Mary Mother of GOD 15 Promises of the Virgin Mary to those who recite the Rosary
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;
2024
23,658  Lives Saved Since 2007

Our Bartholomew Family Prayer List
Joyful Mystery on Monday Saturday   Glorius Mystery on Sunday Wednesday
   Sorrowful Mystery on Friday Tuesday   Luminous Mystery on Thursday Veterens of War

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?

Pope Benedict XVI to The Catholic Church In China {whole article here }

The saints “a cloud of witnesses over our head”, showing us life of Christian perfection is possible.

He who faithfully prays to God for the necessaries of this life is both mercifully heard, and mercifully not heard.
For the physician knows better than the sick man what is good for the disease. -- St. Augustine

814 Blessed Charlemagne Emperor restored unity of liturgy defined doctrine encouraged education
Saint Ephraim of Novy Torg founder of Sts Boris and Gleb monastery in the city
1224 Blessed Bartholomew Aiutamicristo Camaldolese lay-brother 
1237 Bl. Roger of Todi Franciscan friend of St. Francis of Assisi
 
1258 St Peter Nolasco, Founder ransoms Christian prisoners 400 on 1 trip

1274 St. Thomas Aquinas priest Doctor of the Church patron - all universities & students
1431 Blessed Mary of Pisa Widow miraculous favors  saw guardian angel from childhood 
1908 Joseph Freinademetz (b. 1852) he received his mission cross and departed for China with Fr. John Baptist Anzer, another Divine Word Missionary.

January 28 – Our Lady of the People (Italy, 1771)
Thousands claim to have seen the Virgin Mary 
Throughout the month of December 2009, a "luminous white silhouette" in a pure white dress with a royal blue belt, was spotted in different places throughout Egypt.  These were "apparitions of the Blessed Virgin," according to Abbouna Anba Theodosius, Bishop-General of Giza Coptic Orthodox Bishopric. The events generated great religious fervor. More than 200,000 Christians and Muslims claim to have witnessed the apparitions of the Virgin Mary.
"It’s her, with her blue and white clothes, there's no doubt about it. It can’t be an illusion," Rami, 36, told AFP (Agence France Presse). For Coptic Christians in Egypt, the month of December is dedicated to the Virgin Mary. "The Blessed Virgin appeared above the church that bears her name, in Warraq al-Hadar, Giza... It’s a great blessing for the Church and for all the people of Egypt," Abbouna Anba Theodosius added.
Interviewed by the magazine Famille Chretienne, Abbouna Ioustos Kamel Dos, the parish priest of the Coptic Orthodox church of Warraq, affirms: "It is a great joy for us. These apparitions help us to feel that the Virgin Mary is close to us... The Virgin Mary, who once took refuge here, has a very special love in her heart for her Egyptian children. Egypt is a land blessed by the Lord."
Paul Ohlott  actualitechretienne.wordpress.com


January 28 - St Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church (d. 1274)   
  Mary is a remedy like a healing herb
The rule of Divine Providence is that it provides for everything according to what is best suited. This is why, for man, because he is human, it provides remedies derived from the ground. Thus in Ben Sira: “The Lord has brought forth medicinal herbs from the ground” (Si 38:4).
Two remedies extracted from the earth are offered: green herbs and fruit-bearing trees. The healing herb is the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose nativity the Church is presently celebrating. She is called herb, on account of her humility; green, on account of her virginity; and fruit-bearing, on account of (her) fertility.
Saint Thomas Aquinas In Sermon 16, Germinet terra (Birth of the Virgin)

Forgiveness of sins in the Mystery of Repentance, according to his teaching, is not an external exoneration,
 not a forgetting of the sins, but rather their complete undoing, their annihilation.
The tears of repentance wash away and burn away the sin. Moreover, they (i.e. the tears) enliven, they transfigure sinful nature, they give the strength "to walk in the way of the the Lord's commandments," encouraging hope in God.
In the fiery font of repentance, the saint wrote, "you sail yourself across, O sinner, you resurrect yourself from the dead."
January 28-Our Lady of the People (Italy, 1771) - Saint Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274)
  Prayer of St Thomas Aquinas to the Blessed Virgin
O most blessed and sweet Virgin Mary, Mother of God, filled with all tenderness, Daughter of the most high King, Lady of the Angels, Mother of all the faithful,
On this day and all the days of my life, I entrust to your merciful heart my body and my soul, all my acts, thoughts, choices, desires, words, deeds, my entire life and death,
So that, with your assistance, all may be ordered to the good according to the will of your beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ....
Excerpt from St Thomas Aquinas, Devoutly I Adore Thee,
ed. by R. Anderson and J. Moser (Manchester, New Hampshire: Sophia Institute Press, 1933)
 
St. Thomas Aquinas 48
St. Thomas Aquinas was born toward the end of the year 1226. He was the son of Landulph, Count of Aquino, who, when St. Thomas was five years old, placed him under the care of the Benedictines of Monte Casino. His teachers were surprised at the progress he made, for he surpassed all his fellow pupils in learning as well as in the practice of virtue.

When he became of age to choose his state of life, St. Thomas renounced the things of this world and resolved to enter the Order of St. Dominic in spite of the opposition of his family.
In 1243, at the age of seventeen, he joined the Dominicans of Naples. Some members of his family resorted to all manner of means over a two year period to break his constancy. They even went so far as to send an impure woman to tempt him. But all their efforts were in vain and St. Thomas persevered in his vocation. As a reward for his fidelity, God conferred upon him the gift of perfect chastity, which has merited for him the title of the "Angelic Doctor".


After making his profession at Naples, he studied at Cologne under the celebrated St. Albert the Great. Here he was nicknamed the "dumb ox" because of his silent ways and huge size, but he was really a brilliant student. At the age of twenty-two, he was appointed to teach in the same city. At the same time, he also began to publish his first works. After four years he was sent to Paris. The saint was then a priest. At the age of thirty-one, he received his doctorate.

 St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)
By universal consent Thomas Aquinas is the preeminent spokesman of the Catholic tradition of reason and of divine revelation. He is one of the great teachers of the medieval Catholic Church, honored with the titles Doctor of the Church and Angelic Doctor.

At five he was given to the Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino in his parents’ hopes that he would choose that way of life and later become abbot. In 1239 he was sent to Naples to complete his studies. It was here that he was first attracted to Aristotle’s philosophy.

By 1243, Thomas abandoned his family’s plans for him and joined the Dominicans, much to his mother’s dismay. On her order, Thomas was captured by his brother and kept at home for over a year.

Once free, he went to Paris and then to Cologne, where he finished his studies with Albert the Great. He held two professorships at Paris, lived at the court of Pope Urban IV, directed the Dominican schools at Rome and Viterbo, combated adversaries of the mendicants, as well as the Averroists, and argued with some Franciscans about Aristotelianism.

His greatest contribution to the Catholic Church is his writings. The unity, harmony and continuity of faith and reason, of revealed and natural human knowledge, pervades his writings. One might expect Thomas, as a man of the gospel, to be an ardent defender of revealed truth. But he was broad enough, deep enough, to see the whole natural order as coming from God the Creator, and to see reason as a divine gift to be highly cherished.

The Summa Theologiae, his last and, unfortunately, uncompleted work, deals with the whole of Catholic theology. He stopped work on it after celebrating Mass on December 6, 1273. When asked why he stopped writing, he replied, “I cannot go on.... All that I have written seems to me like so much straw compared to what I have seen and what has been revealed to me.” He died March 7, 1274.

Comment:  We can look to Thomas Aquinas as a towering example of Catholicism in the sense of broadness, universality and inclusiveness. We should be determined anew to exercise the divine gift of reason in us, our power to know, learn and understand. At the same time we should thank God for the gift of his revelation, especially in Jesus Christ.
Quote:   “Hence we must say that for the knowledge of any truth whatsoever man needs divine help, that the intellect may be moved by God to its act. But he does not need a new light added to his natural light, in order to know the truth in all things, but only in some that surpasses his natural knowledge” (Summa Theologiae, I-II, 109, 1).

At Paris he was honored with the friendship of the King, St. Louis, with whom he frequently dined. In 1261, Urban IV called him to Rome where he was appointed to teach, but he positively declined to accept any ecclesiastical dignity. St. Thomas not only wrote (his writings filled twenty hefty tomes characterized by brilliance of thought and lucidity of language), but he preached often and with greatest fruit. Clement IV offered him the archbishopric of Naples which he also refused. He left the great monument of his learning, the "Summa Theologica", unfinished, for on his way to the second Council of Lyons, ordered there by Gregory X, he fell sick and died at the Cistercian monastery of Fossa Nuova in 1274.
St. Thomas was one of the greatest and most influential theologians of all time.
He was canonized in 1323 and declared Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius V
.

 Romæ sanctæ Agnétis, Vírginis et Mártyris, secúndo.
       At Rome, the second feast of St. Agnes, virgin and martyr.
Publican and the Pharisee
251 St. Thyrsus, Leucius, & Callinicus slain at Apollonia Phrygia 
304 St. Flavian Martyr at Civita Vecchia
asst prefect of Rome
304 Leonidas and Companions martyrs in Egypt 

315 St. Valerius Bishop Saragossa Spain St. Vincent was deacon 
356 Martyrs of Alexandria while attending Mass offered by Saint Athanasius
     
St. Saint Ephraim the Syrian deacon teacher of repentance humble contrite monk translator hymnographer  
390 St. Palladius hermit of Syria near Antioch  gift of wonderworking 
444 St Cyril, Archbishop Of Alexandria, Doctor Of The Church
530 St. Cannera Irish hermitess a friend of St. Senan 
544 John of Reomay hermit monk  confirmed many miracles Abbot 
6th v. Saint Isaac Syrian Bishop of Ninevah 8th v. works on Syrian history by Iezudena bishop of Barsa the account of St Isaac found
       St. Antilnus Benedictine abbot Brantome 
804 Paulinus of Aquileia defending the filioque
814 Blessed Charlemagne Emperor restored unity of liturgy defined doctrine encouraged education

830 St. Glastian Bishop patron of Kinglassie Fife & Scotland 

880 Odo of Beauvais Benedictine monk helped reform Church N. France
 
       Saint John the Sage
 
       Saint Ephraim of Novy Torg founder of Sts Boris and Gleb monastery in the city

      New_Saints_of_Moscow
11th v. St. James the Hermit  hermit in Palestine miracle worker 
1159 Bl. Amadeus of Lausanne Cistercian Bishop prominent official court of Savoy & Burgundy 
1169 St. Richard of Vaucelles English Cistercian abbot
 
1208 Julian of Cuenca bishop dedication to the poor invoked for rain
 
1224 Blessed Bartholomew Aiutamicristo Camaldolese lay-broth
er 
1237 Bl. Roger of Todi Franciscan friend of St. Francis of Assisi
 
1258 St Peter Nolasco, Founder ransoms Christian prisoners 400 on 1 trip
1274 St. Thomas Aquinas priest Doctor of the Church patron - all universities & students
1304 Blessed James the Almsgiver priest martyred by a bishop

1350 BD ANTONY OF AMANDOLA commended for his patience and for his charity towards the poor, and a great number of miracles are reported to have been wrought at his intercession

1366 St Peter Thomas Carmelite diplomat bishop of Patti and Lipari crusader


1431 Blessed Mary of Pisa Widow miraculous favors  saw guardian angel from childhood
 
1450 Blessed Antony of Amandola Augustinian  OSA (AC)
1518 Blessed Giles of Lorenzana   Franciscan lay-brother 
1554 The Sumorin Totma Icon of the Mother of God glorified by numerous healings at the Spaso-Sumorin monastery of the city of Totma
1568 Saint Theodosius of Totma & founded Ephraimov wilderness monastery miracles incorrupt
1683 Blessed Julian Maunoir priest recalled 30,000 to God in 2 years, SJ (AC)  
1858 Blessed Jerome Lu & Laurence Wang martyred  native catechists 
1908 Joseph Freinademetz (b. 1852) he received his mission cross and departed for China with Fr. John Baptist Anzer, another Divine Word Missionary.

Publican and the Pharisee
Sunday after the Sunday of Zacchaeus is devoted to the Publican and the Pharisee.
At Vespers the night before, the TRIODION (the liturgical book used in the services of Great Lent) begins.

Two men went to the Temple to pray. One was a Pharisee who scrupulously observed the requirements of religion: he prayed, fasted, and contributed money to the Temple. These are very good things, and should be imitated by anyone who loves God. We who may not fulfill these requirements as well as the Pharisee did should not feel entitled to criticize him for being faithful. His sin was in looking down on the Publican and feeling justified because of his external religious observances.

The second man was a Publican, a tax-collector who was despised by the people. He, however, displayed humility, and this humility justified him before God (Luke 18:14).
The lesson to be learned is that we possess neither the Pharisee's religious piety, nor the Publican's repentance, through which we can be saved. We are called to see ourselves as we really are in the light of Christ's teaching, asking Him to be merciful to us, deliver us from sin, and to lead us on the path of salvation.
251 St. Thyrsus, Leucius, & Callinicus slain at Apollonia Phrygia
 Apollóniæ sanctórum Mártyrum, Léucii, Thyrsi et Calliníci; qui, témpore Décii Imperatóris, váriis tormentórum genéribus cruciáti, ac primus et últimus abscissióne cápitis, médius cælésti voce evocátus spíritum reddens, martyrium consummárunt.
       At Appollonia, the holy martyrs Thrysus, Leucius, and Callinicus, who were made to undergo various torments in the time of Emperor Decius.  Thyrsus and Callinicus were beheaded; Leucius, called by a heavenly voice, yielded his soul unto God.
Three martyrs, slain at Apollonia, Phrygia (modern Turkey). Their relics were believed to have been taken to Constantinople and then to Spain, for which reason Thyrsus was given a full office in the Mozarabic liturgy.
304 St. Flavian Martyr at Civita Vecchia.
Rom
æ sancti Flaviáni Mártyris, qui sub Diocletiáno passus est. At Rome, St. Flavian, martyr, who suffered under Diocletian.
 Italy. He was a deputy prefect of Rome.
304 Leonidas and Companions martyrs in Egypt MM (RM).
 In Thebáide sanctórum Mártyrum Leónidæ et Sociórum, qui, témpore Diocletiáni, palmam martyrii sunt assecúti.
       In Thebais, the holy martyrs Leonides and his companions, who obtained the palm of martyrdom in the time of Diocletian.
Died 304. These were martyrs in Egypt under Diocletian who are associated with Saints Philemon and Apollonius (Benedictines).
315 St. Valerius Bishop Saragossa Spain St. Vincent was his deacon
 Cæsaraugústæ, in Hispánia, sancti Valérii Epíscopi.
       At Saragossa in Spain, St. Valerius, bishop.
He was apparently exiled during the persecutions of Emperor Diocletian (r. 284-305) but managed to survive and to return to his see after the proclamation of the Edict of Toleration. St. Vincent was his deacon.
Saint Ephraim the Syrian deacon teacher of repentance humble contrite monk translator hymnographer   see also June 18 Here:  373 St Ephraem, Doctor of The Church
was born at the beginning of the fourth century in the city of Nisibis (Mesopotamia) into the family of impoverished toilers of the soil. His parents raised their son in piety, but from his childhood he was known for his quick temper and impetuous character. He often had fights, acted thoughtlessly, and even doubted God's Providence. He finally recovered his senses by the grace of God, and embarked on the path of repentance and salvation.

Once, he was unjustly accused of stealing a sheep and was thrown into prison. He heard a voice in a dream calling him to repent and correct his life. After this, he was acquitted of the charges and set free.

The young man ran off to the mountains to join the hermits. This form of Christian asceticism had been introduced by a disciple of St Anthony the Great, the Egyptian desert dweller Eugenius.

St James of Nisibis (January 13) was a noted ascetic, a preacher of Christianity and denouncer of the Arians. St Ephraim became one of his disciples. Under the direction of the holy hierarch, St Ephraim attained Christian meekness, humility, submission to God's will, and the strength to undergo various temptations without complaint.

St James transformed the wayward youth into a humble and contrite monk. Realizing the great worth of his disciple, he made use of his talents. He trusted him to preach sermons, to instruct children in school, and he took Ephraim with him to the First Ecumenical Council at Nicea (in the year 325). St Ephraim was in obedience to St James for fourteen years, until the bishop's death in 338.

After the capture of Nisibis by the Persians in 363, St Ephraim went to a monastery near the city of Edessa. Here he saw many great ascetics, passing their lives in prayer and psalmody. Their caves were solitary shelters, and they fed themselves with a certain plant.

He became especially close to the ascetic Julian (October 18), who was of one mind with him. St Ephraim combined asceticism with a ceaseless study of the Word of God, taking from it both solace and wisdom for his soul. The Lord gave him a gift of teaching, and people began to come to him, wanting to hear his counsel, which produced compunction in the soul, since he began with self-accusation.

Both verbally and in writing, St Ephraim instructed everyone in repentance, faith and piety, and he denounced the Arian heresy, which at that time was causing great turmoil. Pagans hearing preaching of the saint were converted to Christianity.

He also wrote the first Syriac commentary on the Pentateuch (i.e. "Five Books") of Moses.
He wrote many prayers and hymns, thereby enriching the Church's liturgical services.
Famous prayers of St Ephraim are to the Most Holy Trinity, to the Son of God, and to the Most Holy Theotokos.
He composed hymns for the Twelve Great Feasts of the Lord (the Nativity of Christ, the Baptism, the Resurrection), and funeral hymns.
St Ephraim's Prayer of Repentance, "O Lord and Master of my life...", is recited during Great Lent, and it summons Christians to spiritual renewal.

From ancient times the Church has valued the works of St Ephraim. His works were read publicly in certain churches after the Holy Scripture, as St Jerome tells us. At present, the Church Typikon prescribes certain of his instructions to be read on the days of Lent. Among the prophets, St David is the preeminent psalmodist; among the Fathers of the Church, St Ephraim the Syrian is the preeminent man of prayer. His spiritual experience made him a guide for monastics and a help to the pastors of Edessa. St Ephraim wrote in Syriac, but his works were very early translated into Greek and Armenian. Translations into Latin and Slavonic were made from the Greek text.

In many of St Ephraim's works we catch glimpses of the life of the Syrian ascetics, which was centered on prayer and working in various obediences for the common good of the brethren. The outlook of all the Syrian ascetics was the same. The monks believed that the goal of their efforts was communion with God and the acquisition of divine grace. For them, the present life was a time of tears, fasting and toil.

"If the Son of God is within you, then His Kingdom is also within you. Thus, the Kingdom of God is within you, a sinner. Enter into yourself, search diligently and without toil you shall find it. Outside of you is death, and the door to it is sin. Enter into yourself, dwell within your heart, for God is there."

Constant spiritual sobriety, the developing of good within man's soul gives him the possibility to take upon himself a task like blessedness, and a self-constraint like sanctity. The requital is presupposed in the earthly life of man, it is an undertaking of spiritual perfection by degrees. Whoever grows himself wings upon the earth, says St Ephraim, is one who soars up into the heights; whoever purifies his mind here below, there glimpses the Glory of God. In whatever measure each one loves God, he is, by God's love,satiated to fullness according to that measure. Man, cleansing himself and attaining the grace of the Holy Spirit while still here on earth, has a foretaste of the Kingdom of Heaven. To attain to life eternal, in the teachings of St Ephraim, does not mean to pass over from one realm of being into another, but rather to discover "the heavenly," spiritual condition of being.
Eternal life is not bestown on man through God's one-sided efforts,
but rather, it constantly grows like a seed within him by his efforts, toils and struggles.


The pledge within us of "theosis" (or "deification") is the Baptism of Christ, and the main force that drives the Christian life is repentance. St Ephraim was a great teacher of repentance. The forgiveness of sins in the Mystery of Repentance, according to his teaching, is not an external exoneration, not a forgetting of the sins, but rather their complete undoing, their annihilation. The tears of repentance wash away and burn away the sin. Moreover, they (i.e. the tears) enliven, they transfigure sinful nature, they give the strength "to walk in the way of the the Lord's commandments," encouraging hope in God. In the fiery font of repentance, the saint wrote, "you sail yourself across, O sinner, you resurrect yourself from the dead."

St Ephraim, accounting himself as the least and worst of all, went to Egypt at the end of his life to see the efforts of the great ascetics. He was accepted there as a welcome guest and received great solace from conversing with them. On his return journey he visited at Caesarea in Cappadocia with St Basil the Great (January 1), who wanted to ordain him a priest, but he considered himself unworthy of the priesthood. At the insistence of St Basil, he consented only to be ordained as a deacon, in which rank he remained until his death. Later on, St Basil invited St Ephraim to accept a bishop's throne, but the saint feigned madness in order to avoid this honor, humbly regarding himself as unworthy of it.

After his return to his own Edessa wilderness, St Ephraim hoped to spend the rest of his life in solitude, but divine Providence again summoned him to serve his neighbor. The inhabitants of Edessa were suffering from a devastating famine. By the influence of his word, the saint persuaded the wealthy to render aid to those in need. From the offerings of believers he built a poor-house for the poor and sick. St Ephraim then withdrew to a cave near Edessa, where he remained to the end of his days.
356 Martyrs of Alexandria while attending Mass offered by Saint Athanasius (RM)
 Alexandríæ pássio plurimórum sanctórum Mártyrum, qui, hac ipsa die, a factióne Syriáni, Ducis Ariáni, dum in Ecclésia synáxim ágerent, divérso mortis génere sunt interémpti.
      At Alexandria, the commemoration of many holy martyrs, who, while they were at Mass in the church on this day, were put to death in different ways by the followers of Syrianus, an Arian general.

Died 356. The R.M. mentions an anonymous group of martyrs in Alexandria, Egypt, who were order to be put to death by an Arian officer while they were attending a Mass offered by Saint Athanasius. Athanasius himself managed to escape (Benedictines).
390 St. Palladius hermit of Syria near Antioch gift of wonderworking
He resided in a desert retreat near Antioch and was a friend of St. Simeon.
Saint Palladius the Desert Dweller led an ascetical life in a certain mountain cave near Syrian Antioch. Because of his struggles, he received from the Lord a gift of wonderworking. Once, a merchant was found murdered by robbers near his cave. People accused St Palladius of the murder, but through the prayer of the saint, the dead man rose up and named his murderers. The saint died at the end of the fourth century, leaving behind several edifying works.
444 ST CYRIL, ARCHBISHOP OF ALEXANDRIA, DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH
ST CYRIL has been called the Doctor of the Incarnation, as St Augustine was styled the Doctor of Divine Grace: in the great intercession of the Syrian and Maronite Mass he is commemorated as "a tower of truth and interpreter of the Word of God made flesh". Throughout his life he made it a rule never to advance any doctrine which he had not learnt from the ancient fathers, but his books against Julian the Apostate show that he had also read the profane writers. He often said himself that he neglected human eloquence, and it is certainly to be regretted that he did not cultivate a clearer style and write purer Greek.

 Upon the death of his uncle Theophilus in 412, he was raised to the see of Alexandria. He began to exert his authority by causing the churches of the Novatians to be closed and their sacred vessels to be seized-an action condemned by the church historian Socrates, but we do not know his reasons and the grounds upon which he acted.
He next drove out the Jews, who were numerous and who had enjoyed privileges in the city since the time of Alexander the Great. Their generally seditious attitude and several acts of violence committed by them decided him to take this step, which incensed Orestes the governor, although it was approved by the Emperor Theodosius.
This unhappy disagreement with Orestes led to grievous results. Hypatia, a pagan woman of noble character, was the most influential teacher of philosophy at that time in Alexandria, and her reputation was so great that disciples flocked to her from all parts. Among these was the great Bishop Synesius, who submitted his works to her criticism. She was much respected by the governor, who used to consult her even on matters of civil administration. Nowhere was the populace more unruly or more prone to lawless acts of violence than in Alexandria. Acting upon a suspicion that Hypatia had incensed the governor against their bishop, the mob in 417 attacked her in the streets, pulled her out of her chariot, and tore her body in pieces-to the great grief and scandal of all good men, and especially, it may be believed, of St Cyril. Only one other fact is known to us concerning this earlier period of his episcopate. He had imbibed certain prejudices against St John Chrysostom, having been with Theophilus at the Synod of The Oak; Cyril had something of his uncle's obstinacy, and it was no easy matter to induce him to insert Chrysostom's name in the diptychs of the Alexandrian church.

In the year 428 Nestorius, a priest-monk of Antioch, was made archbishop of Constantinople; and he there taught with some of his clergy that there were two distinct persons in Christ, that of God and that of man, joined only by a moral union whereby, according to them, the Godhead dwelt in the manhood merely as its temple. Consequently he denied the Incarnation, that God was made man. He also said that the Blessed Virgin ought not to be styled the mother of God, but only of the man Christ, whose humanity was but the temple of the divinity and not a nature hypostatically assumed by the divine Person. His homilies gave great offence, and protests arose from all sides against the errors they contained. St Cyril sent him a mild expostulation, but was answered with haughtiness and contempt. Both parties appealed to Pope St Celestine I who, after examining the doctrine in a council at Rome, condemned it and pronounced a sentence of excommunication and deposition against Nestorius unless, within ten days of receiving notice of the sentence, he publicly retracted his errors. St Cyril, who was appointed to see the sentence carried out, sent Nestorius, with his third and last summons, twelve propositions with anathemas to be signed by him as a proof of his orthodoxy. Nestorius, however, showed himself more obstinate than ever. [It is debatable whether Nestorius in fact held all the opinions attributed to him; in any case he was hardly the originator of the heresy that bears his name.]
This occasioned the summoning of the third general council which was held at Ephesus in 431, attended by two hundred bishops with St Cyril at their head as senior bishop and Pope Celestine's representative. Nestorius was present in the town, but refused to appear; so after his sermons had been read and other evidence received against him, his doctrines were condemned, and a sentence of excommunication and deposition was pronounced. Six days later there arrived at Ephesus Archbishop John of Antioch, with forty-one bishops who had not been able to reach Ephesus in time. They were in favour of Nestorius, although they did not share his errors, of which indeed they deemed him innocent. Instead of associating themselves with the council, they assembled by themselves and presumed to depose St Cyril, accusing him in turn of heresy. Both sides appealed to the emperor, by whose order St Cyril and Nestorius were both arrested and kept in confinement. When three legates arrived from Pope Celestine, the matter took another turn. After a careful consideration of what had been done, the legates confirmed the condemnation of Nestorius, approved Cyril's conduct, and declared the sentence pronounced against him null and void. Thus he was vindicated with honour and, though the bishops of the Antiochene province continued their schism for a while, they made peace with St Cyril in 433, when they condemned Nestorius and gave a clear and orthodox declaration of their own faith. Nestorius retired to his old monastery at Antioch, but later was exiled to the Egyptian desert.
St Cyril, who had thus triumphed over heresy by his intrepidity and courage, spent the rest of his life in maintaining the faith of the Church and in the labours of his see, until his death in 444. The Alexandrians gave him the title of Teacher of the World, whilst Pope Celestine described him as "the generous defender of the Catholic faith" and "an apostolic man". He was a man of strong and impulsive character, brave but sometimes over-vehement, indeed violent. Abbot Chapman has suggested that more patience and diplomacy on his part might have prevented the rise of the Nestorian Church which was for so long a power in the East. But we have to thank him for the firm and uncompromising stand he took with regard to the dogma of the Incarnation-an attitude which led to the clear statements of the great council over which he presided. Although since his day Nestorianism and Pelagianism have, from time to time and under different names, tried to rear their heads in various quarters of the world, they have never again been a real menace to the Catholic Church as a whole. We ought indeed to be grateful that we, in our generation, are left in no doubt as to what we should believe with regard to that holy mystery upon which we base our faith as Christians. He was declared a doctor of the Universal Church in 1882, and at the fifteenth centenary of his death in 1944 Pope Pius XII issued an encyclical letter, "Orientalis ecclesiae", on "this light of Christian wisdom and valiant hero of the apostolate ".
The great devotion of this saint to the Blessed Sacrament is manifest from the frequency with which he emphasizes the effects it produces upon those who receive it worthily. Indeed, he says that by holy communion we are made concorporeal with Christ. And it must surely be difficult for those who profess to hold the same faith as that defined in the first six general councils to shut their eyes to the vigour and conviction with which St Cyril before the year 431 affirmed his eucharistic doctrine. In a letter to Nestorius, which received the general and formal assent of the fathers at Ephesus, he had written:
Proclaiming the death according to the flesh of the only begotten Son of God, that is, Jesus Christ, and confessing His resurrection from the dead and ascent into Heaven, we celebrate the bloodless sacrifice in our churches; and thus approach the mystic blessings, and are sanctified by partaking of the holy flesh and the precious blood of Christ the Saviour of us all. And we receive it, not as common flesh (God forbid), nor as the flesh of a man sanctified and associated with the Word according to the unity of merit, or as having a divine indwelling, but as really the life-giving and very flesh of the Word Himself (Migne, PG., lxxvii, 113).
And he wrote to Calosyrius, Bishop of Arsinoe:
I hear that they say that the sacramental consecration does not avail for hallowing if a portion of it be kept to another day. In saying so they are crazy. For Christ is not altered, nor will His holy body be changed; but the power of the consecration and the life-giving grace still remain in it (Migne, PG., lxxvi, 1073).
Our knowledge of St Cyril is derived principally from his own writings and from the church historians Socrates, Sozomen and Theodoret. The view of his life and work presented by Butler is the traditional view, and we are not here directly concerned with the discussions which, owing mainly to the discovery of the work known as The Bazaar of Heracleides, have since been devoted to the character of Nestorius and his teaching. The literature connected with St Cyril is very copious. A sufficient account will be found in the two articles in DTC., "Cyrille d'Alexandrie" and "Ephèse, Concile de"-as well as in Bardenhewer's Patrology. See also Duchesne, Histoire ancienne de l’Église, vol. iii (Eng. trans.); Abbot Chapman in the Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. iv, pp. 592-595; and A. Fortescue, The Greek Fathers (1908).
530 St. Cannera Irish hermitess a friend of St. Senan
She is also called Cainder or Kinnera.
She lived as a recluse near Bantry, Ireland, and was buried on St. Senan's Island, Enniscarthy.

Cannera of Inis Cathaig V (AC) (also known as Cainder, Conaire, Kinnera)
Died c. 530. Little is known of Saint Cannera except that which is recorded in the story of Saint Senan, who ruled an abbey on the Shannon River, which ministered to the dying- -but only men. Cannera was an anchorite from Bantry in southern Ireland. When she knew she was dying, she travelled to Senan's abbey without rest and walked upon the water to cross the river because no one would take her to the place forbidden to women. Upon her arrival, the abbot was adamant that no woman could enter his monastic enclosure. Arguing that Christ died for women, too, she convinced the abbot to give her last rites on the island and to bury her at its furtherest edge. Against his argument that the waves would wash away her grave, she answered that she would leave that to God.

Cannera told the abbot of a vision she had in her Bantry cell of the island and its holiness. Her appearance signaled a change in the attitude of the monks toward women, whose contamination they feared. Cannera charges Senan with this unChristian prejudice.

She reminded him that "Christ is no worse than yourself." If He could find comfort in the presence of women, so should the monks. The monks believed that the holier a man, the more he distances himself from Eve. They saw their celibacy as a taboo against women, rather than a sacrifice of love to Christ. They also failed to recognize that Jesus broke the conventions of His time. Again, Cannera said, "Christ came to redeem women no less than to redeem men," and "women gave service and tended to Christ and His Apostles," so why should the monks so distance themselves?

Other double (men and women) monasteries already existed in Ireland for Saint Patrick (March 17) and his followers did not reject the fellowship and ministry of women.

Probably because Saint Cannera walked across the water, sailors honor their patron by saluting her resting place on Scattery Island (Inis Chathaigh). They believed that pebbles from her island protected the bearer from shipwreck. A 16th-century Gaelic poem about Cannera prays, "Bless my good ship, protecting power of grace..." (Benedictines, D'Arcy, Markus, O'Hanlon).
544 John of Reomay hermit monk confirmed many miracles Abbot (RM)
 In monastério Reomaénsi, in Gállia, deposítio sancti Joánnis Presbyteri, viri Deo devóti.       In the monastery of Rheims in France, the death of the holy priest John, a devout man of God.
(also known as John of Réomé)
544  ST JOHN OF REOMAY, ABBOT
ALTHOUGH we have a good early biography of Abbot John, the story it tells is a very simple one. He was a native of the diocese of Langres, and took the monastic habit at Lérins. Later on he was recalled into his own country by the bishop to found the abbey from which he received his surname, but which was afterwards called Moutier-Saint-Jean. He governed it for many years with a great reputation of sanctity, and was rendered famous by miracles. It is recorded of him that he refused to converse with his own mother when she came to the abbey to visit him. He showed himself to her, however, at a distance, sent her a message to encourage her to aim at a high standard of virtue, and warned her that she would not behold him again until they met in Heaven. He went to God about the year 544, when more than a hundred years old, and was one of the pioneers of the monastic state in France.

The biography of St John of Reomay has been edited by B. Krusch in MGH., Scriptores Merov., vol. iii, pp. 502—517. As Krusch has shown in his article “Zwei Heiligenleben des Jonas von Sosa”, in the Mittheilungen of the Austrian Historical Society, vol. xiv, pp.385 seq., the texts previously edited have no value. The author of the vita was Jonas of Susa, and not a contemporary.

Born in Dijon (diocese of Langres), France, 425; died at Reomay c. 544. This pioneer of the monastic life in France, was first a hermit at Reomay. When disciples gathered round him, he escaped in secret and became a monk at Lérins.
Here he learned the traditions of Saint Macarius, and when summoned back to his native Langres by its bishop to found Moûtier-Saint-Jean in Reomay, he regulated his monastery according to them. He governed the abbey for many years with great sanctity, confirmed by many miracles. He was almost 120 years old at his death. Saint Gregory of Tours provides an account of this holy pioneer of French monasticism in his On the glory of confessors (chapter 87), as does Saint Columbanus's disciple Jonas (Attwater2, Benedictines, Coulson, Encyclopedia, Roeder, Husenbeth). In art, Saint John is portrayed as a Benedictine hermit-abbot near a well with a dragon on a chain (Roeder). He is venerated especially in Dijon, Lérins, and Réomé (Roeder).

539 St. John of Reomay  Pioneer of Western monasticism in France
He was born in Dijon, France, in 425, and became a hermit at Reomay. When too many disciples appeared at his hermitage, John went to Lerins. He returned to Reomay and introduced the rules of St. Macanus, founding an abbey that became Mount St. Jean. He was known for his holiness and miracles.
6th v. Saint Isaac Syrian Bishop of Ninevah 8th v. works on Syrian history by Iezudena bishop of Barsa the account of St Isaac found
lived during the sixth century. He and his brother entered the monastery of Mar Matthew near Ninevah and received the monastic tonsure. His learning, virtue, and ascetic manner of life attracted the notice of the brethren, and they proposed that he head the monastery. St Issac did not want this burden, preferring a life of silence, so he left the monastery to live alone in the desert.

His brother urged him more than once to return to the monastery, but he would not agree. However, when the fame of St Isaac's holy life had spread, he was made Bishop of Ninevah. Seeing the crude manners and disobedience of the inhabitants of the city, the saint felt that it was beyond his ability to guide them, and moreover, he yearned for solitude.

Once, two Christians came to him, asking him to settle a dispute. One man acknowledged that he owed money to the other, but asked for a short extension. The lender threatened to bring his debtor to court to force him to pay. St Isaac, citing the Gospel, asked him to be merciful and give the debtor more time to pay. The man said, "Leave your Gospel out of this!" St Isaac replied, "If you will not submit to Lord's commandments in the Gospel, then what remains for me to do here?" After only five months as bishop, St Isaac resigned his office and went into the mountains to live with the hermits. Later, he went to the monastery of Rabban Shabur, where he lived until his death, attaining a high degree of spiritual perfection.

From the early eighth century until the beginning of the eighteenth century, nothing was known about St Isaac of Syria in Europe except for his name and works. Only in 1719 was a biography of the saint published at Rome, compiled by an anonymous Arab author. In 1896, more information on St Isaac came to light. The learned French soteriologist Abbot Chabot published some eighth century works on Syrian history by Iezudena, bishop of Barsa, where the account of St Isaac the Syrian was found.
St. James the Hermit  hermit in Palestine miracle worker 6th century
 In Palæstína sancti Jacóbi Eremítæ, qui, post lapsum, diu, pæniténtiæ causa, in sepúlcro látuit, et clarus miráculis migrávit ad Dóminum.
       In Palestine, St. James, hermit, who hid himself a long time in a sepulchre in order to do penance for a fault he had committed, and, being celebrated for miracles, departed for heaven.
A hermit in Palestine who was the subject of numerous legends. He lived in an ancient tomb to atone for his sins and died a penitent and miracle worker. A later legend changes the "lapse from the faith" into one of homicide, committed under the most romantic circumstances (Benedictines).
St. Antilnus Benedictine abbot Brantome 8th century.  
France. Founded by Charlemagne in 769, the abbey was destroyed by Normans in 817.
804 Paulinus of Aquileia defending the filioque B (AC)

804 ST PAULINUS, PATRIARCH OF AQUILEA
ONE of the most illustrious and holy prelates of the eighth and ninth centuries was this Paulinus of Aquileia, who seems to have been born about the year 726 in a country farm not far from Friuli. His family had no other revenue than what they made by their farm, and he spent part of his youth tilling the soil. Yet he found leisure for studies, and in process of time became so famous as a grammarian and professor that Charlemagne wrote to him, addressing him as Master of Grammar and Very Venerable. This epithet seems to imply that he was then a priest. The same monarch, in recognition of his merit, bestowed on him an estate in his own country. It seems to have been about the year 776 that Paulinus was promoted, against his will, to the patriarchate of Aquileia, and from the zeal, piety and talents of St Paulinus this church derived its greatest lustre.* [*For this title. see herein a footnote under St Laurence (Giustiniani on September 5.]

Charlemagne required him to attend all the great councils which were held in his time, however remote the place of assembly, and he convened a synod himself at Friuli in 791 or 796 against the errors which were then being propagated against the mystery of the Incarnation.

The more serious of these false teachings took the form of what is known as the Adoptionist heresy. Felix, Bishop of Urgel in Catalonia, professed to prove that Christ, as man, is not the natural but only the adoptive Son of God. St Paulinus set to work to confute him in a work which he transmitted to Charlemagne. He was not less concerned in the conversion of the heathen than in the suppression of error, and was instrumental in preaching the gospel to those idolaters in Carinthia and Styria who as yet remained in their superstitions. At the same time the conquest of the Avars by Pepin opened a new field for the bishop’s zeal, and many of them received the faith through missionaries sent by St Paulinus and the bishops of Salzburg. Paulinus strongly opposed the baptism of barbarians before they had received proper instruction and the attempt—so common in those days—to force Christianity upon them by violence.

When the duke of Friuli was appointed governor over the Hunnish tribes which he had lately conquered, St Paulinus wrote for his use an excellent “Ex­hortation”, in which he urges him to aspire after Christian perfection, and lays down rules on the practice of penance, on the remedies against different vices, especially pride, on an earnest desire to please God in all our actions, on prayer and its essential dispositions, on holy communion, on shunning bad company, and on other matters. He closes the book with a most useful prayer, and in the beginning promises to pray for the salvation of the good duke. By his fervent supplications he never ceased to draw down the blessings of the divine mercy on the souls committed to his charge. Alcuin earnestly besought him, whenever he offered the spotless Victim at the altar, to implore the divine mercy on his behalf. St Paulinus closed a holy life by a happy death on January 11, 804.

The works of St Paulinus have been edited by J. F. Madrisi, and will be found in Migne, P1..., vol. xcix, cc. 17—130; see also the Acta Sanctorum for January 11 ; C. Giannoni, Paulinus II, Patriarch von Aquileia (1896) and DCB., vol. iv, pp. 246—248.
Born at Cividale (near Fruili), Italy, c. 726; died at Aquileia, Italy, 804; feast day formerly January 11. Although Saint Paulinus was born on a farm to parents of modest means, himself tilled the soil, and studied on his own in his leisure, he was well-educated and earn a reputation as a scholar. For this reason he was summoned to Charlemagne's court in 776 after the destruction of the Lombard Kingdom in 774 and became a favorite of the Carolingian ruler.
Here he became fast friends with Blessed Alcuin. In 784, Paulinus was elevated to patriarch of Aquileia, near his hometown in northern Italy. During his episcopacy Paulinus was active. He took part in several church councils in which he took the lead in defending the filioque, and competently wrote much against Adoptionism, a heresy which was then spreading throughout Spain. He also carried on missionary work among the Avars, but, in concert with Pepin of Italy and the Danubian bishops, he condemned the baptism of uninstructed or unwilling converts. In addition to theological tracts, Paulinus wrote poems, hymns, and a book of spiritual direction for use by Duke Henry of Friuli (Attwater, Attwater2, Benedictines, Coulson).

In 776 he was sent back to Italy and, against his will, was appointed Patriarch of Aquileia. He represented Charlemagne at various Church Councils, and sent missionaries to attempt the evangelization of the Avars. He also preached in the regions of Styria and Carinthia, was a talented poet, and was the author of a treatise on Christian perfection for the duke of Friuli. He died on January 11.
814 Blessed Charlemagne Emperor restored unity of liturgy defined doctrine encouraged education (AC)  
Born December 25, 742; died 814; cultus confirmed by Benedict XIV.
814 BD CHARLEMAGNE
THE life of Charlemagne (born in 742; king of the Franks, 768; first Holy Roman emperor, 800; died, 814) belongs to general history, and his is a somewhat surprising name to find in any book of saints. There does not appear to have been any noticeable cultus of him till 1166, when it began to develop under the rather sinister auspices of Frederick Barbarossa; and an antipope, Guy of Crema (“Paschal III”), appears to have equivalently sanctioned it.
It is interesting to note that St Joan of Arc associated “St Charlemagne” with the devotion she paid to St Louis of France, and that in 1475 the observance of a feast in his honour was made obligatory throughout that country. Prosper Lambertini, later Pope Benedict XIV, discusses the question at some length in his great work on beatification and canonization, and he concludes that the title Blessed may not improperly be allowed to so great a defender of the Church and the papacy. To-day, however, the cultus of Charlemagne is con­fined to the keeping of a feast in his honour in Aachen and two Swiss abbeys.

The main source of our more personal knowledge of Charlemagne is the biography written by his contemporary and friend Einhard, the best edition being that of G. Waitz in MGH., Scriptores, vol. ii, and separately. See also the Acta Sanctorum for January 28, and especially the long discussion of various controverted matters in DAC., vol. iii, with full bibliographical references. Cf. also the remarks of H. Amann on Charlemagne’s character in Fliche and Martin, Histoire de l’Eglise, vol. vi, p. 200, and R. Folz, Etudes say le culte liturgique de Charlemagne . . . (1951).

Charlemagne was the son of Pepin the Short, king of the Franks, on Christmas Day. Popular devotion to Charlemagne took root chiefly at the time of the great quarrel among the pope, Frederick Barbarossa, and the antipope Paschal III. Charlemagne's name is a somewhat extraordinary one to find among the beati. In France devotion to Charlemagne was made compulsory by the state in 1475 (though his memorial is no longer celebrated there liturgically), and his feast is still observed in several German dioceses. Saint Joan of Arc associated him with Saint Louis in her prayers.

He was anointed with his father and his brother Carloman by Pope Stephen II in 754. When Pepin died in 768, Charlemagne and Carloman divided the kingdom. With the death of Carloman in 771, he became the sole ruler.

For the next 28 years, he expanded his empire. At the request of Hadrian I, he subdued Lombardy, forcing King Desiderius to retire to a monastery. He assumed the Lombardy crown and was rewarded by the pope with the title "patricius."

From 772 to 785, he campaigned against the Saxons. He conquered Bavaria, the Avar kingdom, and Pannonia (Hungary). At home, Charlemagne organized and reformed the government, standardizing the laws, building a stable administration, and employing missi dominici, itinerant royal legates.

He furthered ecclesiastical reforms and became a patron of letters, which resulted in his reign being labelled "the Carolingian Renaissance." He commissioned Alcuin to write against the Adoptionist heretics led by Felix of Urgel. He spurred learning by acting as a patron to the scholars who formed the Palace School.

It was primarily due to Charlemagne's efforts--not the pope's--that the hierarchy, discipline, and unity of liturgy were restored; that doctrine was defined; and that education was encouraged. It is these achievements rather than his conquests that earned him fame. The high point of his reign was his coronation as the first Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day in 800.

Charlemagne's cultus developed about 1166 under the influence of Frederick Barbarossa and the antipope Paschal III. Nevertheless, Benedict XIV, before ascending the Chair of Peter, decided that the former emperor was entitled to be called "blessed" because he provided the Church with such great protection (Attwater2, Benedictines, Coulson, White).

In art, Charlemagne is generally portrayed as emperor, wearing the imperial crown with an orb, sword, eagle, and lilies on his shield. At times, he may be shown (1) with a dog at his feet; (2) with four philosophers around him; (3) SS. Peter and Paul appearing to him; or (4) near the Church of Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle).

Patron of learning (Gill), brokers, teachers, tin-founders, and the University of Paris (Roeder).
He is venerated at Aachen, Germany (Roeder).
830 St. Glastian Bishop patron of Kinglassie Fife & Scotland
He served as mediator between the Scots and Picts.
Glastian of Kinglassie B (AC) (also known as Glastian of MacGlastian)
Born in County Fife, Scotland; died at Kinglassie (Kinglace), Scotland, in 830. As bishop of Fife, Saint Glastian mediated in the bloody civil war between the Picts and the Scots. When the Picts were subjugated, Glastian did much to alleviate their lot.
He is the patron saint of Kinglassie in Fife, and venerated in Kyntire (Benedictines, Husenbeth).
880 Odo of Beauvais Benedictine monk helped reform Church N. France  OSB B (AC)
Born near Beauvais, France, in 801; died 880; cultus approved by Pope Pius IX.

Saint Odo chose the military as a profession in his youth but abandoned this calling to become a Benedictine monk at Corbie. He taught Charles Martel's son while he was a monk there and in 851 was elected abbot, succeeding Saint Paschasius Radbertus. He was consecrated bishop of his native city in 861 and in the two decades of his bishopric helped reform the Church in northern France and mediated the differences between Pope Nicholas I and Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims over Hincmar's deposition of Rothadius of Soissons in 862 and Rothadius's restoration by the pope in 865 (Benedictines, Delaney).

In 851, Odo was elected abbot, and in 861 became bishop of Beauvais. His reforms were much to the benefit of the Church in northern France, and he assisted in bringing about the reconciliation between Pope Nicholas I and the powerful Archbishop Hincmar of Reims after they had a dispute over Hincrnar’s deposition of Bishop Rothadius of Soissons in 862.
Saint John the Sage 11th century 11v
A 19th-century German book, Die Heiligen Englands (edited by F. Liebermann), mentions Saint John as buried at Malmesbury with Maedub and Saint Aldhelm. This may be the John whose tomb William of Malmesbury described and whose epitaph he transcribed. Malmesbury thought this John might be John Scotus Erigena, the 9th-century Irish philosopher, and that he was killed by the pens of his students after settling in Malmesbury. This may be a confusion with another saint. He manner of martyrdom may have been borrowed from the acta of Saint Cassian of Imola. He is venerated at Malmesbury (Farmer).
Saint Ephraim Novy Torg founder of Sts Boris and Gleb monastery in the city
Native of Hungary Together with brothers, St Moses the Hungarian (July 26) and St George (in Hungarian "Sandor," pronounced "Shandor"), he quit his native land, possibly because he was Orthodox.

Having come to Russia, all three brothers entered into the service of the Rostov prince St Boris, son of St Vladimir (July 15). St Ephraim's brother George also perished in the year 1015 at the River Alta, with holy Prince Boris. The murderers cut off his head, and took the gold medallion which he had received from St Boris. Moses managed to save himself by flight, and became a monk at the Kiev Caves monastery.

St Ephraim, evidently in Rostov at this time, and arriving at the place of the murder, found the head of his brother and took it with him. Forsaking service at the princely court, St Ephraim withdrew to the River Tvertsa in order to lead a solitary monastic life.

After several other monks settled near him, he founded a monastery in honor of the holy Passion-Bearers Boris and Gleb in the year 1038. The brethren chose him to lead them. Near the monastery, not far from a merchant's road to Novgorod, a wanderer's home was built, where the poor and travelers stayed for free. St Ephraim died in old age. His body was buried at the monastery he founded. The head of his brother, St George was also placed in the grave, in accordance with his last wishes. The relics of St Ephraim were uncovered in the year 1572.
1159 Bl. Amadeus of Lausanne Cistercian Bishop prominent official court of Savoy & Burgundy
1159 ST AMADEUS, BISHOP OF LAUSANNE
THIS Amadeus was of the royal house of Franconia and born at the castle of Chatte in Dauphiné in 1110. When he was eight years old his father, Amadeus of Cler­mont, Lord of Hauterive, took the religious habit at the Cistercian abbey of Bonnevaux. Young Amadeus went to Bonnevaux to be educated there, but after a time he and his father migrated to Cluny. Amadeus senior returned to the more austere Cistercian house, while Amadeus junior went for a short time into the household of the Emperor Henry V. He then received the Cistercian habit at Clairvaux, where he lived for fourteen years. In 1139 the abbot of Hautecombe in Savoy retired and St Bernard appointed Amadeus in his place; the monastery had adopted the reform only four years before and its temporal affairs were in a bad way. St Amadeus encouraged the community to bear these extra hardships cheerfully, and by careful administration got the monastery out of its difficulties. In 1144 he accepted, by order of
Pope Lucius II, the see of Lausanne, where he was at once involved in struggles with the nobles of the diocese and a vain effort to induce the Emperor Conrad to go to the help of the pope against Pierleone. When Amadeus III, Duke of Savoy, went on the Second Crusade, St Amadeus was appointed as a sort of co-regent with his son Humbert; and four years before his death he was made chancellor of Burgundy by Frederick Barbarossa. Nicholas, the secretary of St Bernard, speaks highly of the virtues of this active bishop, and his age-long cultus was approved in 1910. A number of sermons of St Amadeus are extant.
There seems to be no early life of Amadeus, but an account of him has been compiled from various sources in such works as the Gallia Christiana, vol. xv, pp. 346—348, and Manrique, Annales Cistercienses, under the year 1158. A more modern survey of his career will be found in the Cistercienser-Chronik, vol. xi (1891), pp. 50 seq. and vol. xxiii (1911), pp. 297 seq. and see A. Dimier, Amédée de Lausanne (1949) in the series “Figures monastiques”.
Amadeus was a member of the royal family of Franconia, the son of Blessed Amadeus of Clermont (monk), born in the castle of Chatte, Dauphine, France.
He was educated at Bonnevaux and then at Cluny, where his father had become a monk. While serving in the household of King Henry V, Amadeus entered Clairvaux in 1124, becoming a Cistercian.
He became abbot of Ilautecombe Savoy in 1139, and the bishop of Lausanne in 1144.
In his last years, Amadeus served as co-regent for Duke Humbert of Savoy and as the chancellor of Burgundy, appointed to the post by Frederick Barbarossa (1123; died 10 June, 1190).

Amadeus of Lausanne, OSB Cist., Bishop (AC)
Born at Chattes, Dauphiné, France; died 1159; cultus approved by Saint Pius X in 1910. Amadeus of Lausanne is the son of Blessed Amadeus of Clermont, lord of Hauterive. He was educated at Bonnevaux and Cluny, then served at the court of Emperor Henry V. In 1125, Amadeus became a monk at Clairvaux under Saint Bernard, who sent Amadeus in 1139 to govern the abbey of Hautecombe in Savoy. Under obedience to the pope, he accepted the bishopric of Lausanne in 1144. During the last four years of his life, he was also co- regent of Savoy and chancellor of Burgundy (Attwater2, Benedictines, Coulson). Blessed Amadeus is pictured as a Cistercian bishop receiving a pair of gloves from the Blessed Virgin (Roeder). He is venerated in Burgundy and Savoy, especially Cluny, Clairvaux, and Hautecombe (Roeder).
1169 St. Richard of Vaucelles English Cistercian abbot.
He was appointed the head of Vaucelles Abbey, France, by St. Bernard.
1208 Julian of Cuenca bishop dedication to the poor invoked for rain B (RM)
 Conchæ, in Hispánia, natális sancti Juliáni Epíscopi, qui, érogans in páuperes bona Ecclésiæ, ópera mánuum sibi more Apostólico victum quærens, clarus miráculis quiévit in pace.
       At Cuenca in Spain, the birthday of St. Julian, bishop, who, after bestowing the goods of the Church on the poor, like the apostles, supported himself by the work of his hands, and went to his God famous for his miracles.
Born in Burgos, Spain, in 1127. Saint Julian is known primarily for his dedication to the poor. When Cuenca, New Castile (central Spain), was recaptured by King Alphonsus IX, Julian was appointed bishop of the city. In his longing to help the poor, he is said to have spent all his spare time earning money for them by the work of his hands (Benedictines, Encyclopedia). Saint Julian is pictured as a bishop making baskets, his crozier and miter laid by (Roeder). He is invoked for rain and is patron of the diocese of Cuenca, New Castile (Roeder).

Bishop of Cuenca, Spain, when that city was taken from the Moors. He supported himself and the poor of his diocese with his own labors. Julian is the patron of Cuenca.
1224 Blessed Bartholomew Aiutamicristo Camaldolese lay-brother, OSB Cam., Hermit (AC)
Born in Pisa; died 1224; cultus approved in 1857. Bartholomew received the surname 'Aiutamicristo' ("Christ help me") because that ejaculation was ever on his lips. Bartholomew was a Camaldolese lay-brother at the monastery of San Frediano in Pisa (Benedictines).
1237 Bl. Roger of Todi Franciscan friend of St. Francis of Assisi Ruggiero da Todi was one of the early Franciscans, receiving his habit from Francis himself. He was appointed by the saint to the post of spiritual director of the convent of the Poor Clares which had been established at Rieti, Italy, by Blessed Philippa Mareri. He died soon after Philippa, at Todi.
  1258 St Peter Nolasco, Founder ransoms Christian prisoners 400 during 1 trip (RM)
 Sancti Petri Nolásci Confessóris, qui Ordinis beátæ Maríæ de Mercéde redemptiónis captivórum éxstitit Fundátor, et octávo Kaléndas Januárii obdormívit in Dómino.
       St. Peter Nolasco, confessor, who founded the Order of Our Lady of Ransom for the redemption of captives, and who fell asleep in the Lord on the 25th of December
Born at Mas-des-Saintes Puelles (Languedoc), France, (or Barcelona, Spain?) c. 1189; died in Barcelona, Spain, December 25, 1258; canonized in 1628; feast extended to the universal Church in 1664; feast day formerly on January 31.

1258 ST PETER NOLASCO, FOUNDER OF THE ORDER OF OUR LADY OF RANSOM
PETER, of the noble family of Nolasco in Languedoc, was born about the year 1189. At the age of fifteen he lost his father, who left him heir to a great estate; and he remained at home under the tutelage of a mother who encouraged all his good aspirations.

Being solicited to marry, he set himself first to ponder seriously the vanity of earthly things; and rising one night full of those thoughts, he prostrated himself in prayer which continued till morning, consecrating himself to God in the state of celibacy and dedicating his whole patrimony to His service. Some authors affirm that Peter took part in the campaign of Simon de Montfort against the Albigenses. The count vanquished them, and in the battle of Muret defeated and killed Peter, King of Aragon, and took his son James prisoner, a child of six years old; The conqueror is further said to have given him Peter Nolasco, then twenty-five years old, for a tutor, and to have sent them both together into Spain. But it is now generally admitted that there is no adequate evidence for connecting St Peter with the Albigensian campaign or with the education of the future King James.
The Moors at that time were masters of a great part of Spain, and numbers of Christians who had been made slaves groaned under their tyranny both there and in Africa. Compassion for the poor had always been the distinguishing virtue of Peter. The pitiful spectacle of these unfortunates, and the consideration of the dangers to which their faith and virtue stood exposed under their Mohammedan masters, touched his heart, and he soon spent his estate in redeeming as many as he could. Whenever he saw any slaves, he used to say, “Behold eternal treasures which never fail”. By his fervent appeals he moved others to contribute large alms towards this charity, and at last formed the project of instituting a religious order to maintain a constant supply of men and means whereby to carry on so charitable an undertaking. This design encountered many difficulties; but it is said that our Lady appeared to St Peter, to the king of Aragon and to St Raymund of Peñafort in distinct visions on the same night, and encouraged them to carry the scheme into effect under the assurance of her patronage and protection.
St Raymund was the spiritual director both of St Peter and of King James, and a zealous promoter of this work. The king declared himself the protector of the order, and assigned them quarters in his own palace by way of a commencement. On August 10, 1223 the king and St Raymund conducted St Peter to the church, and presented him to Berengarius, Bishop of Barcelona, who received his three religious vows, to which the saint added a fourth, to devote his whole substance and his very liberty, if necessary, to the work of ransoming slaves. The like vow was exacted of all his followers. St Raymund preached on the occasion, and declared that it had pleased Almighty God to reveal His will to King James, to the confidant of St Peter and that at the time of the foundation he was not yet a Peter Nolasco and to himself, enjoining the institution of an order for the ransom of the faithful detained in bondage among the infidels.*[*Members of the Order of Our Lady of Ransom are commonly called Mercedarians Spanish merced =ransom. They now engage in general apostolic and charitable work, though the vow to ransom captives is still taken at profession.]

 This was received by the people with acclamation. St Peter received the new habit from St Raymund, who established him first master general of the order, and drew up for it rules and constitutions. Two other gentlemen were professed at the same time with St Peter. When Raymund went to Rome, he obtained from Pope Gregory IX in 1235 the confirmation of the foundation and its rule.

King James having conquered the kingdom of Valencia, founded in it several houses of the order, one of which was in the city of Valencia itself. The town had been taken by the aid of Peter Nolasco’s prayers, when the soldiers had des­paired of success, and it was in fact to the prayers of the saint that the king attributed the great victories which he obtained over the infidels, and the entire conquest of Valencia and Murcia. St Peter, touching the main work of the order, ordained that two members should always be sent together amongst the infidels, to treat about the ransom of captives, and they are hence called ransomers. One of the two employed at the outset in this way was the saint himself, and Valencia was the first place which was blessed with his labours; the second was Granada. He not only comforted and ransomed a great number, but by his charity and example was the instrument of inducing many Mohammedans to embrace the faith of Christ. He made several other journeys to those regions of the coast of Spain which were held by the Moors, besides a voyage to Algiers, where he underwent imprisonment. But the most terrifying dangers could never make him desist from his endeavours for the conversion of the infidels, burning as he was with a desire of martyrdom.

St Peter resigned the offices of ransomer and master general some years before his death, which took place on Christmas day 1256. In his last moments he exhorted his religious to perseverance, and concluded with those words of the psalmist: “The Lord hath sent redemption to His people He hath commanded His covenant for ever”. He then recommended his soul to God, appealing to the charity which brought Jesus Christ from Heaven to redeem us from the captivity of the Devil, and so died, being in the sixty-seventh year of his age. His relics were honoured by many miracles, and he was canonized in 1628.

Alban Butler’s account of St Peter Nolasco, summarized above without substantial change, represents the version of his story which is traditional in the Mercedarian Order. But it must be confessed that hardly any detail in this narrative has escaped trenchant criticism, and that, to say the least, the facts connected with the foundation of the order are wrapped in hopeless uncertainty. Great disagreement exists, even in Mercedarian sources, regarding the date of the ceremonial foundation in the presence of Bishop Berengarius. By some this event is assigned to 1218 by others, as above, to 1223 by others again to 1228; and by Father Vacas Galindo, O.P., in his San Raimundo de Peñafort (1919),to 1234. As pointed out above under January 23, a rather heated controversy arose between the Dominicans and the Mercedarians, the former attributing a predominant influence in the creation of this work for the redemption of captives to the great Dominican, St Raymund of Peñafort; the latter contending that he was merely Dominican but a canon of Barcelona.

One extremely suspicious feature in the Mercedarian case cannot easily be explained away. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, when the cause of the canonization of St Peter Nolasco was being pressed at Rome, there was discovered most opportunely behind a brick wall in the Mercedarian house at Barcelona an iron casket full of documents, hitherto quite unknown, which purported to establish upon irrefragable evidence just the points on which the promoters of the cause were most anxious to insist. The most famous of these, known as the documento de los cellos (the deed with the seals) was a notarial act drafted in 1260—so at least the q document itself affirmed—with the express object of being submitted to the Holy See in vindication of St Peter’s claims to sanctity. Now this deed, which contains an account of the apparition of our Lady to Peter himself, to King James and to Señor Raimondo de Peñafort (and which states that a swarm of bees built a honeycomb in Peter’s hand when he was an infant in the cradle), after being cited for nearly three centuries as the most authentic memorial of the saint’s history is now admitted to he a forgery. It is Father Gazulla himself, the Mercedarian champion (in a paper read before the Literary Academy of Barcelona, Al Margen de una Refutacion, 1921) who has shown that Pedro Bages, the notary whose name appears as drafting the document of the seals in 1260, had died before February 4, 1259. When this primary instrument is thus proved to be spurious, what possible value can attach to the rest of the contents of the suspicious iron casket? It would serve no good purpose to pursue the matter further.

See the book of Fr Vacas Galindo, or., referred to above Fr P. N. Perez Mere., San Pedro Nolasco (1915); M. Even, Une page de l’histoire de la charité (1918); Analecta Bol­landiana, vol. xxxix (1921), pp. 209 seq., and vol. xl (1922), pp. 442 seq. and two articles by Fr Kneller, s.j., in Stimmen aus Maria Laach, vol. ii (1896), at pp. 272 and 357. Fr F. D. Gazulla has produced several volumes on the Mercedarian side, notably a Refutacion of Fr Galindo’s book in 1920, and in 1934 La Orden de N.S. de Ia Merced. Estudios historico-criticos, 1218—1317; on this last cf. Analecta Bollandiana, vol. lv (1937), pp. 412-415.
Peter Nolasco's family was either mercantile or a distinguished one, possessing great estates, all of which Peter inherited at age 15 upon the death of his father. It is said that he consecrated himself to a life of celibacy and service to the poor when he was still quite young. At his father's death he went to Barcelona, Spain, and quickly exhausted his entire estate paying ransoms to the Moors of Spain for the release of Christian prisoners. (Tabor relates that he was one of the converts of Saint John of Matha.)
Vision
The Vision of Saint Peter of Nolasco by Francisco de Zurbarán
Museo del Prado, Madrid
courtesy of Web Gallery of Art     In response to a vision (which according to legend was experienced also by Saint Raymond of Peñafort and King James of Aragon), Peter decided to found a religious congregation dedicated to ransoming Christian slaves from the ruling Moors. The Order of Our Lady of Ransom (the Mercedarians) developed from the decision, with the help of Saint Raymond, Peter's spiritual director, who is considered the cofounder of the order. With the approval of Bishop Berengarius of Barcelona, Peter more actively encouraged others to contribute large sums to this same charity. Confirmation of its foundation and rule was given by Pope Gregory IX in 1235.

The exact year of the founding of the order is unknown (sometime between 1218 and 1234) and there is very little available on the life of this founder because there are so many spurious documents on his life.

In addition to the three traditional religious vows, the Mercedarians took a fourth--to give themselves if necessary in exchange for a slave. Otherwise, the rule followed that of the Augustinians. Peter travelled to Moorish-dominated Spain several times and to Algeria, where he was imprisoned for a while. It is claimed that he redeemed 400 Christians during one trip to Valencia and Granada. He resigned his position as master general in 1249-- several years before his own death (Attwater, Benedictines, Delaney, Encyclopedia, Farmer, Tabor).
In art, Saint Peter is an old man dressed in the white Mercedarian habit with the arms of Aragon on the breast (Roeder, Tabor) , holding a bell on which is the image of the Blessed Virgin. Sometimes he may be shown (1) with the king watching the large bell being dug up with the image of the Virgin; (2) as the Virgin gives him as scapular; (3) holding a chain or surrounded by captives; (4) wearing a large pilgrim's hat, in a boat with boatmen; (5) witnessing a vision of heaven shown to him by an angel; (6) having a vision of Saint Peter, crucified upside-down; (7) as two angels carry him to the altar; or (8) with a banner bearing a red cross (Roeder).
     Vision of St. Peter
The Apparition of Apostle St. Peter to St. Peter of Nolasco by Francisco de Zurbarán
Museo del Prado, Madrid Courtesy of Web Gallery of Art

He is especially venerated in Barcelona (Roeder). A series of paintings on Saint Peter by Zurbarán can be found in the Prado Museum of Madrid (Farmer).

Details of his life are uncertain, but he was probably a native of Languedoc, France. After taking part in the crusade against the heretic Albigensians of southern France, he became a tutor of King James I of Aragon and then settled at Barcelona. There he became friends with St. Raymond of Penafort, and in 1218, with the support of James I, they laid the foundation for the Mercedarians, devoted to the ransoming of Christian captives. Twice Peter went to Africa to serve as a captive, and it was reported that during one journey to Granada and Valencia he won the release from Moorish jails of some four hundred captive Christians. Retiring in 1249, he was followed as head of the order by William of Bas. He was canonized by Pope Urban VIII in 1628. His feast day is now confined to local calendars.
1304 Blessed James the Almsgiver priest martyred by a bishop M (AC)
1304 BD JAMES THE ALMSGIVER
THERE is, or at any rate once was, a curious contest between the Friars Minor and the Servites regarding the religious status of the servant of God who is known as James the Almsgiver. The Servites keep his feast every year on this day in virtue of a rescript of Pope Pius IX, and he is described in their martyrology as a con­fessor of the Third Order of the Servants of Blessed Mary the Virgin, “whose memory remaineth for a blessing among his fellow-citizens”. On the other hand, the Third Order of the Franciscans also claims him as a recruit, although his name does not occur in the general martyrology of the Friars Minor. Mazzara in his Leggendario Francescano (1676) indignantly rejects the claim of the Servites to number Bd James among the adherents of their own religious family.

The essential features of the story as told by either party are the same. James was the son of well-to-do parents at the small town of Città delle Pieve, not far from Chiusi in Lombardy, and studied for the law. Hearing a sermon on the words, “He that doth not renounce all that he possesseth cannot be My disciple.  He determined to become a priest, and thereafter led a most ascetic life. Not far from Città delle Pieve he discovered a hospital with a chapel which had been allowed to fall into ruin. He restored the buildings, furnished it as well as he could, and then devoted himself to receiving and tending all the sick and afflicted for whom he could find room. He also, we are told, used his legal knowledge in gratuitously helping and advising those who were oppressed, and in these ways became much beloved by the poor throughout the whole country.

It happened, however, that on inquiring into the past history of his hospice, James discovered that its revenues had been scandalously appropriated for their own emolument by former occupants of the see of Chiusi. He respectfully repre­sented the matter to the actual bishop, laying the documents before him, but could obtain no redress. Then he felt it his duty to take proceedings in both the ecclesiastical and civil courts, and the case in the end was given in his favour. The bishop dissembled his resentment, and invited James to dine with him, having previously hired a band of ruffians to waylay and assassinate him on his return. The conscientious student of Italian (and other) history has often regretfully to confess that the social and ecclesiastical life of the ages of faith “was not always so ideal as certain apologists are inclined to represent it. The plot was carried out successfully, and for a time no trace of the murdered man was discovered.” but some shepherds passing through the forest were astonished to come upon a pear-tree and other neighbouring shrubs in full blossom, though it was still winter. Whilst they stood wondering and somewhat alarmed at the portent, they heard, we are told, a voice which said to them, “Have no fear; I am James, the priest, who have been murdered for defending the rights of the Church and of the poor”.

It would certainly be rash to guarantee the truth of this and other supernatural incidents which are said to have attended the discovery of the body and its inter­ment in the chapel of the hospice. But we are told that 174 years later the remains were found still incorrupt when a second translation took place. The date given for the murder—Mazzara calls it the martyrdom—of Bd James is January 15, 1304.

See Mazzara, Leggendario Francescano (1676), vol. i, pp. 95—98; and Spoerr, Lebensbilder aus dem, Servitenorden (1892), p. 605.
Born near Chiusi, Lombardy, Italy.
James studied law but became a priest upon attaining his majority. He bought and restored a ruined hospital, where he tended the sick and gave free legal advice. Having discovered that the former revenues of this hospital had been unjustly appropriated, he applied to the bishop of Chiusi for restitution, but was refused. James then proceeded to file suit against the diocese and won his case both in civil and ecclesiastical courts. The bishop was not very happy; he retaliated by hiring assassins who murdered James (Attwater2, Benedictines).

1350 BD ANTONY OF AMANDOLA commended for his patience and for his charity towards the poor, and a great number of miracles are reported to have been wrought at his intercession

Bd ANTONY seems to have been born not far from Ascoli Piceno, about the year 1300. Rejoined the Augustinians in 1306, the year that St Nicholas of Tolentino went to his reward, and he is said to have tried to copy the example of that great luminary of the order during the whole of his religious life. He is especially commended for his patience and for his charity towards the poor, and a great number of miracles are reported to have been wrought at his intercession. He died in 1350, and is said to have been ninety years old. His body lies at Amandola, and his feast is kept not only by the Augustinian friars but at Ancona and throughout the neighbouring district.

See J. F. Stadler, Heiligen-Lexikon (1861).
1366 St Peter Thomas Carmelite diplomat bishop of Patti and Lipari crusader OC BM (AC)
Born in Breil, Gascony, France, c. 1305; died January 6, 1366; cultus approved in 1608; feast day was January 25.
1366 ST PETER THOMAS, TITULAR PATRIARCH OF CONSTANTINOPLE
THE career of St Peter Thomas presents us with a curious combination of a religious vocation and a life spent in diplomacy. Born in 1305, of humble parentage, at the hamlet of Salles in the south-west of France, he at an early age came into contact with the Carmelites, and his abilities led them gladly to admit him into their noviceship at Condom; in 1342 he was made procurator general of the order. This appointment led to his taking up his abode in Avignon, then the residence of the popes, and also indicated that in spite of high spiritual ideals he was known to be pre-eminently a man of affairs. His remarkable eloquence became known, and he was asked to deliver the funeral oration of Clement VI. It
may be said that from that time forth, although he always retained the simplicity of a friar, his life was entirely spent in difficult negotiations as the representative of the Holy See. To describe the political complications in which he was called upon to intervene would take much space. It must suffice to say that he was sent as papal legate to negotiate with Genoa, Milan and Venice; in 1354 he was consecrated bishop and represented the pope at Milan when the Emperor Charles IV was crowned king of Italy. Thence he proceeded to Serbia, and afterwards was charged with a mission to smooth the difficulties between Venice and Hungary; going on to Constantinople he was instructed to make another effort to reconcile the Byzantine church with the West.

What is most surprising in our days is that Innocent VI and Urban V seem to have placed Peter Thomas virtually in command of expeditions which were dis­tinctly military in character. He was sent to Constantinople in 1359 with a large contingent of troops and contributions in money, himself holding the title of “Universal Legate to the Eastern Church”; and when in 1365 an expeditionary force was sent to make an attack on infidel Alexandria, again the legate had virtual direction of the enterprise. The expedition ended disastrously. In the assault the legate was more than once wounded with arrows, and when he died a holy death at Cyprus three months later (January 6, 1366) it was stated that these wounds had caused, or at least accelerated, the end, and he was hailed as a martyr.

It is probable that among the reasons which led to the many diplomatic missions of St Peter Thomas we must reckon the economy thus effected for the papal exchequer at a time when it was very much depleted, for he dispensed with all unnecessary pomp and state. So far as he was himself concerned he travelled in the poorest way, and he was willing to face the great hardships which such expedi­tions then entailed even upon the most illustrious. We must also not forget that though his biographers write in a tone of rather indiscriminating panegyric, they are nevertheless agreed in proclaiming his own desire to evangelize the poor, his spirit of prayer, and the confidence which his holiness inspired in others. There are not many human touches to be found in our principal source, the biography of Mézières, but it is a tribute to the impression which the bishop made on his contemporaries that Philip de Mézières, who was himself a devoted Christian and a statesman of eminence, should speak of his friend in terms of such unstinted praise. A decree issued by the Holy See in 1608 authorized the celebration of St Peter’s feast among the Carmelites as that of a bishop and martyr, but he has never been formally canonized.
See the Acta Sanctorum for January 29; Fr Daniel, Vita S. Petri Thomae (1666); Parraud, Vie de St Pierre Thomas (1895); B. J. Smet, Life . . . by P. de Mézières (1954).
Saint Peter was a French Carmelite, who spent his life in diplomacy. In 1342, he was sent to Avignon a procurator of his order. There he entered the service of the pope and went on diplomatic missions to Italy, Serbia, Hungary, and the Near East. He was successively appointed the bishop of Patti and Lipari (1354), and Coron (Morea; 1359), archbishop of Candia (1363), and in 1364 became the Latin Patriarch of Constantinople.

On behalf of Pope Urban V and with the support of King Peter I of Cyprus, he led a crusade against the Turks. In an unsuccessful attack on Alexandria, Peter was wounded and died three months later on Cyprus. Throughout his active life, he remained true to the spirit of his contemplative profession (Benedictines).

In art, Saint Peter Thomas is portrayed as an elderly Carmelite wearing a missioner's cross and hat, carrying a staff, with a ray of light shining on the heart of the Virgin Mary on his breast. Sometimes he may be shown reading with a hat and staff near at hand (Roeder).
1431 Blessed Mary of Pisa Widow miraculous favors saw guardian angel from childhood OP Tertiary (AC) (also known as Catherine Mancini)
Born in Pisa, Italy, 1355; died 1431; cultus confirmed by Pius IX in 1855; feast day formerly on December 22.
1431 BD MARY OF PISA, Widow
THE history of Bd Mary Mancini is a standing illustration of the principle that holiness depends very little upon external circumstances. There is, in fact, no condition of life which the interior spirit may not sanctify. Here we have a servant of God who was twice married and many times a mother, who then lived for several years in the world as a widow, joined a relaxed religious house, reformed it, and finally founded a community of exceptionally strict observance, in which she died at an advanced age in the fragrance of sanctity.

The Mancini were a distinguished family in Pisa at a time when terrible things were occurring owing to the political factions prevalent in the Italian cities. We are told that Catherine (Mary was the name she afterwards took in religion) at the age of five and a half had an extraordinary experience. In an ecstasy or vision she witnessed the torture on the rack of Peter Gambacorta, who had been accused of conspiracy and was sentenced by his enemies to be hanged. The legend goes on to say that the child prayed so hard in her horror at what she witnessed that the rope broke with which Peter was being hanged, and that his judges then commuted the death penalty. After this our Lady appeared to her and bade her say the Lord’s Prayer and the Angelical Salutation for him seven times every day, because she would eventually be supported by his bounty. Catherine was married at the age of twelve, and had two children. Her first husband died when she was sixteen, and, yielding to family influence, she married again. This union lasted eight years, and she bore her husband five children, nursing him also most devotedly for a year before his death; her children seem to have all died young.

Great pressure was used to induce Catherine to marry a third time, but she was resolute in her refusal, and she gave herself up completely to works of piety and charity. She converted her house into a hospital, and we are told strange stories of her drinking the wine with which she washed men’s sores, on one occasion experiencing such intense sweetness and consolation in this conquest of her natural repugnance that she was convinced that the mysterious stranger whom she had been tending was no other than our Saviour Himself. During this period she was under the direction of the Dominicans and joined their third order. It was probably through them that she was brought into relation with St Catherine of Siena, and we still possess a letter of that great saint which was addressed to “Monna Catarina e Monna Orsola ed altre donne di Pisa”. She had ecstasies sometimes even in the streets, and on one occasion, when thus taken by surprise, was knocked down by a mule. Eventually she entered the relaxed Dominican convent of Santa Croce, mainly with the object of bringing it back to stricter observance. We are told that she effected a great reform, but Sister Mary, as she was now, aspired after a life of greater austerity. Accordingly, with Bd Clare Gambacorta, she left Santa Croce to found a new community in a convent built for them by Clare’s father, the same Peter Gambacorta for whom Mary had daily prayed. The new foundation was greatly blessed, and became a model, the fame of which spread throughout Italy. Here Bd Mary Mancini died on December 22, 1431. Her cultus was approved in 1855.

See M. C. de Ganay, Lee Bienheureuses Dominicaines (1913), pp. 237—250; and Procter, Dominican Saints, pp. 342-345.
Almost from the moment Catherine Mancini was born into that noble family she began enjoying the miraculous favors with which her life was filled. At the age of three, she was warned by some heavenly agency that the porch on which she had been placed by her nurse was unsafe. Her cries attracted the nurse's attention, and they had barely left the porch when it collapsed. She also was able to see her guardian angel from her childhood.

When she was 5, she beheld in an ecstasy the dungeon of a palace in Pisa in which Blessed Peter Gambacorta, one of the leading citizens, was being tortured. At Catherine's prayer, the rope broke and the man was released. Our Lady told the little girl to say prayers every day for this man, because he would one day be her benefactor.

Catherine would have much preferred the religious life to marriage, but she obeyed her parents and was married at the age of 12. Widowed at 16, she was compelled to marry again. Of her seven children, only one survived the death of her second husband, and Catherine learned through a vision that this child, too, was soon to be taken from her. Thus she found herself, at age 24, twice widowed and bereft of all seven of her children. Refusing a third marriage, she devoted herself to prayer and works of charity.

She soon worked out for herself a severe schedule of prayers and good works, fasting, and mortifications. She tended the sick and the poor, bringing them into her own home and regarding them as our Lord Himself. She gave her goods to the poor and labored for them with her own hands. Our Lord was pleased to show her that He approved of her works by appearing to her in the guise of a poor young man, sick, and in need of both food and medicine. She carefully dressed his wounds, and she was rewarded by the revelation that it was in reality her Redeemer whom she had served.

Saint Catherine of Siena visited Pisa at about this time, and the two saintly women were drawn together into a holy friendship. As they prayed together in the Dominican church one day, they were surrounded by a bright cloud, out of which flew a white dove. They conversed joyfully on spiritual matters, and were mutually strengthened by the meeting.  On the advice of Saint Catherine of Siena, Catherine Mancini retired to the enclosed Santa Croce convent of the Second Order. In religion, she was given the name Mary, by which she is usually known. She embraced the religious life in all its primitive austerity and reformed the convent. With Blessed Clare Gambacorta and a few other members of the convent, she founded a new and much more austere house, which had been built by Peter Gambacorta. Our Lady's prophecy of his benefaction was thus fulfilled.

Blessed Mary was favored with many visions and was in almost constant prayer. She became prioress of the house on the death of her friend Blessed Clare Gambacorta, and ruled it with justice and holiness until her death (Attwater2, Benedictines, Dorcy).
1450 Blessed Antony of Amandola Augustinian  OSA (AC)
Born in Amandola in the Marches of Ancona, Italy, c. 1355; died 1450; cultus confirmed in 1759. Antony joined the Augustinian hermits and followed in the footsteps of his friend Saint Nicholas of Tolentino. He is honored primarily in Ancona and by the Augustinians (Attwater2, Benedictines). (Attwater2 says he died in 1350.)
1518 Blessed Giles of Lorenzana Franciscan lay-brother OFM (AC)
Born in Lorenzana, Naples, Italy, c. 1443; cultus approved in 1880.
Blessed Giles began life as a farmhand in Naples, then became a Franciscan lay-brother and was allowed to live as a hermit in the garden of the friary. He is famous for his love of animals (Attwater2, Benedictines).
1554 The Sumorin Totma Icon of the Mother of God glorified by numerous healings at the Spaso-Sumorin monastery of the city of Totma
When the inhabitants of the city turned to Tsar Ivan the Terrible for permission to build a monastery in their city, the Rostov archbishop Nicander in the year 1554 bestowed upon St Theodosius the grant for building. The igumen of the Priluki monastery blessed St Theodosius with an icon of the Mother of God for success at building the new monastery.

The icon thereafter received the name Sumorin Totma (Sumorin is the family name of St Theodosius, and Totma is a city). After the death of the monk, the wonderworking icon was put in a case in front of the crypt of the saint at the Ascension church of the monastery.
St Theodosius has appeared to many of the sick, holding this icon in his hands.
1568 Saint Theodosius of Totma & founded Ephraimov wilderness monastery miracles incorrupt
born at Vologda about the year 1530.

In his youth he was raised in a spirit of Christian piety and the fear of God. At the insistence of his parents he married, but family life did not turn him away from God. He went fervently to church and prayed at home, particularly at night. After the death of his parents and his wife, he withdrew to the Priluki monastery not far from Vologda.

At the monastery Theodosius passed through the various obediences: he carried water, chopped fire-wood, milled flour and baked bread. He went to Totma on the igumen's orders to search for a salt-works for the monastery. He sought the permission of Tsar Ivan Vasilevich and the blessing of Archbishop Nicander to found a monastery at Totma.
Theodosius was appointed head of this newly-formed Totma monastery, which in a grant of 1554 was declared free of taxation.

The saint founded the Totma Ephraimov wilderness monastery and brought brethren into it. Eventually becoming the head of two monasteries, Theodosius continued to lead an ascetic life. He wore down his body by wearing chains and a hairshirt, and beneath his monastic cowl he wore an iron cap. Fond of spiritual reading, he acquired many books for the monastery. St Theodosius reposed in the year 1568 and was buried in the monastery he founded, and miracles occurred at his grave.

On September 2, 1796 during the reconstruction of the Ascension church, his relics were found incorrupt, and their glorification took place on January 28, 1798, on the day of his repose.
1683 Blessed Julian Maunoir priest recalled 30,000 to God in 2 years, S.J. (AC)
Born at Saint-Georges-de Reitembault (near Rennes), France, in 1606; died in Plévin, 1683; beatified in 1951. Julian was raised in the heart of a pious family. He entered the Society of Jesus and took vows in 1625. After his ordination in 1637, he begged to be sent on mission to Canada, but he was needed closer to home. Julian became an apostle to Brittany. He mastered the language, and preached his revivals so effectively that he is said to have recalled 30,000 to God in two years. Of course, not everyone agreed with his methods during his 40 years of "working and weeping, suffering and dying" for the Bretons, but the bishops encouraged his work and many secular priests joined in his mission. He died at an advanced age, worn out by his labors (Attwater2, Benedictines).
1683 BD JULIAN MAUNOIR
IT cannot be said that the Christianity of seventeenth-century France is unknown among English-speaking Catholics, but there can be no doubt that its domestic missionary work is the aspect of which we have heard least. Monsieur Olier in Paris, Monsieur Vincent all over the place—yes. But St John Eudes in Normandy, St Peter Fourier in Lorraine, the Oratorian Father John Lejeune in the Limousin, Languedoc and Provence, St John Francis Regis in the Velay and Vivarais, of these we know little enough, and of the missions in Brittany perhaps nothing at all. Yet these last, in Henri Bremond’s opinion, were the most successful of any, and certainly the most “picturesque”. They are associated in the first place with the names of Dom Michael Le Nobletz and of Father Julian Maunoir who, born in the diocese of Rennes in 1606, became a Jesuit in 1625, and was beatified in 1951.

No doubt the godlessness and barbarity of the Bretons, and the negligence of their clergy, at this time have been exaggerated, just as the woeful state of the Cornish before Wesley and the Welsh before Howel Harris and Griffith Jones and Daniel Rowlands has been exaggerated. But certainly they were a very super­stitious, rough and turbulent people, and at the same time as ready to respond to a religious call as their kinsmen across the Channel. The country of the readily used fish-knife and of “wreckers” (a phenomenon which certainly in England and probably in Brittany needs more critical examination than it commonly gets) was also the country of Armelle Nicolas and of those baroque calvaries and statues in Basse-Bretagne. Mystics prepared the way for missioners. And it was Father Bernard, s.j. and Dom Le Nobletz who directed the attention of Julian Maunoir to this field and urged him to learn the Breton language, which he mastered in a surprisingly short time.

The comparison of Catholic Brittany with Protestant Wales and Cornwall is not gratuitous or far-fetched. In writing of the Breton missions Bremond uses the English word “revival” and refers to Bunyan and the Pilgrim’s Progress; and what he says lends point to the title, “A John Wesley of Armorican Cornwall” given to his pamphlet on Maunoir by the Anglican historian of the Cornish saints, the late Canon Gilbert Doble. To read Séjourné’s biography of Father Maunoir and then to turn to John Wesley’s Journal is an instructive and thought-provoking exercise, or for that matter to compare the detailed journal that Maunoir kept too.

When Father Maunoir (“Tad Maner” in Breton) began his work in 1640 there were two missionaries on the job; when he died forty-three years later there were a thousand. Later on, Renan complained that his ancestors had been “jesuitified” and denationalized by a lot of foreign missioners. In fact, there was a handful of Jesuits, themselves mostly Bretori, and a large majority of Breton pastoral clergy, who co-operated with the fathers of the Society and submitted themselves to the very rigorous discipline proposed to them by Father Maunoir. And the technique of their work was due to a priest who was a Breton of the Bretons and who was not a Jesuit, Michael Le Nobletz, “the last of the bards”.

The work was primarily one of religious teaching “emotional preaching that swept the hearers off their feet certainly had a part, but it was secondary”. Among the “teachers’ aids” used were large brightly-coloured pictures (some of them can still be seen in the episcopal library at Quimper) they were illustrative of the Passion, the Lord’s Prayer, the seven deadly sins and so forth, but more often allegorical—the Knight Errant, the Six Cities of Refuge, the Three Trees—that is, appeal was made to the imagination and to the “poetical” quality in the human mind, and it was these pictures, together with the liveliness and humour of the expositions that accompanied them, that reminded Bremond of Bunyan. But painted pictures were not enough, there must also be tableaux vivants. Hence arose the very remarkable processions, in which, for example, the way of the cross was enacted, the “actors” illustrating Father Maunoir’s address at the stations, when he was often interrupted “by the sobbing and the shouts of the congregation”. This was much too much like “enthusiasm” for some people and there were complaints but the Breton bishops backed the missioners.

Another feature was the use of religious songs (cantiques), some of which no doubt were old ones brought back into use, but others Maunoir composed ad hoc. Apparently only one survives pretty well as he wrote it, and it loses badly in trans­lation from Breton into French; but it is clear that Maunoir versified with power and feeling, and hymn-singing had a very notable part in the Breton “revivals” again as in those of Wales and England in the following centuries. With this use of the mother tongue went an emphasis on devotion to the local saints of early days. St Corentin’s country, Cornouaille, the diocese of Quimper, was Maunoir’s field of predilection.

And just as the lives of the Celtic saints as they have come down to us are full of miracles—sometimes touching, sometimes fantastic or even positively disedifying, sometimes convincing—so Father Maunoir’s evangelization was marked by numerous signs and wonders. Already in 1697 his first biographer, Father Boschet, s.j., had studied a book of his miracles and “found them so astonishing that I suspected the writer of having touched things up to glorify the holy man”. But after making inquiries on the spot Father Boschet became somewhat less sceptical after all, he asks, is it surprising that Christianity should be revived in Brittany with the same helps with which it was introduced into the world?

On the natural side, Maunoir was not a man of outstanding intellectual force and was perhaps inclined to be credulous but he was a leader who was loved as well as obeyed, a first-rate organizer, and a man of insight not a little of the lasting success of his work was due to his missions being directed as much to the shepherds as to their flocks. The pointer used in expounding their pictures became the distinguishing badge of his missioners, and it was a good symbol—they pointed out the way.

At communion during his retreat before ordination, young Maunoir wrote, “I felt an extraordinary ardour for the salvation of souls and an overwhelming urge to work for that end in every possible way. The voice of our Lord said within me, ‘I laboured, I wept, I suffered, I died for them’.” Those words sum up Bd Julian’s own life and after his death at Plévin in Cornouaille, on January 28, 1683, pilgrims flocked in crowds to kiss the feet which had so often traversed Brittany, carrying the good news of salvation to its remotest corners.

See Fr Boschet, Le parfait missionaire (1697); X. A. Séjourné, Histoire de…Julien Maunoir (1895); H. Bremond, Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France…t. v, pp. 82—117; P. Pourrat, La spiritualité chrétienne, t. iv, p. 122; and G. H. Doble in Pax, no. 85 (1927), pp 318—329. See also H. de Gouvello, Le vénérable Michelle Nobletz (1898).
1858 Blessed Jerome Lu & Laurence Wang martyred  native catechists MM (AC)
 beatified in 1909. Jerome Lu was born in Mao-Cheu, China, c. 1810, worked as a native catechist, and was beheaded in his hometown at Maokeu (Mao-Ken). Laurence was born in 1811 at Kuy-yang. Like Jerome he was a catechist beheaded in the same town (Attwater2, Benedictines).
St. Jerome Lu, Blessed Martyr in Vietnam.
He was born in China and entered the Church as a catechist in the Chinese missions. He was eventually beheaded after torture in the anti Christian persecutions
.
1908 Joseph Freinademetz (b. 1852) he received his mission cross and departed for China with Fr. John Baptist Anzer, another Divine Word Missionary.
Joseph Freinademetz was born on April 15, 1852, in Oies, a small hamlet of five houses situated in the Dolomite Alps of northern Italy. The region, known as South Tyrol, was then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. He was baptised on the day he was born, and he inherited from his family a simple but tenacious faith.


While Joseph was studying theology in the diocesan seminary of Bressanone (Brixen), he began to think seriously of the foreign missions as a way of life. He was ordained a priest on July 25, 1875, and assigned to the community of Saint Martin very near his own home, where he soon won the hearts of the people. However, the call to missionary service did not go away. Just two years after ordination he contacted Fr. Arnold Janssen, the founder of a mission house which quickly developed into the Society of the Divine Word.

With his bishop's permission, Joseph entered the mission house in Steyl, Netherlands, in August 1878. On March 2, 1879, he received his mission cross and departed for China with Fr. John Baptist Anzer, another Divine Word Missionary. Five weeks later they arrived in Hong Kong, where they remained for two years, preparing themselves for the next step. In 1881 they travelled to their new mission in South Shantung, a province with 12 million inhabitants and only 158 Christians.

Those were hard years, marked by long, arduous journeys, assaults by bandits, and the difficult work of forming the first Christian communities. As soon as a community was just barely developed an instruction from the Bishop would arrive, telling him to leave everything and start anew.

"'And they went forth and preached everywhere'" (Mk 16: 20). "The Evangelist Mark ends his Gospel with these words. He then adds that the Lord never ceases to accompany the activity of the Apostles with the power of his miracles. Echoing these words of Jesus, the words of St Joseph Freinademetz are filled with faith: "I do not consider missionary life as a sacrifice I offer to God, but as the greatest grace that God could ever have lavished upon me". With the tenacity typical of mountain people, this generous "witness of love" made a gift of himself to the Chinese peoples of southern Shandong. For love and with love he embraced their living conditions, in accordance with his own advice to his missionaries: "Missionary work is useless if one does not love and is not loved". An exemplary model of Gospel inculturation, this Saint imitated Jesus, who saved men and women by sharing their existence to the very end." John Paul II

As a memento of his visit, Benedict XVI wrote in the guest book at the birthplace: "Through the intercession of St. Joseph, may the Lord grant many spiritual vocations and open China ever more to faith in Jesus Christ."

Dear Brothers and Sisters,
I am deeply moved by this very warm welcome that I have encountered here, and I can only say thank you with all my heart. And I thank the Lord who has given us this great Saint, St Joseph Freinademetz, who shows us the path to life and also is a sign for the Church's future. He is a very modern Saint: we know that China is becoming increasingly significant in political and economic life and also in the life of ideas. It is important that this great country open itself to the Gospel.
And St Joseph Freinademetz shows us that faith does not mean alienation for any culture, for any people, because all cultures are waiting for Christ and are not destroyed by the Lord: indeed, [in him] they reach their maturity.
St Joseph Freinademetz, as we have heard, not only wanted to live and die as a Chinese, but also wanted to be Chinese in Heaven: thus he identified in spirit with this people, in the certainty that it would open itself to faith in Jesus Christ.

Let us now pray that this great Saint may be an encouragement for all of us to live anew the life of faith in our time, to journey towards Christ because Christ alo ne can unite peoples, can unite cultures; and let us also pray that Christ will give numerous young people the courage to devote their lives totally to the Lord and to his Gospel.
However, I cannot say anything other than simply "thank you" to the Lord who gave us this Saint, and "thank you" to all of you for your welcome which shows me that the Church is still visibly alive today and that faith is the joy that unites us and guides us on the path of life.
My thanks to you all!
[This was followed by a prayer in Ladin, the Rhaeto-Romance dialect of the Engadine in Switzerland, the Our Father and the Benediction. The Holy Father then said:]
Thank you! May the Lord Bless you all!
[And he concluded:]
Dear Brothers and Sisters, I would simply like to say thank you for coming. I heard that some of you waited for hours: thank you for your patience and your courage. May the Lord bless you all. And naturall y I cordially greet all the German-speaking people present: may God reward you all, may the Lord's Blessing be with you all. May God reward you!
[Translation by L'Osservatore Romano]


Soon Joseph came to appreciate the importance of a committed laity, especially catechists, for first evangelisation. He dedicated much energy to their formation and prepared a catechetical manual in Chinese. At the same time, together with Anzer (who had become bishop) he put great effort into the preparation, spiritual formation and ongoing education of Chinese priests and other missionaries. His whole life was marked by an effort to become a Chinese among the Chinese, so much so that he wrote to his family: “I love China and the Chinese. I want to die among them and be laid to rest among them.”

In 1898, Freinademetz was sick with laryngitis and had the beginnings of tuberculosis as a result of his heavy workload and many other hardships. So at the insistence of the bishop and the other priests he was sent for a rest to Japan, with the hope that he could regain his health. He returned to China somewhat recuperated, but not fully cured.

When the bishop had to travel outside of China in 1907, Freinademetz took on the added burden of the administration of the diocese. During this time there was a severe outbreak of typhus. Joseph, like a good shepherd, offered untiring assistance and visited many communities until he himself became infected. He returned to Taikia, the seat of the diocese, where he died on January 28, 1908. He was buried at the twelfth station on the Way of the Cross, and his grave soon became a pilgrimage site for Christians.


Freinademetz learned how to discover the greatness and beauty of Chinese culture and to love deeply the people to whom he had been sent. He dedicated his life to proclaiming the gospel message of God's love for all peoples, and to embodying this love in the formation of Chinese Christian communities. He animated these communities to open themselves in solidarity with the surrounding inhabitants. And he encouraged many of the Chinese Christians to be missionaries to their own people as catechists, religious, nuns and priests. His life was an expression of his motto: “The language that all people understand is that of love.”


Mary's Divine Motherhood
  Pope Francis  PRAYER INTENTIONS FOR  January 2019
Evangelization – Young People
That young people, especially in Latin America, follow the example of Mary
and respond to the call of the Lord to communicate the joy of the Gospel to the world.
.
ABORTION IS A MORAL OUTRAGE
Marian spirituality: all are invited.
God Bless Mother Angelica 1923-2016
ewtnmissionaries.com

On Death and Life
"Man Needs Eternity -- and Every Other Hope, for Him, Is All Too Brief"
Пресвятая Богородице спаси нас!    (Santíssima Mãe de Deus, salva-nos!)
                                                                                     
     
We are the defenders of true freedom.
  May our witness unveil the deception of the "pro-choice" slogan.
  Campaign saves lives Shawn Carney Campaign Director www.40daysforlife.com
Please help save the unborn they are the future for the world

It is a great poverty that a child must die so that you may live as you wish -- Mother Teresa
 Saving babies, healing moms and dads, 'The Gospel of Life'

"Man Needs Eternity -- and Every Other Hope, for Him, Is All Too Brief"
It Makes No Sense Not To Believe In GOD 
Every Christian must be a living book
wherein one can read the teaching of the gospel

Jesus brings us many Blessings
 
The more we pray, the more we wish to pray. Like a fish which at first swims on the surface of the water, and afterwards plunges down, and is always going deeper; the soul plunges, dives, and loses itself in the sweetness of conversing with God. -- St. John Vianney

  Month by Month of Saintly Dedications


The Rosary html Mary Mother of GOD -- Her Rosary Here
Mary Mother of GOD Mary's Divine Motherhood: FEASTS OF OUR LADY
     of the Virgin Mary to those who recite the Rosary

May 9 – Our Lady of the Wood (Italy, 1607) 
Months of Dedication
January is the month of the Holy Name of Jesus since 1902;

March is the month of Saint Joseph since 1855;

May, the month of Mary, is the oldest and most well-known Marian month, officially since 1724;
June is the month of the Sacred Heart since 1873;
July is the month of the Precious Blood since 1850;
August is the month of the Immaculate Heart of Mary;
September is the month of Our Lady of Sorrows since 1857;
October is the month of the Rosary since 1868;
November is the month of the Holy Souls in Purgatory since 1888;
December is the month of the Immaculate Conception.

In all, five months of the year are dedicated to Mary.
The idea of dedicating months came from Rome and promotion of the month of Mary owes much to the Jesuits.  arras.catholique.fr


Pray that the witness of 40 Days for Life bears abundant fruit, and that we begin again each day
to storm the gates of hell until God welcomes us into the gates of heaven.


If you seek patience, you will find no better example than the cross. Great patience occurs in two ways:
either when one patiently suffers much, or when one suffers things which one is able to avoid and yet does not avoid.
Christ endured much on the cross, and did so patiently, because when he suffered he did not threaten;
he was led like a sheep to the slaughter and he did not open his mouth.-- St. Thomas Aquinas


                    We begin our day by seeing Christ in the consecrated bread, and throughout the day we continue to see Him in the torn bodies of our poor. We pray, that is, through our work, performing it with Jesus, for Jesus and upon Jesus.
The poor are our prayer. They carry God in them. Prayer means praying everything, praying the work.
We meet the Lord who hungers and thirsts, in the poor.....and the poor could be you or I or any person kind enough to show us his or her love and to come to our place.
Because we cannot see Christ, we cannot express our love to Him in person.
But our neighbor we can see, and we can do for him or her what we would love to do for Jesus if He were visible.
-- Mother Teresa
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 love Thee.  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,  Amen Fatima Prayer, Angel of Peace
Mary's Divine Motherhood
Pope Francis and Pope Benedict XVI { 2013 } Catholic Church In China { article here}
1648 to1930 St. Augustine Zhao Rong and 120 Companions Christianity arrived in China by way of Syria -- 600s.
        Depending on China's relations with outside world,
Christianity for centuries was free to grow or forced to operate secretly.

How do I start the Five First Saturdays? 
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.
“The Blessed Virgin was eternally predestined, in conjunction with the incarnation of the divine Word, to be the Mother of God. By decree of divine Providence, she served on earth as the loving mother of the divine Redeemer, an associate of unique nobility, and the Lord's humble handmaid. She conceived, brought forth, and nourished Christ.”
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.
Join Mary of Nazareth Project help us build the International Marian Center of Nazareth
http://www.worldpriest.com/
THE EUCHARIST, A MYSTERY TO BE BELIEVED POST-SYNODAL APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION
SACRAMENTUM CARITATIS OF THE HOLY FATHER BENEDICT XVI
There are over 10,000 named saints beati  from history
 and Roman Martyology Orthodox sources

Miracles by Century 100   200   300   400   500   600   700    800   900   1000    1100   1200   1300   1400  1500  1600  1700  1800   1900  Miracles_BLay Saints
Morning Prayer and Hymn    Meditation of the Day    Prayer for Priests    Our Bartholomew Family Prayer List  Here
We are called upon with the whole Church militant on earth to join in praising and thanking God for the grace and glory he has bestowed on his saints. At the same time we earnestly implore Him to exert His almighty power and mercy in raising us from our miseries and sins, healing the disorders of our souls and leading us by the path of repentance to the company of His saints, to which He has called us.
   They were once what we are now, travellers on earth they had the same weaknesses, which we have. We have difficulties to encounter so had the saints, and many of them far greater than we can meet with; obstacles from kings and whole nations, sometimes from the prisons, racks and swords of persecutors. Yet they surmounted these difficulties, which they made the very means of their virtue and victories. It was by the strength they received from above, not by their own, that they triumphed. But the blood of Christ was shed for us as it was for them and the grace of our Redeemer is not wanting to us; if we fail, the failure is in ourselves.
   THE saints and just, from the beginning of time and throughout the world, who have been made perfect, everlasting monuments of God’s infinite power and clemency, praise His goodness without ceasing; casting their crowns before His throne they give to Him all the glory of their triumphs: “His gifts alone in us He crowns.”
“The saints must be honored as friends of Christ and children and heirs of God, as John the theologian and evangelist says: ‘But as many as received him, he gave them the power to be made the sons of God....’ Let us carefully observe the manner of life of all the apostles, martyrs, ascetics and just men who announced the coming of the Lord. And let us emulate their faith, charity, hope, zeal, life, patience under suffering, and perseverance unto death, so that we may also share their crowns of glory” Exposition of the Orthodox Faith

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.
Nine First Fridays Devotion to the Sacred Heart ... From the writings of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque
On Friday during Holy Communion, He said these words to me, His unworthy slave, if I mistake not:
I promise you in the excessive mercy of my Heart that its all-powerful love will grant to all those who receive Holy Communion on nine first Fridays of consecutive months the grace of final repentance; they will not die under my displeasure or without receiving their sacraments, my divine Heart making itself their assured refuge at the last moment.
Margaret Mary was inspired by Christ to establish the Holy Hour and to pray lying prostrate with her face to the ground from eleven till midnight on the eve of the first Friday of each month, to share in the mortal sadness.
He endured when abandoned by His Apostles in His Agony, and to receive holy Communion on the first Friday of every month. In the first great revelation, He made known to her His ardent desire to be loved by men and His design of manifesting His Heart with all Its treasures of love and mercy, of sanctification and salvation.
He appointed the Friday after the octave of the feast of Corpus Christi as the feast of the Sacred Heart; He called her the Beloved Disciple of the Sacred Heart, and the heiress of all Its treasures. The love of the Sacred Heart was the fire which consumed her, and devotion to the Sacred Heart is the refrain of all her writings. In her last illness she refused all alleviation, repeating frequently: What have I in heaven and what do I desire on earth, but Thee alone, O my God, and died pronouncing the Holy Name of Jesus.
With regard to this promise it may be remarked: (1) that our Lord required Communion to be received on a particular day chosen by Him; (2) that the nine Fridays must be consecutive; (3) that they must be made in honor of His Sacred Heart, which means that those who make the nine Fridays must practice the devotion and must have a great love for our Lord; (4) that our Lord does not say that those who make the nine Fridays will be dispensed from any of their obligations or from exercising the vigilance necessary to lead a good life and overcome temptation; rather He implicitly promises abundant graces to those who make the nine Fridays to help them to carry out these obligations and persevere to the end; (5) that perseverance in receiving Holy Communion for nine consecutive First Firdays helps the faithful to acquire the habit of frequent Communion, which our Lord eagerly desires; and (6) that the practice of the nine Fridays is very pleasing to our Lord He promises such great reward, and all Catholics should endeavor to make nine Fridays.
How do I start the Five First Saturdays? by Fr. Tom O'Mahony.
On July 13,1917, Our Lady appeared for the third time to the three children of Fatima an showed them the vision of hell and made the now - famous thirteen prophecies. In this vision Our Lady said that 'GOD WISHES TO ESTABLISH IN THE WORLD DEVOTION to Her Immaculate Heart and that She would come TO ASK FOR THE COMMUNION OF REPARATION ON THE FIRST SATURDAYS...'  Eight years later, on December 10, 1925, Our Lady did indeed come back. She appeared (with the Child Jesus) to Lucia in the convent of the Dorothean Sisters in Pontevedra.
The Child Jesus spoke first:
'HAVE COMPASSION ON THE HEART OF YOUR MOST HOLY MOTHER WHICH IS COVERED WITH THORNS WITH WHICH UNGRATEFUL MEN PIERCE IT AT EVERY MOMENT, WHILE THERE IS NO ONE TO REMOVE THEM WITH AN ACT OF REPARATION.'

THE GREAT PROMISE
Our Lady then said: 'MY DAUGHTER LOOK AT MY HEART SURROUNDED WITH THORNS WITH WHICH UNGRATEFUL MEN PIERCE IT AT EVERY MOMENT BY THEIR BLASPHEMIES AND INGRATITUDE. YOU, AT LEAST, TRY TO CONSOLE ME, AND SAY THAT I PROMISE TO ASSIST AT THE HOUR OF DEATH WITH ALL THE GRACES NECESSARY FOR SALVATION, ALL THOSE WHO, ON THE FIRST SATURDAY OF FIVE CONSECUTIVE MONTHS GO TO CONFESSION AND RECEIVE HOLY COMMUNION, RECITE FIVE DECADES OF THE ROSARY AND KEEP ME COMPANY FOR A QUARTER OF AN HOUR WHILE MEDITATING ON MYSTERIES OF THE ROSARY, WITH THE INTENTION OF MAKING REPARATION TO ME.'

The Five Reasons
Lucia once asked this question of Our Lord and received as an answer: 'MY DAUGHTER, THE MOTIVE IS SIMPLE, THERE ARE FIVE KINDS OF OFFENCES AND BLASPHEMIES UTTERED AGAINST THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY: (1) BLASPHEMIES AGAINST THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION: (2) BLASPHEMIES AGAINST HER VIRGINITY: (3) BLASPHEMIES AGAINST HER DIVINE MATERNITY: (4) BLASPHEMIES OF THOSE WHO OPENLY SEEK TO FOSTER IN THE HEARTS OF CHILDREN INDIFFERENCE OR EVEN HATRED FOR THIS IMMACULATE MOTHER: (5) THE OFFENCES OF THOSE WHO DIRECTLY OUTRAGE HER IN HOLY IMAGES.'
From the above, it is easy to see that each of the Five Saturdays can correspond to a specific offence. By offering the graces received during each First Saturday as reparation for the offence being prayed for, the participant can hope to help remove the thorns from Our Lady's Heart.
What Do I Have To Do?
The devotion of First Saturdays, as requested by Our Lady of Fatima, carries with it the assurance of salvation. However, to derive profit from such a great promise of Our Lady, the devotion must be properly understood and duly performed.
The requirements as stipulated by Our Lady are as follows:
(1) CONFESSION, (2) COMMUNION, (3) FIVE DECADES OF THE ROSARY, (4) MEDITATION ON ONE OR MORE OF THE ROSARY MYSTERIES FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES, (5) TO DO ALL THESE THINGS IN THE SPIRIT OF REPARATION TO THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY, and (6) TO OBSERVE ALL THESE PRACTICES ON THE FIRST SATURDAY OF FIVE CONSECUTIVE MONTHS.
(1) CONFESSION: A reparative confession means that the confession should not only be good (valid and licit), but also be offered in the spirit of reparation, in this case, to Mary's Immaculate Heart. This confession may be made on the First Saturday itself or some days before or after the First Saturday within the preceding octave would suffice.
(2) COMMUNION: The communion of reparation must be sacramental duly received with the intention of making reparation. This offering, like the confession, is an interior act and so no external action to express the intention is needed.
(3) THE ROSARY: The Rosary mentioned here was indicated by the Portuguese word 'terco' which is commonly employed to denote a Rosary of five decades, since it forms a fourth of the full Rosary of 20 decades. This too must recited in a spirit of reparation.
(4) MEDITATION FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES: Here the meditation on one mystery or more is to be made without simultaneous recitation of the Rosary decade. As indicated, the meditation may be either on one mystery alone for 15 minutes, or on all 20 mysteries, spending about one minute on each mystery, or again, on two or more mysteries during the period. This can also be made before each decade spending three minutes or more in considering the mystery of the particular decade. This meditation has likewise to be made in the spirit of reparation to the Immaculate Heart.
(5) THE SPIRIT OF REPARATION: All these acts, as said above, have to be done with the intention of offering reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary for the offences committed against Her. Everyone who offends Her commits, so to speak, a two-fold offence, for these sins also offend her Divine Son, Christ, and so endanger our salvation. They give bad example to others and weaken the strength of society to withstand immoral onslaughts. Such devotions therefore make us consider not only the enormity of the offence against God, but also the effect of sins on human society as well as the need for undoing these social effects even when the offender repents and is converted. Further, this reparation emphasises our responsibility towards sinners who, themselves, will not pray and make reparation for their sins.
(6) FIVE CONSECUTIVE FIRST SATURDAYS: The idea of the Five First Saturdays is obviously to make us persevere in the devotional acts for these Saturdays and overcome initial difficulties. Once this is done, Our Lady knows that the person would become devoted to Her immaculate Heart and persist in practising such devotion on all First Saturdays, working thereby for personal self-reform and for the salvation of others.

Unless Russia is converted, the movement against God and for sin will continue to spread, promoting wars and persecutions, and making the attainment for peace and justice impossible for this world. One means of obtaining Russia's conversion is to practise the Fatima Message. The stakes are so great that to encourage Catholics to practise the devotion of the First Saturdays, Our Lady has assured us that She will obtain salvation for all those who observe the first Saturdays for five consecutive months in accordance with Her conditions.
At the supreme moment the departing person will be either in the state of grace or not. In either case Our Lady will be by his side. If in the state of grace, She will console and help him to resist whatever temptations the devil might put before him in his last attempt to take the person with him to hell. If not in the state of grace, Our Lady will help the person to repent in a manner agreeable to God and so benefit by the fruits of redemption and be saved.

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.

Join us on CatholicVote.org. Be part of a new movement committed to using powerful media projects to create a Culture of Life. We can help shape the movement and have a voice in its future. Check it out at www.CatholicVote.org

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.


THE PSALTER OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY PSALM 78

Hear ye these things, all ye nations: give ear, all ye who desire to enter the kingdom of God.

Honor the Virgin Mary: and ye will find life and perpetual salvation.

Keep thy poor servants, O Lady: join them with a happy union to Christ.

By the fruit of thy womb, refresh and sustain the hunger of thy little ones.

For after thy bringing forth thou hast remained incorrupt: and after thy Son, inviolate.


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.

Join us on CatholicVote.org. Be part of a new movement committed to using powerful media projects to create a Culture of Life. We can help shape the movement and have a voice in its future. Check it out at www.CatholicVote.org

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]

To Save A Life is Earthly; Saving A Soul is Eternal Donation by mail, please send check or money order to:
Eternal Word Television Network 5817 Old Leeds Rd. Irondale, AL 35210  USA
  Catholic Television Network  Supported entirely by donations from viewers  help  spread the Eternal Word, online Here
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
Jul 23, 2019 - 03:01 am .- The cause for canonization of Servant of God Edward Flanagan, the priest who founded Nebraska's Boys Town community for orphans and other boys, advanced Monday with the presentation of a summary of records on his life.

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
May 30, 2019 - 03:01 pm .- On Sunday in Blaj, Pope Francis will beatify seven Greek-Catholic bishops of Romania who were killed by the communist regime between 1950 and 1970.
 
Woman who served Brazil’s poorest to be canonized
May 14, 2019 - 06:53 am .- Pope Francis Tuesday gave his approval for eight sainthood causes to proceed, including that of Bl. Dulce Lopes Pontes, a 20th-century religious sister who served Brazil’s poor.

Seven 20th-century Romanian bishops declared martyrs
Mar 19, 2019 - 12:01 pm .- Pope Francis declared Tuesday the martyrdom of seven Greek-Catholic bishops killed by the communist regime in Romania in the mid-20th century.

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
Dec 10, 2018 - 03:08 pm .- Bishop Pierre Claverie and his 18 companions, who were martyred in Algeria between 1994 and 1996, were beatified Saturday during a Mass in Oran.

The Algerian martyrs shed their blood for Christ, pope says
Dec 7, 2018 - 10:02 am .- Ahead of the beatification Saturday of Bishop Pierre Claverie and his 18 companions, who were martyred in Algeria between 1994 and 1996, Pope Francis said martyrs have a special place in the Church.
Algerian martyrs are models for the Church, archbishop says
Nov 16, 2018 - 03:01 am .- Archbishop Paul Desfarges of Algiers has said that Bishop Pierre Claverie and his 18 companions, who were martyred in Algeria between 1994 and 1996, are “models for our lives as disciples today and tomorrow.”
 
Francesco Spinelli to be canonized after healing of a newborn in DR Congo
Oct 9, 2018 - 05:01 pm .- Among those being canonized on Sunday are Fr. Franceso Spinelli, a diocesan priest through whose intercession a newborn was saved from death in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

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.

Pope Francis creates new path to beatification under ‘offering of life’
Jul 11, 2017 - 06:22 am .- On Tuesday Pope Francis declared a new category of Christian life suitable for consideration of beatification called “offering of life” – in which a person has died prematurely through an offering of their life for love of God and neighbor.
 
Twentieth century Polish nurse among causes advancing toward sainthood
Jul 7, 2017 - 06:14 am .- Pope Francis on Friday approved a miracle attributed to the intercession of the Venerable Hanna Chrzanowska, a Polish nurse and nursing instructor who died from cancer in 1973, paving the way for her beatification.
 
Sainthood causes advance, including layman who resisted fascism
Jun 17, 2017 - 09:22 am .- Pope Francis on Friday recognized the heroic virtue of six persons on the path to canonization, as well as the martyrdom of an Italian man who died from injuries of a beating he received while imprisoned in a concentration camp for resisting fascism.
 
Solanus Casey, Cardinal Van Thuan among those advanced toward sainthood
May 4, 2017 - 10:47 am .- Pope Francis on Thursday approved decrees of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints advancing the causes for canonization of 12 individuals, including the American-born Capuchin Solanus Casey and the Vietnamese cardinal Francis Xavier Nguen Van Thuan.
 
Pope clears way for canonization of Fatima visionaries
Mar 23, 2017 - 06:44 am .- On Thursday Pope Francis approved the second and final miracle needed to canonize Blessed Francisco and Jacinta Marto, two of the shepherd children who witnessed the Fatima Marian apparitions.
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.

Records on life of Father Flanagan, founder of Boys Town, presented at Vatican
Jul 23, 2019 - 03:01 am .- The cause for canonization of Servant of God Edward Flanagan, the priest who founded Nebraska's Boys Town community for orphans and other boys, advanced Monday with the presentation of a summary of records on his life.

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
May 30, 2019 - 03:01 pm .- On Sunday in Blaj, Pope Francis will beatify seven Greek-Catholic bishops of Romania who were killed by the communist regime between 1950 and 1970.
 
Woman who served Brazil’s poorest to be canonized
May 14, 2019 - 06:53 am .- Pope Francis Tuesday gave his approval for eight sainthood causes to proceed, including that of Bl. Dulce Lopes Pontes, a 20th-century religious sister who served Brazil’s poor.

Seven 20th-century Romanian bishops declared martyrs
Mar 19, 2019 - 12:01 pm .- Pope Francis declared Tuesday the martyrdom of seven Greek-Catholic bishops killed by the communist regime in Romania in the mid-20th century.

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
Dec 10, 2018 - 03:08 pm .- Bishop Pierre Claverie and his 18 companions, who were martyred in Algeria between 1994 and 1996, were beatified Saturday during a Mass in Oran.

The Algerian martyrs shed their blood for Christ, pope says
Dec 7, 2018 - 10:02 am .- Ahead of the beatification Saturday of Bishop Pierre Claverie and his 18 companions, who were martyred in Algeria between 1994 and 1996, Pope Francis said martyrs have a special place in the Church.
Algerian martyrs are models for the Church, archbishop says
Nov 16, 2018 - 03:01 am .- Archbishop Paul Desfarges of Algiers has said that Bishop Pierre Claverie and his 18 companions, who were martyred in Algeria between 1994 and 1996, are “models for our lives as disciples today and tomorrow.”
 
Francesco Spinelli to be canonized after healing of a newborn in DR Congo
Oct 9, 2018 - 05:01 pm .- Among those being canonized on Sunday are Fr. Franceso Spinelli, a diocesan priest through whose intercession a newborn was saved from death in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

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.

Pope Francis creates new path to beatification under ‘offering of life’
Jul 11, 2017 - 06:22 am .- On Tuesday Pope Francis declared a new category of Christian life suitable for consideration of beatification called “offering of life” – in which a person has died prematurely through an offering of their life for love of God and neighbor.
 
Twentieth century Polish nurse among causes advancing toward sainthood
Jul 7, 2017 - 06:14 am .- Pope Francis on Friday approved a miracle attributed to the intercession of the Venerable Hanna Chrzanowska, a Polish nurse and nursing instructor who died from cancer in 1973, paving the way for her beatification.
 
Sainthood causes advance, including layman who resisted fascism
Jun 17, 2017 - 09:22 am .- Pope Francis on Friday recognized the heroic virtue of six persons on the path to canonization, as well as the martyrdom of an Italian man who died from injuries of a beating he received while imprisoned in a concentration camp for resisting fascism.
 
Solanus Casey, Cardinal Van Thuan among those advanced toward sainthood
May 4, 2017 - 10:47 am .- Pope Francis on Thursday approved decrees of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints advancing the causes for canonization of 12 individuals, including the American-born Capuchin Solanus Casey and the Vietnamese cardinal Francis Xavier Nguen Van Thuan.
 
Pope clears way for canonization of Fatima visionaries
Mar 23, 2017 - 06:44 am .- On Thursday Pope Francis approved the second and final miracle needed to canonize Blessed Francisco and Jacinta Marto, two of the shepherd children who witnessed the Fatima Marian apparitions.
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:
Marian Apparitions (over 2000)  India Marian Shrine Lourdes of the East   Lourdes Feb 11- July 16, Loreto, Italy 1858 
China
Marian shrines
May 23, 1995 Zarvintisya Ukraine Lourdes Kenya national Marian shrine    Quang Tri Vietnam La Vang 1798  
Links to Related
Marian Websites  Angels and Archangels
Doctors_of_the_Church   Acts_Apostles  Roman Catholic Popes  Purgatory  Uniates, 248 2024