night, she also slept briefly in the pre-dawn chill.  Once her friends offered to get her a servant; she replied,
"I should be ashamed to ask for the things of this world from Him to Whom the world belongs, and how should I ask for them from those to whom it does not belong?"  (186-7)
A wealthy merchant once wanted to give her a purse of gold.  She refused it, saying that God, who sustains even those who dishonor Him, would surely sustain her, "whose soul is overflowing with love" for Him.  And she added an ethical concern as well:
"...How should I take the wealth of someone of whom I do not know whether he acquired it lawfully or not?" (187)
She taught that repentance was a gift from God because no one could repent unless God had already accepted him and given him this gift of repentance.  She taught that sinners must fear the punishment they deserved for their sins, but she also offered such sinners far more hope of Paradise than most other ascetics did.  For herself, she held to a higher ideal, worshipping God neither from fear of Hell nor from hope of Paradise, for she saw such self-interest as unworthy of God's servants; emotions like fear and hope were like veils -- i.e., hindrances to the vision of God Himself.  The story is told that once a number of Sufis saw her hurrying on her way with water in one hand and a burning torch in the other.  When they asked her to explain, she said:
"I am going to light a fire in Paradise and to pour water on to Hell, so that both veils may vanish altogether from before the pilgrims and their purpose may be sure..." (187-188)
She was once asked where she came from.  "From that other world," she said.  "And where are you going?" she was asked.  "To that other world," she replied (219).  She taught that the spirit originated with God in "that other world" and had to return to Him in the end.  Yet if the soul were sufficiently purified, even on earth, it could look upon God unveiled in all His glory and unite with him in love.  In this quest, logic and reason were powerless.  Instead, she speaks of the "eye" of her heart which alone could apprehend Him and His mysteries (220).
Above all, she was a lover, a bhakti, like one of Krishna’s Goptis in the Hindu tradition.  Her hours of prayer were not so much devoted to intercession as to communion with her Beloved.  Through this communion, she could discover His will for her.  Many of her prayers have come down to us:
       "I have made Thee the Companion of my heart,
        But my body is available for those who seek its company,
        And my body is friendly towards its guests,
        But the Beloved of my heart is the Guest of my soul."  [224]

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Mother Angelica saving souls is this beautiful womans journey  Shrine_of_The_Most_Blessed_Sacrament
Colombia was among the countries Mother Angelica visited. 
In Bogotá, a Salesian priest - Father Juan Pablo Rodriguez - brought Mother and the nuns to the Sanctuary of the Divine Infant Jesus to attend Mass.  After Mass, Father Juan Pablo took them into a small Shrine which housed the miraculous statue of the Child Jesus. Mother Angelica stood praying at the side of the statue when suddenly the miraculous image came alive and turned towards her.  Then the Child Jesus spoke with the voice of a young boy:  “Build Me a Temple and I will help those who help you.” 

Thus began a great adventure that would eventually result in the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, a Temple dedicated to the Divine Child Jesus, a place of refuge for all. Use this link to read a remarkable story about
The Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament
Father Reardon, Editor of The Catholic Bulletin for 14 years Lover of the poor; A very Holy Man of God.
Monsignor Reardon Protonotarius Apostolicus
 
Pastor 42 years BASILICA OF SAINT MARY Minneapolis MN
America's First Basilica Largest Nave in the World
August 7, 1907-ground broke for the foundation
by Archbishop Ireland-laying cornerstone May 31, 1908
James M. Reardon Publication History of Basilica of Saint Mary 1600-1932
James M. Reardon Publication  History of the Basilica of Saint Mary 1955 {update}

Brief History of our Beloved Holy Priest Here and his published books of Catholic History in North America
Reardon, J.M. Archbishop Ireland; Prelate, Patriot, Publicist, 1838-1918.
A Memoir (St. Paul; 1919); George Anthony Belcourt Pioneer Catholic Missionary of the Northwest 1803-1874 (1955);
The Catholic Church IN THE DIOCESE OF ST. PAUL from earliest origin to centennial achievement
1362-1950 (1952);

The Church of Saint Mary of Saint Paul 1875-1922;
  (1932)
The Vikings in the American Heartland;
The Catholic Total Abstinence Society in Minnesota;
James Michael Reardon Born in Nova Scotia, 1872;  Priest, ordained by Bishop Ireland;
Member -- St. Paul Seminary faculty.
Affiliations and Indulgence Litany of Loretto in Stained glass windows here.  Nave Sacristy and Residence Here
Sanctuary
spaces between them filled with grilles of hand-forged wrought iron the
life of our Blessed Lady After the crucifixon
Apostle statues Replicas of those in St John Lateran--Christendom's earliest Basilica.
Ordered by Rome's first Christian Emperor, Constantine the Great, Popes' cathedral and official residence first millennium of Christian history.

The only replicas ever made:  in order from west to east {1932}.
Every Christian must be a living book wherein one can read the teaching of the gospel
 
It Makes No Sense
Not To Believe In GOD
THE BLESSED MOTHER AND ISLAM By Father John Corapi
  June 19, Trinity Sunday, 1991: Ordained Catholic Priest under Pope John Paul II;
then 2,000,000 miles delivering the Gospel to millions, and continues to do so.
By Father John Corapi
THE BLESSED MOTHER AND ISLAM By Father John Corapi
  June 19, Trinity Sunday, 1991: Ordained Catholic Priest under Pope John Paul II;
then 2,000,000 miles delivering the Gospel to millions, and continues to do so.
By Father John Corapi
Among the most important titles we have in the Catholic Church for the Blessed Virgin Mary are Our Lady of Victory and Our Lady of the Rosary. These titles can be traced back to one of the most decisive times in the history of the world and Christendom. The Battle of Lepanto took place on October 7 (date of feast of Our Lady of Rosary), 1571. This proved to be the most crucial battle for the Christian forces against the radical Muslim navy of Turkey. Pope Pius V led a procession around St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City praying the Rosary. He showed true pastoral leadership in recognizing the danger posed to Christendom by the radical Muslim forces, and in using the means necessary to defeat it. Spiritual battles require spiritual weapons, and this more than anything was a battle that had its origins in the spiritual order—a true battle between good and evil.

Today we have a similar spiritual battle in progress—a battle between the forces of good and evil, light and darkness, truth and lies, life and death. If we do not soon stop the genocide of abortion in the United States, we shall run the course of all those that prove by their actions that they are enemies of God—total collapse, economic, social, and national. The moral demise of a nation results in the ultimate demise of a nation. God is not a disinterested spectator to the affairs of man. Life begins at conception. This is an unalterable formal teaching of the Catholic Church. If you do not accept this you are a heretic in plain English. A single abortion is homicide. The more than 48,000,000 abortions since Roe v. Wade in the United States constitute genocide by definition. The group singled out for death—unwanted, unborn children.

No other issue, not all other issues taken together, can constitute a proportionate reason for voting for candidates that intend to preserve and defend this holocaust of innocent human life that is abortion.

As we watch the spectacle of the world seeming to self-destruct before our eyes, we can’t help but be saddened and even frightened by so much evil run rampant. Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Somalia, North Korea—It is all a disaster of epic proportions displayed in living color on our television screens.  These are not ordinary times and this is not business as usual. We are at a crossroads in human history and the time for Catholics and all Christians to act is now. All evil can ultimately be traced to its origin, which is moral evil. All of the political action, peace talks, international peacekeeping forces, etc. will avail nothing if the underlying sickness is not addressed. This is sin. One person at a time hearts and minds must be moved from evil to good, from lies to truth, from violence to peace.
Islam, an Arabic word that has often been defined as “to make peace,” seems like a living contradiction today. Islam is a religion of peace.  As we celebrate the birthday of Our Lady, I am proposing that each one of us pray the Rosary for peace. Prayer is what must precede all other activity if that activity is to have any chance of success. Pray for peace, pray the Rosary every day without fail.  There is a great love for Mary among Muslim people. It is not a coincidence that a little village named Fatima is where God chose to have His Mother appear in the twentieth century. Our Lady’s name appears no less than thirty times in the Koran. No other woman’s name is mentioned, not even that of Mohammed’s daughter, Fatima. In the Koran Our Lady is described as “Virgin, ever Virgin.”

Archbishop Fulton Sheen prophetically spoke of the resurgence of Islam in our day. He said it would be through the Blessed Virgin Mary that Islam would be converted. We must pray for this to happen quickly if we are to avert a horrible time of suffering for this poor, sinful world. Turn to our Mother in this time of great peril. Pray the Rosary every day. Then, and only then will there be peace, when the hearts and minds of men are changed from the inside.
Talk is weak. Prayer is strong. Pray!  God bless you, Father John Corapi

Father Corapi's Biography

Father John Corapi is what has commonly been called a late vocation. In other words, he came to the priesthood other than a young man. He was 44 years old when he was ordained. From small town boy to the Vietnam era US Army, from successful businessman in Las Vegas and Hollywood to drug addicted and homeless, to religious life and ordination to the priesthood by Pope John Paul II, to a life as a preacher of the Gospel who has reached millions with the simple message that God's Name is Mercy!

Father Corapi's academic credentials are quite extensive. He received a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Pace University in the seventies. Then as an older man returned to the university classrooms in preparation for his life as a priest and preacher. He received all of his academic credentials for the Church with honors: a Masters degree in Sacred Scripture from Holy Apostles Seminary and Bachelor, Licentiate, and Doctorate degrees in dogmatic theology from the University of Navarre in Spain.

Father John Corapi goes to the heart of the contemporary world's many woes and wars, whether the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, or the Congo, or the natural disasters that seem to be increasing every year, the moral and spiritual war is at the basis of everything. “Our battle is not against human forces,” St. Paul asserts, “but against principalities and powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness...” (Ephesians 6:12). 
The “War to end all wars” is the moral and spiritual combat that rages in the hearts and minds of human beings. The outcome of that  unseen fight largely determines how the battle in the realm of the seen unfolds.  The title talk, “With the Moon Under Her Feet,” is taken from the twelfth chapter of the Book of Revelation, and deals with the current threat to the world from radical Islam, and the Blessed Virgin Mary's role in the ultimate victory that will result in the conversion of Islam. Few Catholics are aware of the connection between Islam, Fatima, and Guadalupe. Presented in Father Corapi's straight-forward style, you will be both inspired and educated by him.

About Father John Corapi.
Father Corapi is a Catholic priest .
The pillars of father's preaching are basically:
Love for and a relationship with the Blessed Virgin Mary 
Leading a vibrant and loving relationship with Jesus Christ
Great love and reverence for the Most Holy Eucharist from Holy Mass to adoration of the Blessed Sacrament
An uncompromising love for and obedience to the Holy Father and the teaching of the Magisterium of the Church


God Bless you on your journey Father John Corapi


Records on life of Father Flanagan, founder of Boys Town, presented at Vatican
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Pope advances sainthood causes of 17 women
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Algerian martyrs to be beatified in December
Sep 14, 2018 - 06:01 pm .- The Algerian bishops' conference has announced that the beatification of Bishop Pierre Claverie and his 18 companions, who were martyred in the country between 1994 and 1996, will be held Dec. 8.

Now a cardinal, Giovanni Angelo Becciu heads to congregation for saints' causes
Jun 28, 2018 - 11:41 am .- Newly-minted Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu will resign from his post as substitute of the Secretariat of State tomorrow, in anticipation of his appointment as prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints later this summer.

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Records on life of Father Flanagan, founder of Boys Town, presented at Vatican
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Archbishop Fulton Sheen to be beatified
Jul 6, 2019 - 04:00 am .- Pope Francis approved the miracle attributed to Archbishop Fulton Sheen Friday, making possible the American television catechist's beatification.

Brooklyn diocese advances sainthood cause of local priest
Jun 25, 2019 - 03:01 am .- The Bishop of Brooklyn accepted last week the findings of a nine-year diocesan investigation into the life of Monsignor Bernard John Quinn, known for fighting bigotry and serving the African American population, as part of his cause for canonization.

Fr. Augustus Tolton, former African American slave, advances toward sainthood
Jun 12, 2019 - 05:03 am .- Fr. Augustus Tolton advanced along the path to sainthood Wednesday, making the runaway slave-turned-priest one step closer to being the first black American saint.

Pope Francis will beatify these martyred Greek-Catholic bishops in Romania
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Seven 20th-century Romanian bishops declared martyrs
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Pope advances sainthood causes of 17 women
Jan 15, 2019 - 11:12 am .- Pope Francis approved Tuesday the next step in the canonization causes of 17 women from four countries, including the martyrdom of 14 religious sisters killed in Spain at the start of the Spanish Civil War.
 
Nineteen Algerian martyrs beatified
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The Algerian martyrs shed their blood for Christ, pope says
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Algerian martyrs to be beatified in December
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Now a cardinal, Giovanni Angelo Becciu heads to congregation for saints' causes
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Pope Francis creates new path to beatification under ‘offering of life’
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Surgeon and father among sainthood causes moving forward
Feb 27, 2017 - 11:03 am .- Pope Francis recognized on Monday the heroic virtue of eight persons on the path to canonization, including an Italian surgeon and father of eight who suffered from several painful diseases throughout his life.

8 Martyrs Move Closer to Sainthood 8 July, 2016
Posted by ZENIT Staff on 8 July, 2016

The angel appears to Saint Monica
This morning, Pope Francis received Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Cardinal Angelo Amato. During the audience, he authorized the promulgation of decrees concerning the following causes:

***
MIRACLES:
Miracle attributed to the intercession of the Venerable Servant of God Luis Antonio Rosa Ormières, priest and founder of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Guardian Angel; born July 4, 1809 and died on Jan. 16, 1890
MARTYRDOM:
Servants of God Antonio Arribas Hortigüela and 6 Companions, Missionaries of the Sacred Heart; killed in hatred of the Faith, Sept. 29, 1936
Servant of God Josef Mayr-Nusser, a layman; killed in hatred of the Faith, Feb. 24, 1945
HEROIC VIRTUE:

Servant of God Alfonse Gallegos of the Order of Augustinian Recollects, Titular Bishop of Sasabe, auxiliary of Sacramento; born Feb. 20, 1931 and died Oct. 6, 1991
Servant of God Rafael Sánchez García, diocesan priest; born June 14, 1911 and died on Aug. 8, 1973
Servant of God Andrés García Acosta, professed layman of the Order of Friars Minor; born Jan. 10, 1800 and died Jan. 14, 1853
Servant of God Joseph Marchetti, professed priest of the Congregation of the Missionaries of St. Charles; born Oct. 3, 1869 and died Dec. 14, 1896
Servant of God Giacomo Viale, professed priest of the Order of Friars Minor, pastor of Bordighera; born Feb. 28, 1830 and died April 16, 1912
Servant of God Maria Pia of the Cross (née Maddalena Notari), foundress of the Congregation of Crucified Sisters Adorers of the Eucharist; born Dec. 2, 1847 and died on July 1, 1919
Sunday, November 23 2014 Six to Be Canonized on Feast of Christ the King.

On the List Are Lay Founder of a Hospital and Eastern Catholic Religious
VATICAN CITY, June 12, 2014 (Zenit.org) - Today, the Vatican announced that during the celebration of the feast of Christ the King on Sunday, November 23, an ordinary public consistory will be held for the canonization of the following six blesseds, who include a lay founder of a hospital for the poor, founders of religious orders, and two members of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic Church in full communion with the Holy See:
-Giovanni Antonio Farina (1803-1888), an Italian bishop who founded the Institute of the Sisters Teachers of Saint Dorothy, Daughters of the Sacred Hearts
-Kuriakose Elias Chavara (1805-1871), a Syro-Malabar priest in India who founded the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate
-Ludovico of Casoria (1814-1885), an Italian Franciscan priest who founded the Gray Sisters of St. Elizabeth
-Nicola Saggio (Nicola da Longobardi, 1650-1709), an Italian oblate of the Order of Minims
-Euphrasia Eluvathingal (1877-1952), an Indian Carmelite of the Syro-Malabar Church
-Amato Ronconi (1238-1304), an Italian, Third Order Franciscan who founded a hospital for poor pilgrims

CAUSES OF SAINTS July 2015.
Pope Recognizes Heroic Virtues of Ukrainian Archbishop
Recognition Brings Metropolitan Archbishop Andrey Sheptytsky Closer to Beatification
By Junno Arocho Esteves Rome, July 17, 2015 (ZENIT.org)
Pope Francis recognized the heroic virtues of Ukrainian Greek Catholic Archbishop Andrey Sheptytsky. According to a communique released by the Holy See Press Office, the Holy Father met this morning with Cardinal Angelo Amato, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

The Pope also recognized the heroic virtues of several religious/lay men and women from Italy, Spain, France & Mexico.
Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky is considered to be one of the most influential 20th century figures in the history of the Ukrainian Church.
Enthroned as Metropolitan of Lviv in 1901, Archbishop Sheptytsky was arrested shortly after the outbreak of World War I in 1914 by the Russians. After his imprisonment in several prisons in Russia and the Ukraine, the Archbishop was released in 1918.

The Ukrainian Greek Catholic prelate was also an ardent supporter of the Jewish community in Ukraine, going so far as to learn Hebrew to better communicate with them. He also was a vocal protestor against atrocities committed by the Nazis, evidenced in his pastoral letter, "Thou Shalt Not Kill." He was also known to harbor thousands of Jews in his residence and in Greek Catholic monasteries.
Following his death in 1944, his cause for canonization was opened in 1958.
* * *
The Holy Father authorized the Congregation to promulgate the following decrees regarding the heroic virtues of:
- Servant of God Andrey Sheptytsky, O.S.B.M., major archbishop of Leopolis of the Ukrainians, metropolitan of Halyc (1865-1944);
- Servant of God Giuseppe Carraro, Bishop of Verona, Italy (1899-1980);
- Servant of God Agustin Ramirez Barba, Mexican diocesan priest and founder of the Servants of the Lord of Mercy (1881-1967);
- Servant of God Simpliciano della Nativita (ne Aniello Francesco Saverio Maresca), Italian professed priest of the Order of Friars Minor, founder of the Franciscan Sisters of the Sacred Hearts (1827-1898);
- Servant of God Maria del Refugio Aguilar y Torres del Cancino, Mexican founder of the Mercedarian Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament (1866-1937);
- Servant of God Marie-Charlotte Dupouy Bordes (Marie-Teresa), French professed religious of the Society of the Religious of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary (1873-1953);
- Servant of God Elisa Miceli, Italian founder of the Rural Catechist Sisters of the Sacred Heart (1904-1976);
- Servant of God Isabel Mendez Herrero (Isabel of Mary Immaculate), Spanish professed nun of the Servants of St. Joseph (1924-1953)
October 01, 2015 Vatican City, Pope Authorizes following Decrees
(ZENIT.org) By Staff Reporter
Polish Layperson Recognized as Servant of God
Pope Authorizes Decrees
Pope Francis on Wednesday authorised the Congregation for Saints' Causes to promulgate the following decrees:

MARTYRDOM
- Servant of God Valentin Palencia Marquina, Spanish diocesan priest, killed in hatred of the faith in Suances, Spain in 1937;

HEROIC VIRTUES
- Servant of God Giovanni Folci, Italian diocesan priest and founder of the Opera Divin Prigioniero (1890-1963);
- Servant of God Franciszek Blachnicki, Polish diocesan priest (1921-1987);
- Servant of God Jose Rivera Ramirez, Spanish diocesan priest (1925-1991);
- Servant of God Juan Manuel Martín del Campo, Mexican diocesan priest (1917-1996);
- Servant of God Antonio Filomeno Maria Losito, Italian professed priest of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (1838-1917);
- Servant of God Maria Benedetta Giuseppa Frey (nee Ersilia Penelope), Italian professed nun of the Cistercian Order (1836-1913);
- Servant of God Hanna Chrzanowska, Polish layperson, Oblate of the Ursulines of St. Benedict (1902-1973).
March 06 2016 MIRACLES authorised the Congregation to promulgate the following decrees:
Pope Francis received in a private audience Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, during which he authorised the Congregation to promulgate the following decrees:
MIRACLES

– Blessed Manuel González García, bishop of Palencia, Spain, founder of the Eucharistic Missionaries of Nazareth (1877-1940);
– Blessed Elisabeth of the Trinity (née Elisabeth Catez), French professed religious of the Order of Discalced Carmelites (1880-1906);
– Venerable Servant of God Marie-Eugène of the Child Jesus (né Henri Grialou), French professed priest of the Order of Discalced Carmelites, founder of the Secular Institute “Notre-Dame de Vie” (1894-1967);
– Venerable Servant of God María Antonia of St. Joseph (née María Antonio de Paz y Figueroa), Argentine founder of the Beaterio of the Spiritual Exercise of Buenos Aires (1730-1799);
HEROIC VIRTUE

– Servant of God Stefano Ferrando, Italian professed priest of the Salesians, bishop of Shillong, India, founder of the Congregation of Missionary Sisters of Mary Help of Christians (1895-1978);
– Servant of God Enrico Battista Stanislao Verjus, Italian professed priest of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, coadjutor of the apostolic vicariate of New Guinea (1860-1892);
– Servant of God Giovanni Battista Quilici, Italian diocesan priest, founder of the Congregation of the Daughters of the Crucified (1791-1844);
– Servant of God Bernardo Mattio, Italian diocesan priest (1845-1914);
– Servant of God Quirico Pignalberi, Italian professed priest of the Order of Friars Minor Conventual (1891-1982);
– Servant of God Teodora Campostrini, Italian founder of the Minim Sisters of Charity of Our Lady of Sorrows (1788-1860);
– Servant of God Bianca Piccolomini Clementini, Italian founder of the Company of St. Angela Merici di Siena (1875-1959);
– Servant of God María Nieves of the Holy Family (née María Nieves Sánchez y Fernández), Spanish professed religious of the Daughters of Mary of the Pious Schools (1900-1978).

April 26 2016 MIRACLES authorised the Congregation to promulgate the following decrees:
Here is the full list of decrees approved by the Pope:

MIRACLES
– Blessed Alfonso Maria Fusco, diocesan priest and founder of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. John the Baptist (1839-1910);
– Venerable Servant of God John Sullivan, professed priest of the Society of Jesus (1861-1933);
MARTYRDOM
– Servants of God Nikolle Vinçenc Prennushi, O.F.M., archbishop of Durres, Albania, and 37 companions killed between 1945 and 1974;
– Servants of God José Antón Gómez and three companions of the Benedictines of Madrid, Spain, killed 1936;
HEROIC VIRTUES
– Servant of God Thomas Choe Yang-Eop, diocesan priest (1821-1861);
– Servant of God Sosio Del Prete (né Vincenzo), professed priest of the Order of Friars Minor, founder of the Congregation of the Little Servants of Christ the King (1885-1952);
– Servant of God Wenanty Katarzyniec (né Jósef), professed priest of the Order of Friars Minor Conventual (1889-1921);
– Servant of God Maria Consiglia of the Holy Spirity (née Emilia Paqualina Addatis), founder of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Addolorata, Servants of Mary (1845-1900);
– Servant of God Maria of the Incarnation (née Caterina Carrasco Tenorio), founder of the Congregation of the Franciscan Tertiary Sisters of the Flock of Mary (1840-1917);
– Servant of God , founder of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Family of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (1851-1923);
– Servant of God Ilia Corsaro, founder of the Congregation of the Little Missionaries of the Eucharist (1897-1977);
– Servant of God Maria Montserrat Grases García, layperson of the Personal Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei (1941-1959).
LINKS:
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