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!)
R.  Deo grátias. R.  Thanks be to God.
December is the month of the Immaculate Conception.
2023
23,658  Lives Saved Since 2007

Goodbye Vern Bartholomew 1917-2017 on All Saints/All Souls day  Requiescat in pace;
Thanks for being such a great Dad

Pope Francis  PRAYER INTENTIONS FOR  December 2023

For persons with disabilities
We pray that people living with disabilities may be at the center of attention in society,
and that institutions may offer inclusive programs which value their active participation.

 
What is the link between the Rosary and the Eucharist? 
 Benedict XVI insisted: “Actually, the Rosary is not an obstacle to meditation on the Word of God and liturgical prayer; indeed, it represents a natural and ideal complement to it, especially as a preparation and thanksgiving for the Eucharistic celebration.  With Mary, we contemplate Christ encountered in the Gospel and in the Sacrament in the various moments of his life through the Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries.”

“If the Eucharist for Christians is the center of the day, the Rosary contributes in a privileged way to deepening communion with Christ.” (Angelus of October 16, 2005)

“We are therefore asked to let ourselves be guided by Mary in this prayer, ancient and ever new, which is especially dear to her because it leads us directly to Jesus, contemplated in his Mysteries of salvation: joyful, luminous, sorrowful and glorious… The Rosary is a biblical prayer, interwoven with Sacred Scripture throughout… that helps us to meditate on the Word of God and to assimilate Eucharistic Communion, modeling ourselves after Mary.”
 (Angelus of October 10, 2010). Pope Benedict XVI
 
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?
Mary Mother of GOD 15 Promises of the Virgin Mary to those who recite the Rosary

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

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

 Because of our good Lord's tender love to all those who shall be saved, he quickly comforts them saying, "The cause of all this pain is sin. But all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." These words were said so kindly and without a hint of blame. So how unjust it would be for me to blame God for allowing my sin when he does not blame me for falling into it. -- Blessed Juliana of Norwich

  Do you really want to love the Virgin Mary?
Do you really want to love the Virgin Mary? Well, start by spending some time with her! So you ask me how? By praying the Rosary properly. But the Rosary is so repetitious! We always repeat the same words over and over! Always the same words? What about lovers, don't they repeat the same words to each other over and over?...
The supernatural virtues will grow in us if we can manage to spend time with Mary. She is our mother! (…) Let me give you some advice—if you haven't already done it—let yourself experience Mary's maternal love personally. It isn't enough to know that she is a mother, or to perceive her and talk about her this way. She is your mother and you are her child. She loves you as if you were her only child in the whole world.
Speak to her accordingly: tell her about your life, honor her and love her. If you do not, no one else will ever do it as well as you. I promise you that if you take this path, you will soon find Christ's love and you will be immersed in the ineffable life of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
Saint Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, Founder of Opus Dei
 
December 1st - Our Lady of Ratisbon (Bavaria, 1842)
  Mary in the Temple (XI)
The glory of that second Temple will surpass that of the first
After the exile, to comfort those were rebuilding the Temple,
the Word of God was addressed to the prophet Haggai:
"The Lord says, 'Take courage, all you people of the land! (...) A little while now and I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all the nations, (...) The glory of this new Temple will surpass the old, ...and in this place I shall give peace, declares the Lord of hosts' (Hg 2: 4-9)".

The glory promised to the second Temple, fated to disappear in 70 A.D., was thus promised to be superior to the sublime Temple of Solomon dreamed of by David, which enshrined the Ark of the Covenant with Tables of the Law, manna and the rod of Aaron.
But how could they still believe in this prophecy when all the precious gifts of God had been destroyed or lost during the exile in Babylon? Since no one could imagine that the Temple already contained, in Mary, the Ark of the New Covenant, not made by man, it was only through hope in the future coming of the Messiah of Peace that the Virgin and her people could expect, in this prayerful time of the first Advent, the fulfillment of this astonishing prophecy.
 
7th v bc The Holy Prophet Nahum, whose name means "God consoles," was from the village of Elkosh (Galilee)
<Prophet_Nahum.jpg
Sancti Nahum Prophétæ, in Bégabar quiescéntis.    The prophet Nahum, who was buried in Bagabar.

Saint_Procolus
  137 Castritian of Milan  governed the see of Milan for 42 years
        St. Ananias Martyr for the faith Arbela, Persia or Erbel, Assyria
        St. Lucius Roman martyr with Candida, Cassian, and Rogatus
  283 St. Diodorus & Marianus Roman martyrs with many companions
        St. Natalia Martyr of Nicomedia
  303 St. Olympiades Martyr at Almeria ,Italy
  304 St. Ansanus Martyr patron of Siena "the Baptizer."
  347 St. Ursicinus Bishop Brescia Council of Sardica 347
  362 St. Evasius of Asti BM (RM)
  432 St. Leontius Bishop of Fregus
5th v. Candres of Maestricht  evangelized the territory of Maestricht
  570 St. Constantian Abbot founder of Javron Abbey
  588 St. Agericus Bishop miracle worker patron of the poor Verdun
6th v. ST TUDWAL, BISHOP
7th v. St. Grwst A Welsh saint
  640 St. Eligius priest generous in spirit Patron of metalworkers a considerable number of miracles
  660 ST ELIGIUS, OR ELOI, BISHOP OF NOYON
  792 Righteous Philaret the Merciful of Amnia in Asia Minor  whose name means "lover of virtue," was famed for his
 love for the poor. Theoseba said to her husband, "You have no pity on us, you merciless man, but don't you feel sorry for the cow? You have separated her from her calf." The saint praised his wife, and agreed that it was not right to separate the cow and the calf. Therefore, he called the poor man to whom he had given the calf and told him to take the cow as well.
The glory promised to the second Temple, fated to disappear in 70 A.D., was thus promised to be superior to the sublime Temple of Solomon dreamed of by David, which enshrined the Ark of the Covenant with the Tables of the Law, manna and the rod of Aaron.
But how could they still believe in this prophecy when all the precious gifts of God had been destroyed or lost during the exile in Babylon? Since no one could imagine that the Temple already contained, in Mary, the Ark of the New Covenant, not made by man, it was only through hope in the future coming of the Messiah of Peace that the Virgin and her people could expect, in this prayerful time of the first Advent, the fulfillment of this astonishing prophecy.
Saint Mary of Graces (Italy, 1923)  "Consecrate your parish to the Holy and Immaculate Heart of Mary" (I)
   The parish of Our Lady of Victories, located in the business center of Paris, near the stock exchange, is surrounded by theatres and nightclubs and had become the central point for political demonstrations, agitating Paris for so many years. The parish has seen almost all feeling and religious inclination die out in its midst; its church was deserted, even on days of important solemnities; sacraments and other religious practices have been given up, and nothing seemed capable of putting an end to this deplorable state of affairs, which had already existed for more than ten years.
   On December 3, 1836, the feast day of Saint Francis Xavier at 9:00 a.m., I began Holy Mass at the foot of the altar of the Blessed Virgin; I was reciting the first verse of the psalm, when terrible thoughts came into my mind. I started thinking about the uselessness of my ministry in that parish; it was not unusual for me to have these thoughts, I had had so many different occasions to notice and remind myself of the fact. I felt that I had failed in my ministry and I wanted to resign my functions at Our Lady of Victories.

  Despite all my efforts to dispel these unhappy thoughts, I was so overwhelmed that my mental faculties were boggled;
I began reading and reciting the prayers without understanding what I was saying. After reciting the Sanctus, I stopped for a moment, seeking to recollect myself; so frightened had I become by my strange state of mind. I said to myself, "Dear God, what is happening to my mind? How can I offer the Divine Sacrifice? My mind is not in a normal state to consecrate. O my God, deliver me from this unhappy distraction!"
   Hardly had I uttered this prayer in my heart when I very distinctly heard these words spoken to me in a clear and solemn way, "Consecrate your parish to the Holy and Immaculate Heart of Mary.”  
Father Desgenettes, priest at Our Lady of Victory Church (1778 - 1860)

First through Mary, then through Joseph  December 1st  Our Lady of Ratisbon (Bavaria, 1842)
Blessed Charles de Foucauld
You have decided that the providential channels of your graces would be your saintly parents; that your benefits would habitually reach us, in the supernatural order, first through Mary, then through Joseph. And so, Lord, you gave us your own parents as our parents. You make us receive from whom you received, you make us ask those you used to ask, and you make us love in a filial way the parents you loved as a son.
Blessed Charles de Foucauld  Considerations on the Year's Feasts
1232 BENTVOGLIA great charity; zeal for souls; inspiring earnestness of his sermons;  levitating
13th v. Blessed Christian of Perugia one of the first disciples of Saint Dominic
1283 Blessed John of Vercelli sixth master general of the Dominicans tireless energy and his commitment to simplicity
1345 BD GERARD CAGNOLI cult to this follower of St Francis confirmed 1908; simplicity and devotion admiration of all; many miracles healing before little shrine of his patron St Louis; assisted cooking by angel; levitating
1482 Blessed Antony Bonfadini  sent to the mission in the Holy Land miracles were reported at his tomb
1539 Bl. John Beche abbot Martyr England 1539 friend of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More; abbot of Coichester Abbey; A Benedictine, he received a doctorate from Oxford in 1515 . He took the Oath of Supremacy in 1534 , but then saw his own abbey being plundered; deaths of Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More horrified him as well. When he refuted King Henry VIII’s right to suppress the English monasteries, he was arrested for treason and hanged, drawn, and quartered at Colchester; beatified in 1895.
1539 Bl. Richard Writing, Abbot of Glastonbury, and his companions, martyrs
1539 Bb. Hugh Faringdon, Abbot of Reading, and his companions, Martyrs
1539 BD JOHN BECHE, ABBOT OF COLCHESTER, MARTYR
1580 St. Edmund Campion Jesuit; object of most intensive manhunts English history
1581 BD RALPH SHERWIN; priest , MARTYR; M.A. in 1574, “being then accounted”, says Anthony a Wood, “an acute philosopher and an excellent Grecian and Hebrician”. The next year he was reconciled to the Church, went to Douay, and was there ordained priest in 1577.
1581 Bl. Alexander Briant; priest convert, Missionary martyr at 25; From the Tower Bd Alexander contrived to write a long letter to the Jesuits in England, in the course of which he says that the first time he was racked, towards the end “I was without sense and feeling wellnigh of all grief and pain; and not so only, but as it were comforted, eased, and refreshed of the griefs of the torture bypast.” “Whether this that I say be miraculous or no, God he knoweth; but true it is, and thereof my conscience is a witness before God.” On the testi­mony of Norton (for what that is worth), after the torture Bd Alexander experienced pain of a more than usual sharpness. In the same letter he asked that he might be admitted into the Society of Jesus, even in his absence, having made a vow to offer himself if he should be released from jail, and he is in consequence numbered among the martyrs of the Society.
1586 Bl. Richard Langley  English martyr member of gentry sheltered priests.

7th v bc The Holy Prophet Nahum, whose name means "God consoles," was from the village of Elkosh (Galilee) He lived during the seventh century B.C.

Sancti Nahum Prophétæ, in Bégabar quiescéntis. The prophet Nahum, who was buried in Bagabar.

Nahum
    The Book of Nahum opens with a psalm on the wrath of Yahweh against the wicked and with short prophetic passages contrasting the punishment of Assyria with the salvation of Judah, 1:2-2:3. But its main theme, stated in the heading of the book, is the destruction of Nineveh, which Nahum foretells and describes with a power that reveals him as one of the great poets of Israel, 2:4-3:19.
  There is no reason to deny his authorship to the opening psalm and oracles, which form an excellent prologue to this terrifying picture. The prophecy is dated shortly before the capture of Nineveh in 612. The book pulsates with the hatred of Israel against the people of Assyria, the traditional enemy, and also with the hopes that the fall of Assyria arouses. But through this violent nationalism, where there is no anticipation of the gospel whatever, or even of the worldwide outlook of the second part of Isaiah, run the ideals of justice and faith; the fall of Nineveh is a judgement of God, who punishes those who oppose his holy purpose, 1:11; 2:1, the oppressors of Israel, 1:12-13, and of all the nations, 3:1-7.
 The Book of Nahum must have raised the human hopes of Israel in 612, but the joy was short-lived: the fall of Jerusalem followed close on the fall of Nineveh. After this, the scope of the message grows wider and deeper; Is 52:7 borrows the image of Na 2:1 to apply it to a universal and more spiritual salvation.

The Prophet Naum prophesies the ruin of the Assyrian city of Nineveh because of its iniquity, destruction of the Israelite kingdom, and the blasphemy of King Sennacherib against God. The Assyrian king Ashurbanipal died in 632 B.C., and over the next two decades, his empire began to crumble. Nineveh fell in 612 B.C.
Nahum differs from most of the prophets in as much as he does not issue any call to repentance, nor does he denounce Israel for infidelity to God.
Details of the prophet's life are unknown. He died at the age of forty-five, and was buried in his native region. He is the 7th of the Twelve Minor Prophets The Prophet Nahum and St Nahum of Ochrid (December 23) are invoked for people with mental disorders.
Saint_Procolus by Michaelangelo
Nárniæ sancti Próculi, Epíscopi et Mártyris; qui, post multa egrégia ópera, a Rege Gothórum Tótila jussus est decollári.
    At Narni, St. Proculus, bishop and martyr, who, after performing many good works, was beheaded by order of Totila, king of the Goths.
St. Proculus (the spirtual son of the saint and eventually Patriarch of Constantinople) was going to visit St John and entered the room where the saint was working and saw a man standing close at his side appearing to be talking in his ear.  Not wanting to interrupt, St Proculus left and returned sometime later and mentioned to St John that he had come by earlier and found him busy with a visitor.  St John exclaimed that he had no visitors that day and that he had been occupied in writing the entire time.
Fr Mathew told us that legend has it that St Paul would whisper in the saint’s ear as he was composing his many homilies.  What in effect St Proculus had seen in this tale is St Paul himself whispering in the ear of St John! The incorrupt ear is due to it being the ear St John would listen to the God inspired wisdom of the great saint with. 



137 Castritian of Milan  governed the see of Milan for 42 years B (RM).
Medioláni sancti Castritiáni Epíscopi, qui, in máxima Ecclésiæ perturbatióne, virtútum méritis ac rerum pie religioséque gestárum laude enítuit.
At Milan, St. Castritian, bishop, who was eminent for virtues and the practice of pious and religious deeds during the greatest troubles of the Church.
Saint Castritian, predecessor of Saint Calimerius, governed the see of Milan for 42 years (Benedictines).
While Saint Ananias was being tortured for his belief in Christ, he said, "I see a ladder leading to heaven, and radiant men calling me to a marvelous city of light."
St. Ananias Martyr for the faith Arbela, Persia or Erbel, Assyria
Martyr Ananias of Persia tortured for his belief in Christ, he said, "I see a ladder leading to heaven, and radiant men calling me to a marvelous city of light.
Arbéle, in Pérside, sancti Anániæ Mártyris.    At Arbela in Persia, St. Ananias, martyr.
While Saint Ananias was being tortured for his belief in Christ, he said, "I see a ladder leading to heaven, and radiant men calling me to a marvelous city of light. Ananias of Arbela M (RM) Dates unknown. Ananias, a martyr either at the Persian Arbela or the Assyrian Erbel, was a layman (Benedictines).
137 St. Castritian Bishop of Milan 42 yrs.
Medioláni sancti Castritiáni Epíscopi, qui, in máxima Ecclésiæ perturbatióne, virtútum méritis ac rerum pie religioséque gestárum laude enítuit.
    At Milan, St. Castritian, bishop, who was eminent for virtues and the practice of pious and religious deeds during the greatest troubles of the Church.
Italy, the predecessor of St. Calimerius in Milan. Castritian served as bishop for forty-two years.
St. Lucius Roman martyr with Candida, Cassian, and Rogatus.
Item Romæ pássio sanctórum Lúcii, Rogáti, Cassiáni et Cándidæ.
    Also in Rome, the martyrdom of the Saints Lucius, Rogatus, Cassian, and Candida.
283 St. Diodorus & Marianus Roman martyrs with many companions.
Romæ sanctórum Mártyrum Diodóri Presbyteri, et Mariáni Diáconi, cum áliis plúribus, qui, sub Numeriáno Príncipe, cum in Arenário natalítia Mártyrum ágerent, illic, obstrúcta a persecutóribus jánua cryptæ ac díruta désuper mole, martyrii glóriam meruérunt.
    At Rome, the holy martyrs Diodorus, a priest, and Marian, a deacon, with many others, while they were observing the birthdays of the martyrs in the catacombs.  They were made partakers in the glory of martyrdom when the persecutors, by order of Emperor Numerian, walled up the door of the oratory and piled up a great mass of stones against it.
They were surprised while conducting a Christian service in the catacombs. The Roman authorities sealed them in their subterranean chapel.
Diodorus, Marianus & Companions MM (RM)
Saints Diodorus and Marianus were among a large group of Romans martyred under Numerian. In fact, it appears to have been a case of a Christian congregation surprised while assembled at prayer in the catacombs and disposed of by having the entrance to their subterranean oratory blocked up (Benedictines).
303 St. Olympiades Martyr at Almeria, Italy.
Amériæ, in Umbria, sancti Olympíadis, viri Consuláris, qui a beáta Firmína ad fidem est convérsus, et sub Diocletiáno, in equúleo tortus, martyrium consummávit.
    At Amelia in Umbria, St. Olympias, ex-consul, who was converted to the faith by blessed Firmina, was tortured on the rack, and under Diocletian achieved martyrdom.
He was put to death under Emperor Diocletian.
304 St. Ansanus Martyr patron youth of Siena Italy "the Baptizer."
Eódem die sancti Ansáni Mártyris, qui, sub Diocletiáno Imperatóre, Romæ conféssus Christum et in cárcerem trusus, deínde Senas, in Túscia, perdúctus, ibídem cápitis obtruncatióne cursum martyrii perfécit.
    The same day, St. Ansanus, martyr, who confessed Christ at Rome, and was cast into prison in the time of Emperor Diocletian.  Afterwards he was taken to Siena in Tuscany, where he ended the course of his martyrdom by beheading.
 304 ST ANSANUS, MARTYR
ST ANSANUS, a Roman by birth, is venerated as the first apostle of Siena, where he made so many converts that he was named “the Baptizer”. During the persecution under Diocletian he was imprisoned, and after torture his head was cut off at a place outside the walls still marked by a church. In the year 1170 his relics were translated to the cathedral; miracles marked the occasion, and these were written down, together with a fanciful life of the martyr. This states that Ansanus was a youth who was denounced as a Christian by his own father. He confessed the faith, but managed to escape from Rome and fled towards Tuscany. On the way he preached at Bagnorea and was imprisoned where the church of our Lady delle Carceri now stands. In Siena the memory of the boy saint is still devoutly cherished: “ In the vaults under the Spedale are the meeting-places of several devout confraternities, which are said to trace back their origin from the first Sienese Christians, the converts of St Ansanus, who met in secret on this spot in the days of the Roman persecutions.”

Evidence seems to be entirely lacking for any early cultus of St Ansanus. His so-called passio, two different texts of which have been printed in Baluze-Mansi, Miscellanea (vol. iv, pp. 60—63), amounts to no more than a double set of breviary lessons which betray their date by their very form. Cf. also the Bollandist Catalogus cod. hagiog. Bruxel., vol. i, pp. 129—132. See B. G. Gardner, Story of Siena,  p. 187 and passim; and V. Lusini, Il San Giovanni di Siena, who states that a little church, the remains of which still exist, can be shown by documents to have been dedicated to St Ansanus as early as 881. It is supposed to have served as the first baptistery of Siena.

 Tradition states that Ansanus became a Christian at the age of twelve and was denounced by his own father. Ansanus was able to elude the Roman authorities and began a missionary apostolate in Siena and in Bagnorea, Italy. When the persecution initiated by Emperor Diocletian began rounding up Christians, Ansanus was arrested. He was eventually beheaded.

Ansanus the Baptizer M (RM) Died at Siena, Italy, in 304. A scion of the Anician family of Rome, Saint Ansanus became a Christian at age 12. His own father denounced him to the authorities, but the boy contrived to escape, and converted so many pagans, first at Bagnorea and then at Siena, that he gained his surname 'the Baptizer' and is now known as the apostle of Siena. He was finally arrested. Faith made him lose his head under Diocletian, but he was the one who was right (Attwater 2, Benedictines, Coulson, Encyclopedia). Saint Ansanus's emblem is dates. He is depicted as a young man holding a cluster of dates, though occasionally he may be shown (1) holding a liver; (2) holding a heart and liver; (3) with a palm and banner; (4) baptizing; (5) heart with IHS; (6) boiled in oil; or (7) beheaded. He is the patron of Siena (Roeder).
St. Natalia Martyr of Nicomedia modern Turkey
Eódem die sanctæ Natalítiæ, uxóris beáti Hadriáni Mártyris, quæ, sub Diocletiáno Imperatóre, sanctis Martyribus, Nicomedíæ in cárcere deténtis, multo témpore ministrávit; impletóque eórum certámine, Constantinópolim est profécta, et ibídem in pace quiévit.
    The same day, St. Natalia, wife of the blessed martyr Adrian, in the time of Emperor Diocletian.  She long served the holy martyrs imprisoned at Nicomedia, and when their trials were over, went to Constantinople where she peacefully went to her rest in the Lord.
She cared for Christian prisoners awaiting martyrdom during the persecutions of Emperor Diocletian. She is mentioned in the Acta of St. Adrian, and she survived the persecution of the Church.
347 St. Ursicinus Bishop Brescia Council of Sardica Italy 347.
Bríxiæ sancti Ursicíni Epíscopi.    At Brescia, St. Ursicinus, bishop.
It is known that he took part in the Council of Sardica (347) and was an opponent of the Arian heresy. His shrine still exists.
362 Evasius of Asti BM (RM)
In civitáte Casalénsi sancti Evásii, Epíscopi et Mártyris.    At Casale, St. Evasius, bishop and martyr.
Saint Evasius is said to have been the first bishop of Asti in the Piedmont of Italy. He was driven there by the Arians, and reputed put to death under Julian the Apostate at Casale Monferrato. The accounts given of him are very untrustworthy (Benedictines).
432 St. Leontius Bishop of Fregus.
France, and a friend of St. Cassius.
5th v. Candres of Maestricht  evangelized the territory of Maestricht B (AC).
Consecrated as a regionary bishop, Saint Candres evangelized the territory of Maestricht.
He is still liturgically commemorated in the diocese of Rouen (Benedictines).
5th v. St. Candres Bishop and missionary to Maastricht Candres is venerated in the diocese of Rouen, France.
570 St. Constantian Abbot founder of Javron Abbey.
He was a monk at Micy, France.
588 St. Agericus Bishop miracle worker; patron of the poor, Verdun France.
Apud Virodúnum, in Gállia, sancti Ageríci Epíscopi.    At Verdun in France, St. Agericus, bishop.

ST AGERICUS was born at or near Verdun, perhaps at Harville, about the year 521. He became one of the clergy of the church of SS Peter and Paul at Verdun, and when he was thirty-three was appointed bishop of that city in succession to St Desiderius. He was visited there by St Gregory of Tours and St Venantius Fortunatus, both of whom write in his praise: “The poor receive relief, the despairing hope, the naked clothing; whatever you have, all have”, says Fortuna­tus.
     St Agericus enjoyed the favour also of King Sigebert I, whose son, Childebert, he baptized, and counseled after he came to the throne. But he was not able to obtain mercy for Bertefroi and other revolting nobles who came to him for sanctuary and protection. Bertefroi was murdered in the bishop’s own chapel by the royal officers. A more pleasing association between Agericus and Childebert was when the whole of the court was billeted on the bishop; there were so many of them and they were so thirsty that the supply of drink was stretched to its limit. St Agericus had the last cask of wine set in the hall, blessed it, and it proved to have a miraculous and never-ending flow. Another miracle attributed to him was the delivery of a condemned malefactor at Laon, for whom he obtained pardon. St Agericus died in 588, it is said of a broken heart because he had failed to save Bertefroi. He was buried in the church of SS Andrew and Martin which he had built at Verdun. Here an abbey was established early in the eleventh century and dedicated in his honour.

Besides the information furnished by St Gregory of Tours and St Venantius Fortunatus, Hugh of Flavigny in his chronicle has gathered up the data scattered in these same sources and produced some sort of biography (see Migne, PL., vol. cliv, cc. 126—131). Two Latin lives of late date are printed in the Bollandist Catalogus cod. hagiog. Lat. Bib. Nat. Paris, vol. i, pp. 479—482 and vol. iii, pp. 78-92 neither, however, contains any material of value. See also DHG., vol. i, cc. 1223—1224.

Born about 521 in that city, he is sometimes listed as Airy or Algeric.
In 554, after serving in a local parish, Agericus succeeded St. Desiderius as bishop of Verdun. He became an advisor to King Childebert II and a patron of the poor of the region. Agericus witnessed the murder of Bertefroi, a local rebel leader, who had taken refuge in the bishop's own chapel.
The king's men violated sanctuary laws to slay the rebel.

Agericus of Verdun B (RM) (also known as Aguy, Airy) died c. 591. In 554, Saint Agericus succeeded Saint Desiderius in the see of Verdun. He was greatly admired by his contemporaries Saints Gregory of Tours and Venantius Fortunatus, as well as by King Sigebert I and his son Childebert. He was buried in his own home, which was turned into a church and around which the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Airy was built in 1037 (Attwater 2, Benedictines, Coulson).

6th v. ST TUDWAL, BISHOP

According to Breton tradition St Tudwal (Tutwal, Tugdual) was a Briton front Wales who crossed over to Brittany with his mother, his sister, some monks, and others, where the king of Dumnonia, Deroc, was his cousin. He settled at Lan Pabu in Leon (Tudwal was called Palm, i.e. Father, in Brittany) and made several other monastic foundations. He went to Paris to have his grants of land confirmed by King Childebert I and was consecrated bishop, and ended his days in the monastery of Treher, now Tréguier, of which city he is accounted the first bishop. His appellation, Pabu, led to the legend that he became pope under the name of Leo, a fable richly embroidered by Breton hagiographers.

St Tudwal does not figure in any Welsh calendars, but the name occurs in three places in the Lleyn peninsula, the northern arm of Cardigan Bay. The chief of these, a small-uninhabited island off Abersoch, is called Ynys Tudwal, and has ruins of an ancient chapel. It was here that, from May to December 1887, the holy Henry Hughes, a Welsh priest of the diocese of Shrewsbury and tertiary of the Order of Preachers, began to lead a heroic missionary life cut short by an untimely death. The feast of St Tudwal is kept in Brittany, and the Catholic Church at Barmouth is dedicated in his honour.

The three separate accounts of St Tudwal preserved to us are late (one may be of the ninth century), conflicting and unreliable. The Latin texts may best be consulted in A. de la Borderie, Les trois anciennes Vies de S. Tudwal (1887), pp. 12—45 and cf. the Analecta Bollandiana, vol. viii (1889), pp. 158-163. St Tudwal is invoked in the tenth century Breton litany originally printed by Mabillon and reproduced by Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, vol. ii, p. 82. See also LBS., vol. iv, pp. 271—274; Duine, Memento, p. 61 A. Oheix, Études hagiographiques (1919), no. 8 Mgr Duchesne in the Bulletin Critique, vol. x (1889), pp. 228-229 and, regarding the reputed relics of the saint, A. de Barthélemy in the Revue de Bretagne, vol. xxv (1901), pp. 401—413. Dom Gougaud was of the opinion that Tudwal was a native of insular Dumnonia, i.e. Devon or Cornwall.
7th v. St. Grwst A Welsh saint.  honored at Llanrwst, Clwyd, Wales.
640 St. Eligius priest generous in spirit Patron of metalworkers a considerable number of miracles
Noviómi, in Bélgio, sancti Elígii Epíscopi, cujus vitam admirándam múltiplex signórum númerus comméndat.
    At Noyon in Belgium, St. Eligius, bishop, whose life is rendered illustrious by a considerable number of miracles.
 660 ST ELIGLUS, OR ELOI, BISHOP OF NOYON
THE name of Eligius, and those of his father, Eucherius, and his mother, Terrigia, show him to have been of Roman Gaulish extraction. He was born at Chaptelat, near Limoges, about the year 588, the son of an artisan. His father, seeing in due course that the boy had a remarkable talent for engraving and smithing, placed him with a goldsmith named Abbo, who was master of the mint at Limoges. When the time of his apprenticeship was finished Eligius went into France, that  is, across the Loire, and became known to Bobbo, treasurer to Clotaire II at Paris. This king gave Eligius an order to make him a chair of state, adorned with gold and precious stones. Out of the materials furnished he made two such thrones instead of one. Clotaire admired the skill and honesty of the workman, and finding that he was a man of parts and intelligence took him into his household and made him master of the mint. His name is still to be seen on several gold coins struck at Paris and Marseilles in the reigns of Dagobert I and his son, Clovis II.
    His vita states that among other works the reliquaries of St Martin at Tours, of St Dionysius at Saint-Denis, of St Quintinus, SS Crispin and Crispinian at Soissons, St Lucian, St Germanus of Paris, St Genevieve, and others, were made by Eligius. His skill as a workman, his official position and the friendship of the king soon made him a person of consideration. He did not let the corruption of a court infect his soul or impair his virtue, but he conformed to his state and was magnificently dressed, sometimes wearing nothing but silk (a rare material in France in those days), his clothes embroidered with gold and adorned with precious stones. But he also gave large sums in alms. When a stranger asked for his house he was told, "Go to such a street, and it's where you see a crowd of poor people".
    A curious incident occurred when Clotaire tendered him the oath of allegiance. Eligius having a scruple lest this would be to swear without sufficient necessity, or fearing what he might be called upon to do or approve, excused himself with an obstinacy which for some time displeased the king. Still he persisted in his resolution and repeated his excuses as often as the king pressed him. Clotaire, at length perceiving that the motive of his reluctance was really a tenderness of conscience, assured him that his conscientious spirit was a more secure pledge of fidelity than the oaths of others.
St Eligius ransomed a number of slaves, some of whom remained in his service and were his faithful assistants throughout his life. One of them, a Saxon named Tillo, is numbered among the saints and commemorated on January 7; he was first among the seven disciples of St Eligius who followed him from the workshop to the évêché. At the court he sought the company of such men as Sulpicius, Bertharius, Desiderius and his brother, Rusticus, and in particular Audoenus, all of who became not only bishops but saints as well. Of these Audoenus (St Ouen) must have been a boy when St Eligius first knew him; to him was long attributed the authorship of the Vita Eligii, which is now commonly regarded as the work of a later monk of Noyon. By it St Eligius is described as having been at this time, "tall, with a fresh complexion, his hair and beard curling without artifice; his hands were shapely and long-fingered, his face full of angelic kindness and its expression grave and unaffected".
King Clotaire's regard for and trust in Eligius was shared by his son, Dagobert I, though, like many monarchs, he valued and took the advice of a holy man more willingly in public than in private affairs. He gave to the saint the estate of Solignac in his native Limousin for the foundation of a monastery, which in 632 was peopled with monks who followed the Rules of St Columban and St Benedict combined. These, under the eye of their founder, became noted for their good work in various arts.* [*The original charter of Solignac is preserved in the archives of Limoges. It is signed by, among others, Eligius, Adeodatus of Macon, Lupus of Limoges, Audoenus and Vincent the least of all the deacons of Christ".]

Dagobert also gave to St Eligius a house at Paris, which he converted into a nunnery and placed under the direction of St Aurea. Eligius asked for an additional piece of land to complete the buildings, and it was granted him. But he found that he had somewhat exceeded the measure of the land which had been specified. Upon which he immediately went to the king and asked his pardon. Dagobert, surprised at his careful honesty, said to his courtiers, "Some of my officers do not scruple to rob me of whole estates ; whereas Eligius is afraid of having one inch of ground which is not his". So trustworthy a man was valuable as an ambassador, and Dagobert is said to have sent him to treat with Judicael, the prince of the turbulent Bretons.
    St Eligius was chosen to be bishop of Noyon and Tournai, at the same time as his friend St Audoenus was made bishop of Rouen. They were consecrated together in the year 641. Eligius proved as good a bishop as he had been layman, and his pastoral solicitude, zeal and watchfulness were most admirable. Soon he turned his thoughts to the conversion of the infidels, who were a large majority in the Tournai part of his diocese, and a great part of Flanders was chiefly indebted to St Eligius for receiving the gospel. He preached in the territories of Antwerp, Ghent and Courtrai, and the inhabitants, who were as untamed as wild beasts, reviled him as a foreigner, "a Roman"; yet he persevered. He took care of their sick, protected them from oppression, and employed every means that charity could suggest to overcome their obstinacy. The barbarians were gradually softened, and some were converted; every year at Easter he baptized those whom he had brought to the knowledge of God during the twelve preceding months. The author of the Life tells us that St Eligius preached to the people every Sunday and feast-day and instructed them with indefatigable zeal; an abstract is given of several of his discourses united in one, by which it appears that he often borrowed whole passages from the sermons of St Caesarius of Arles. It would perhaps be more correct to say that the writer of the Life has borrowed from St Caesarius, though there are similar borrowings in the sixteen homilies attributed to St Eligius. One of these may possibly be authentic, a very interesting discourse in which the preacher warns his hearers against superstitions and pagan practices observances of January 1 and also of June 24 are mentioned, work must not be abstained from out of respect for Thursday (dies Jovis) or May month, charms, biblical and other, fortune-telling, watching the omens, and many other superstitions (some of them still used in Great Britain today) are forbidden. In their place he urges prayer, the partaking of the body and blood of Christ, anointing in time of sickness, and the sign of the cross, with the recitation of the creed and the Lord's Prayer.
At Noyon St Eligius established a house of nuns, to govern which he fetched his protégée, St Godeberta, from Paris, and one of monks, outside the city on the road to Soissons. He was very active in promoting the cultus of local saints, and it was during his episcopate that several of the reliquaries mentioned above were made, either by himself or under his direction. He took a leading part in the ecclesiastical life of his day, and for a short time immediately before his death was a valued counsellor of the queen-regent, St Bathildis. His biographer gives several illustrations of the regard which she had for him, and they had in common not only political views but also a deep solicitude for slaves (she had been carried off from England and sold when a child). The effect of this is seen at the Council of Chalon (c. 647), which forbade their sale out of the kingdom and decreed that they must be free to rest on Sundays and holidays. The only certainly authentic writing of St Eligius is a charming letter to his friend St Desiderius of Cahors.
"Remember your Eligius", he says in the course of it, "0 my Desiderius, who art dear to me as mine own self, when your soul pours itself out in prayer to the Lord...I greet you with all my heart and the most sincere affection. Our faithful companion, Dado, greets you also.” Dado is St Audoenus. When he had governed his flock nineteen years Eligius was visited with a foresight of his death, and foretold it to his clergy. Falling ill of a fever, he on the sixth day called together his household and took leave of them. They all burst into tears and he was not able to refrain from weeping with them; he commended them to God, and died a few hours later, on December 1, 660. At the news of his sickness St Bathildis set out from Paris, but arrived only the morning after his death. She had preparations made for carrying the body to her monastery at Chelles. Others were anxious that it should be taken to Paris, but the people of Noyon so strenuously opposed it that the remains of their pastor were left with them. They were afterwards translated into the cathedral, where a great part of them remain. St Eligius was for long one of the most popular saints of France, and his feast was universal in north-western Europe during the later middle ages. In addition to being the patron saint of all kinds of smiths and metalworkers, he is invoked by farriers and on behalf of horses: this on account of legendary tales about horses that have become attached to his name. He practised his art all his life, and a number of existing “pieces” are attributed to him.
Of all the Merovingian saints, the history of St Eloi possibly brings us most nearly into touch with Christian practice at that period. It is therefore not surprising that his life has given rise to a relatively abundant literature. Everything centers round the Vita S. Eligii, an unusually lengthy document, of which, as stated above, St Ouen is the reputed author. The best text is that edited by B. Krusch in MGH., Scriptores Merov., vol. iv, pp. 635—742 it is also to be found in Migne, PL., vol. lxxxvii, cc. 477—658. It seems certain that St Ouen did write some account of his friend, but the life now preserved to us was compiled at Noyon a half-century or more later; and though it probably incorporates a good deal of what St Ouen wrote, it has been recast and supplemented in many places. An excellent account of St Eligius is given by E. Vacandard in DTC., vol. iv, cc. 2340—2350, and there are several articles of the same author bearing on the subject, notably in the Revue des questions historiques for 1898 and 1899, where the question of the authenticity of the homilies attributed to the saint is very fully discussed. See also Van der Essen, Étude critique sur les saints mérovingiens (1904), pp. 324—336 H. Timerding, Die christ. Frühzeit Deutschlands, vol. i (1929), pp. 125—149; S. R. Maitland, The Dark Ages (1889), pp. 101—140; and P. Parsy, Saint Eloi (1904) in the series “Les Saints”. In the long article by H. Leclercq in DAC., vol. iv, cc. 2674—2687, a detailed account is given of the different works of art attributed to the saint’s craftsmanship. On “missionary sermons” and the homiletic influence of St Caesarius, see W. Levison, England and the Continent...(1946), appendix x, pp. 302-314, “Venus, a Man”.
Eligius (also known as Eloi) was born around 590 near Limoges in France. He became an extremely skillful metalsmith and was appointed master of the mint under King Clotaire II of Paris. Eligius developed a close friendship with the King and his reputation as an outstanding metalsmith became widespread. With his fame came fortune.
Eligius was very generous to the poor, ransomed many slaves, and built several churches and a monastery at Solignac. He also erected a major convent in Paris with property he received from Clotaire's son, King Dagobert I. In 629, Eligius was appointed Dagobert's first counselor. Later, on a mission for Dagobert, he persuaded the Breton King Judicael, to accept the authority of Dagobert.
Eligius later fulfilled his desire to serve God as a priest, after being ordained in 640. Then he was made bishop of Noyon and Tournai. His apostolic zeal led him to preach in Flanders, especially Antwerp, Ghent, and Courtai where he made many converts. Eligius died on December 1, around 660, at Noyon. He is the patron of metalworkers.
The use of one's talents and wealth for the welfare of humanity is a very true reflection of the image of God. In the case of St. Eligius, he was so well liked that he attracted many to Christ. His example should encourage us to be generous in spirit and kind and happy in demeanor.
792 Righteous Philaret the Merciful of Amnia in Asia Minor  whose name means "lover of virtue," was famed for his love for the poor.
Righteous Philaret the Merciful, son of George and Anna, was raised in piety and the fear of God. He lived during the eighth century in the village of Amneia in the Paphlagonian district of Asia Minor. His wife, Theoseba, was from a rich and illustrious family, and they had three children: a son John, and daughters Hypatia and Evanthia.
Philaret was a rich and illustrious dignitary, but he did not hoard his wealth. Knowing that many people suffered from poverty, he remembered the words of the Savior about the dread Last Judgment and about "these least ones" (Mt. 25:40); the the Apostle Paul's reminder that we will take nothing with us from this world (1 Tim 6:7); and the assertion of King David that the righteous would not be forsaken (Ps 36/37:25). Philaret, whose name means "lover of virtue," was famed for his love for the poor.

One day Ishmaelites [Arabs] attacked Paphlagonia, devastating the land and plundering the estate of Philaret. There remained only two oxen, a donkey, a cow with her calf, some beehives, and the house. But he also shared them with the poor. His wife reproached him for being heartless and unconcerned for his own family. Mildly, yet firmly he endured the reproaches of his wife and the jeers of his children. "I have hidden away riches and treasure," he told his family, "so much that it would be enough for you to feed and clothe yourselves, even if you lived a hundred years without working."

The saint's gifts always brought good to the recipient. Whoever received anything from him found that the gift would multiply, and that person would become rich. Knowing this, a certain man came to St Philaret asking for a calf so that he could start a herd. The cow missed its calf and began to bellow. Theoseba said to her husband, "You have no pity on us, you merciless man, but don't you feel sorry for the cow? You have separated her from her calf." The saint praised his wife, and agreed that it was not right to separate the cow and the calf. Therefore, he called the poor man to whom he had given the calf and told him to take the cow as well.

That year there was a famine, so St Philaret took the donkey and went to borrow six bushels of wheat from a friend of his. When he returned home, a poor man asked him for a little wheat, so he told his wife to give the man a bushel. Theoseba said, "First you must give a bushel to each of us in the family, then you can give away the rest as you choose." Philaretos then gave the man two bushels of wheat. Theoseba said sarcastically, "Give him half the load so you can share it." The saint measured out a third bushel and gave it to the man. Then Theoseba said, "Why don't you give him the bag, too, so he can carry it?" He gave him the bag. The exasperated wife said, "Just to spite me, why not give him all the wheat." St Philaret did so.

Now the man was unable to lift the six bushels of wheat, so Theoseba told her husband to give him the donkey so he could carry the wheat home. Blessing his wife, Philaret gave the donkey to the man, who went home rejoicing. Theoseba and the children wept because they were hungry.

The Lord rewarded Philaret for his generosity: when the last measure of wheat was given away, a old friend sent him forty bushels. Theoseba kept most of the wheat for herself and the children, and the saint gave away his share to the poor and had nothing left. When his wife and children were eating, he would go to them and they gave him some food. Theoseba grumbled saying, "How long are you going to keep that treasure of yours hidden? Take it out so we can buy food with it."

During this time the Byzantine empress Irene (797-802) was seeking a bride for her son, the future emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitos (780-797). Therefore, emissaries were sent throughout all the Empire to find a suitable girl, and the envoys came to Amneia.

When Philaret and Theoseba learned that these most illustrious guests were to visit their house, Philaret was very happy, but Theoseba was sad, for they did not have enough food. But Philaret told his wife to light the fire and to decorate their home. Their neighbors, knowing that imperial envoys were expected, brought everything required for a rich feast.

The envoys were impressed by the saint's daughters and granddaughters. Seeing their beauty, their deportment, their clothing, and their admirable qualities, the envoys agreed that Philaret' granddaughter, Maria was exactly what they were looking for. This Maria exceeded all her rivals in quality and modesty and indeed became Constantine's wife, and the emperor rewarded Philaret.

Thus fame and riches returned to Philaret. But just as before, this holy lover of the poor generously distributed alms and provided a feast for the poor. He and his family served them at the meal. Everyone was astonished at his humility and said: "This is a man of God, a true disciple of Christ."

He ordered a servant to take three bags and fill one with gold, one with silver, and one with copper coins. When a beggar approached, Philaret ordered his servant to bring forth one of the bags, whichever God's providence would ordain. Then he would reach into the bag and give to each person, as much as God willed.

St Philaret refused to wear fine clothes, nor would he accept any imperial rank. He said it was enough for him to be called the grandfather of the Empress. The saint reached ninety years of age and knew his end was approaching. He went to the Rodolpheia ("The Judgment") monastery in Constantinople. He gave some gold to the Abbess and asked her to allow him to be buried there, saying that he would depart this life in ten days.

He returned home and became ill. On the tenth day he summoned his family, he exhorted them to imitate his love for the poor if they desired salvation. Then he fell asleep in the Lord. He died in the year 792 and was buried in the Rodolpheia Judgment monastery in Constantinople.

The appearance of a miracle after his death confirmed the sainthood of Righteous Philaret. As they bore the body of the saint to the cemetery, a certain man, possessed by the devil, followed the funeral procession and tried to overturn the coffin. When they reached the grave, the devil threw the man down on the ground and went out of him. Many other miracles and healings also took place at the grave of the saint.

After the death of the righteous Philaret, his wife Theoseba worked at restoring monasteries and churches devastated during a barbarian invasion.

1232 BENTVOGLIA great charity; zeal for souls; inspiring earnestness of his sermons;  levitating

BENTVOGLIA a native of San Severino in the Marches, joined the Franciscan Order in the lifetime of the founder, and though his family was well-to-do a number of his near relatives subsequently followed his example. The imperfect records preserved to us do not seem to supply anything very characteristic or personal regarding this beatus. He, no doubt, shared in full measure the love of poverty and simplicity which was so conspicuous in the first generation of the Friars Minor. We are told of his great charity, his zeal for souls and of the inspiring earnestness of his sermons. The parish priest of San Severino is said in the Fioretti to have been brought to the order by witnessing a rapture of Bd Bentivoglia when praying in a wood, in the course of which he saw this holy brother raised for a long time high above the ground. In the same source we read how, “while sojourning once alone at Trave Bonanti in order to take charge of and serve a certain leper, he (Bentivoglia) received commandment from his superior to depart thence and go unto another place, which was about fifteen miles distant, and, not willing to abandon the leper, he took him with him with great fervour of charity, and placed him on his shoulders, and carried him from the dawn till the rising of the sun all the fifteen miles of the way, even to the place where he was sent, which was called Monte San Vicino, which journey, if he had been an eagle, he could not have flown in so short a time, and this divine miracle put the whole country round in amazement and admiration”. He died, where he was born, at San Severino on Christmas day, 1232.

See Mazzara, Leggendario Francescano (168o), vol. i, pp. 239—240 Léon Auréole Séraphique (Eng. trans.), vol. ii, pp. 31-33; and Actus B. Francisci et sociorum ejus, edited by Paul Sabatier, p. 160 In deference to the reading of Sabatier’s manuscripts I have spelt the name Bentivoglia rather than Bentivoglio.
1283 Blessed John of Vercelli sixth master general of the Dominicans tireless energy and his commitment to simplicity

1283 BD JOHN OF VERCELLI
THIS John was born near Vercelli about the year 1205, but he is not first certainly heard of till forty years later, when he was prior of the Dominicans at Vercelli and a marked man for his abilities and character. After filling various offices and missions he was elected sixth master general of the Order of Preachers in 1264, an office which he held with great distinction for nineteen years. John was rather short of stature—in his first letter to his brethren he refers to himself as a “poor little man”—and so amiable of expression that he is said to have required of his socius that he should be of a severe and awe-inspiring countenance. But he made up for lack of size by sufficiency of energy and was tireless in his visitation and correction of the Dominican houses up and down Europe; nor would he on these journeys dispense himself from the fasts either of the Church or of his order. Immediately on his election to the see of Rome, Bd Gregory X imposed on John of Vercelli and his friars the task of again pacifying the quarrelling states of Italy, and three years later he was ordered to draw up a schema for the second ecumenical Council of Lyons. At the council he met Jerome of Ascoli (afterwards Pope Nicholas IV), who had succeeded St Bonaventure as minister general of the Franciscans, and the two addressed a joint letter to the whole body of friars. Later on they were sent together by the Holy See to mediate between Philip III of France and Alfonso X of Castile, continuing the work of peace-maker, in which John excelled.

Bd John of Vercelli was one of the early propagators of devotion to the name of Jesus, which the Council of Lyons prescribed in reparation for Albigensian blasphemies. Bd Gregory X selected John particularly, as head of a great body of preachers, to spread this devotion, and the master general at once addressed all his provincial priors accordingly. It was decided that there should be an altar of the Holy Name in every Dominican church and that confraternities against blasphemy and profanity should be formed. In 1278 Bd John sent a visitor into England, where some friars had been attacking the teaching of St Thomas Aquinas, then lately dead, whom John had reappointed to the chair of theology at Paris after the refusal of St Albert the Great. Two years later John came himself to Oxford, where a general chapter was held. Like Humbert of Romans, his pre­decessor, he refused episcopacy and a curial office at Rome; but he was induced to withdraw his resignation of the generalate, which he retained until his death at Montpellier on November 30, 1283. The cultus of Bd John of Vercelli was approved in 1903.

A very full life was composed in French by P. Mothon and it has been translated into Italian, Vita del B. Giovanni da Vercelli (1903) naturally also Fr Mortier in his Histoire des Maîtres Généraux 0.P., vol. ii, pp. 1-170, gives much space to this important generalate. A careful account in briefer compass is that of M. de Waresquiel, Le bx Jean de Verceil (1903). See also Taurisano, Catalogus Hagiographicus 0.P.

John was born near Vercelli in northwest Italy in the early 13th century. Little is known of his early life. He entered the Dominican Order in the 1240s and served in various leadership capacities over the years. Elected sixth master general of the Dominicans in 1264, he served for almost two decades.  Known for his tireless energy and his commitment to simplicity, John made personal visits—typically on foot—to almost all the Dominican houses, urging his fellow friars to strictly observe the rules and constitutions of the Order.
He was tapped by two popes for special tasks. Pope Gregory X enlisted the help of John and his fellow Dominicans in helping to pacify the States of Italy that were quarreling with one another. John was also called upon to draw up a framework for the Second Council of Lyons in 1274. It was at that council that he met Jerome of Ascoli (the man who would later become Pope Nicholas IV), then serving as minister general of the Franciscans. Some time later the two men were sent by Rome to mediate a dispute involving King Philip III of France. Once again, John was able to draw on his negotiating and peacemaking skills.

Following the Second Council of Lyons, Pope Gregory selected John to spread devotion to the name of Jesus. John took the task to heart, requiring that every Dominican church contain an altar of the Holy Name; groups were also formed to combat blasphemy and profanity.
Toward the end of his life John was offered the role of patriarch of Jerusalem, but declined. He remained Dominican master general until his death.
Comment: The need for peacemakers is certainly as keen today as in the 10th century! As followers of Jesus, John’s role falls to us. Each of us can do something to ease the tensions in our families, in the workplace, among people of different races and creeds.
13th v. Blessed Christian of Perugia one of the first disciples of Saint Dominic  OP (PC).
As one of the first disciples of Saint Dominic, Blessed Christian helped in the foundation of the friary at Perugia (Benedictines).
1345 BD GERARD CAGNOLI cult to this follower of St Francis confirmed 1908; simplicity and devotion admiration of all; many miracles of healing before a little shrine of his patron St Louis; assisted cooking by angel; ecstasy, levitating
   The cult which from time immemorial has been paid at Palermo and elsewhere to this follower of St Francis was confirmed in 1908. Gerard, born about 1270, was the only son of noble parents in the north of Italy. He lost his father at the age of ten, and his mother not many years afterwards.
   Resisting the persuasions of his relatives to marry, he distributed his goods to the poor and led, until he was forty, the life of a pilgrim and hermit, spending most of his time in the wilder parts of Sicily. In the early years of the fourteenth century, the holiness and miracles of St Louis of Anjou, who though heir to a throne had become a Franciscan, were much talked about. Gerard took him for his patron, and about the year 1310 ended by joining the same order.

  While he discharged duties of a lay-brother, his simplicity and devotion were the admiration of all. On one great feast-day, when he was acting as cook, being absorbed in prayer, he seemed to have forgotten all about the dinner; when, late in the morning, the father guardian, apprised that even the fire had not yet been lighted, remonstrated with the brother on his neglect.
Gerard, quite unperturbed, took to the kitchen, where, assisted, it is said, by an unknown youth of radiant beauty, he produced, punctually to the moment, a more delicious meal than the community had ever before eaten.

   Many miracles were attributed to the intercession of the holy brother. For example, it was said that, finding a child crying because it had dropped and broken the glass beaker it was carrying home to its mother, he collected the fragments, blessed them and restored the vessel to the child as sound as it had been before. His miracles of healing were commonly performed by anointing the sick with the oil which burned in a lamp before a little shrine of his patron St Louis. His diet was bread and water, he slept upon a plank, he scourged himself to blood, and there were many stories told of ecstasies in which he was seen surrounded with light and raised from the ground. He died on December 30, 1345.
See the decree of the Congregation of Rites in Analecta Ecclesiastica (1908), vol. xvi, pp. 293—295 B. Mazzara, Leggendario Francescano (1680), vol. iii, pp. 767—773; and Analecta Franciscana (1897), vol. ii, pp. 489-497.
1482 Blessed Antony Bonfadini sent to the mission in the Holy Land miracles were reported at his tomb  OFM (AC)

 1482 Bd ANTONY BONFADINI
THE Bonfadini were a good family of Ferrara, where Antony was born in the year 1400. When he was thirty-nine, he became a friar minor of the Observance at the friary of the Holy Ghost in his native town, and soon distinguished himself as a teacher and preacher. He was sent on the Franciscan mission in the Holy Land, and on a journey from there, in his old age, he died and was buried at the village of Cotignola in the Romagna. A year later his body was found to be still incorrupt, and miracles were reported at his tomb. Accordingly, when some years later the Friars Minor made a foundation at Cotignola, they were given permission to translate the body to their church. The cultus of Bd Antony was approved in 1901.

Although the continued cultus is well attested, we know little detail of the life of this holy friar. Some account is furnished by such chroniclers as Mazzara in Leggendario Francescano, vol. iii (1680), pp. 601-602. See also the Acta Ord. Fratrum Minorum, vol. xx (1901), pp. 105 seq. and DHG., vol. iii, c. 763.

Born at Ferrara, Italy, 1400; died at Cotignola, diocese of Faenza, 1482; cultus confirmed in 1901. After becoming an Observant Franciscan, Blessed Antony was sent to the mission in the Holy Land (Attwater 2, Benedictines).
1539 Bl. John Beche abbot Martyr England friend of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More.
John was abbot of Colchester Abbey. A Benedictine, he received a doctorate from Oxford in 1515 . He took the Oath of Supremacy in 1534 , but then saw his own abbey being plundered. The deaths of Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More horrified him as well. When he refuted King Henry VIII’s right to suppress the English monasteries, he was arrested for treason and hanged, drawn, and quartered at Colchester. John was beatified in 1895.

1539 Bl. Richard Writing, Abbot of Glastonbury, and his companions, martyrs

The prestige conferred both by legend and history gives Glastonbury a literally unique place among the numerous great monasteries of ancient England, and, if it be impossible to accept the story of its foundation by St Joseph of Arimathaea (and several other stories about it), the very existence of such a legend testifies to the veneration in which our ancestors held the place. It is therefore fitting that, at a time when many ecclesiastics, secular and regular, and distinguished lay-people fell away lamentably front their calling as Catholic Christians, the last abbot of Glastonbury should have died for his faith at the hands of the civil power.
     Richard Whiting was born at Wrington in Somerset, probably soon after 1460, and was educated at Cambridge (Magdalene?), where he took his MA., in 1483, and returned for his S.T.D., in 1505. In all likelihood he was a monk before the first date. He was ordained priest at Wells in. 1501, and for some years held the office of chamber­lain in the monastery. Upon the death of Abbot Bere, in 1525, the community requested Cardinal Wolsey to name a successor. He chose Dom Richard Whiting “an upright and religious monk, a provident and discreet man, and a priest com­mendable for his life, virtues, and learning”. Among those who signed the commission was St Thomas More.

For ten years his rule was quiet and uneventful, till in 1534 came the summons to take the oath of supremacy, that the king was head of the Church in England. With the exception of More, Fisher, the Carthusian monks and the Franciscan Observants, there were few who stood out from the first against this. Abbot Whiting and his monks took the oath when it was tendered to them.

   In the following year the royal commissioners visited Glastonbury, and reported (with regret) that the brethren were kept in such good order that they could not offend and assured the monks that nothing was intended against them. A year later the lesser monasteries were suppressed, and by the time the greater ones were con­demned, in 1539, Glastonbury was the only religious house left in Somerset. Three commissioners arrived there in September. They impounded various incriminating documents (a book against the king’s divorce, copies of papal bulls, and a Life of St Thomas Becket) and questioned Abbot Whiting. But now he refused to surrender his charge and showed “his cankerous and traitorous mind against the King’s Majesty and his succession”. So they carried him off to London, to the Tower. Mr Commissioner Layton sent after him to Cromwell a book of evidences “of divers and sundry treasons” committed by the abbot, which is not extant and the contents are unknown. But in consequence of it Cromwell noted in his Remembrances:  Item, the Abbot of Glaston to be tried at Glaston, and also executed there”—a pretty anticipation of the course of in­justice. There is a good deal of uncertainty as to what actually took place whether Abbot Whiting was tried in London or in Wells or at both places; but he was condemned to death. The indictment was not allowed to survive, or even, apparently, to be made public, but there is general agreement that it was for high treason (in which case the abbot was entitled to be tried by his peers in the House of Lords), and the available evidence points to denial of the royal supremacy as having been the specific offence.

Bd Richard arrived at Wells with his escort on Friday, November 14, 1539. The next day he was hurried to Glastonbury, was refused leave to make a farewell visit to his abbey (he apparently did not know it was deserted, the community scattered), and was dragged on a hurdle to the top of the Tor, a hill some 500 feet high overlooking the town. There, beneath the tower of St Michael’s chapel, the aged man, “very weak and sickly”, sustained barbarities of hanging and disembowelling. Before the evening his head was displayed above the gate of his monastery, and his quarters had been sent off to Wells, Bridgewater, Ilchester and Bath. * {* The Catholic church of St John built on the place where his limbs were exposed at Bath.}

After the abbot had been despatched, two of his monks suffered in a like manner. These were Bd JOHN THORNE, treasurer of the abbey church, and Bd ROGER JAMES, its sacristan. Their offence was called sacrilege, in that they had hidden various treasures of their church to save them from the king’s hands. It is likely that this was also one of the charges against Whiting.

The memory of the martyred abbot was long held in benediction by the people of Somerset, and he is not forgotten in Glastonbury and its neighbourhood today. It was probably on the evidence of Father William Good, S.J., a contemporary and a native of Glastonbury, that Pope Gregory XVI permitted his representation among the martyrs on the walls of the chapel of the Venerabile, and so led to his equipollent beatification with the others in 1895.

The feast of these three martyrs is observed in the diocese of Clifton on the day of their death, and in the archdiocese of Westminster and by the English Bene­dictine Congregation on December 1, together with the other two martyred abbots, Hugh Faringdon and John Beche.

The principal materials for this and the two following notices are to be found in the calendar of Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII, edited for the Record Office by J. S. Brewer, James Gairdner and R. H. Brodie. The story of Richard Whiting is told in some detail by F. A. Gasquet in The Last Abbot of Glastonbury (1895), on which also consult Canon Dixon’s notice in the English Historical Review, vol. xii (1897), pp. 781—785. The most accurate account of the martyr is that furnished by Bede Camm In LEM., vol. (1904), pp. 327—412.
1539 Bb. Hugh Faringdon, Abbot of Reading, and his companions, Martyrs
BD HUGH was commonly called Faringdon probably after his birthplace in Berkshire, but his true surname was Cook and he bore (or assumed) the arms of Cook of Kent. He became a monk of Reading, and while discharging the office of sub-chamberlain was elected abbot in 1520. It was an important abbacy, carrying a seat in the House of Lords and in Convocation, and the holder was a county magistrate.
Dom Hugh took an active part in the duties involved, though hostile chroniclers have called him “utterly without learning”. This was not the opinion of Leonard Cox, master of Reading Grammar School, who dedicated to him a book on rhetoric. He maintained an excellent discipline in his monastery, and could not abide the preachers of the new doctrines, whom he called “heretics and knaves”. But at first he was on good terms with Henry VIII—too good terms. The king visited him and called him “my own abbot” the abbot sent presents of hunting-knives and of trout netted in the Kennet. He went further, for he signed the petition to Pope Clement VII for the nullity of Henry’s marriage and supplied him with a list of books likely to help his case. And in 1536 he signed Convocation’s articles of faith that virtually acknowledged the royal supremacy over the English church. At the end of 1537 he still enjoyed the royal favour, and took a prominent part in the funeral of Queen Jane Seymour at Windsor. A few weeks later he offended the king by reporting to Cromwell and to the neighbouring abbot of Abingdon the rumour that Henry was dead. He was examined by a commission, but released.

In 1539 the greater abbeys were suppressed. It was known that the abbot of Reading would not surrender his, and in the late summer he was consigned to the Tower of London, charged with treason. With him were tried Bd John Eynon and Bd John Rugg. Eynon was a priest of St Giles’s church at Reading, who had already been in trouble for writing and distributing a copy of Robert Aske’s proclamation of the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536. Rugg was a prebendary of Chichester living in retirement at Reading Abbey. Among the charges against him was that he had preserved a relic of the hand of St Anastasius, “knowing that his Majesty had sent visitors to the said abbey to put down such idolatry”. * {* It has been suggested by Dom Bede Camm that the hand preserved at the Catholic church of St Peter at Marlow, known to have been found in Reading, is this very relic. See LEM., vol. 1, p. 376, note.

 These two priests are generally accounted to have been monks, but it is not certain they were. As in the case of Bd Richard Whiting, the terms of the indictment are not known, but it was not doubted at the time that it was primarily for denying the royal supremacy, and Bd Hugh spoke clearly on the scaffold. The supremacy of the Holy See in spiritual matters was, he said, “ the common faith of those who had the best right to declare the true teaching of the English church”. The execution of all three took place outside Reading Abbey gateway, on the same day as that of the Glastonbury monks.

These martyrs were beatified by equipollence in 1895. Their feast is kept in the diocese of Portsmouth on November 14, and by Westminster and the English Benedictines with Bd. Richard Whiting and John Beche on December 1.

The books mentioned in the notice of Bd Richard Whiting also contain whatever in­formation is available concerning the Abbot of Reading; see in particular pp. 121-158 of Cardinal Gasquet’s book, and pp. 358—387 in that of Bede Camm.

1539 BD JOHN BECHE, ABBOT OF COLCHESTER, MARTYR.

THE martyr who was equivalently beatified in 1895 as John Beche was also known as Thomas Marshall; the last seems to have been his proper surname, and Thomas was perhaps his name “in religion”. His birthplace and parentage are not known; he took his D.D. at Oxford in 1515 and for some years was abbot of St Werburgh’s at Chester. In 1533 he was elected abbot of St John’s, Colchester. He was a friend of More and Fisher and his new community was opposed to the ecclesiastical policy of Henry VIII, but in the following year the abbot and sixteen monks, like their fellows throughout the land, took the oath of royal supremacy. The writer of an early Life of St John Fisher, who refers to Dom John Beche as “excelling many of the abbots of his day in devotion, piety and learning”, states that he first came under suspicion owing to a “traitorous guest”, who encouraged him to speak against the execution of More and Fisher and then reported his words to the king’s advisers. In November 1538 commissioners were sent to dissolve Colchester Abbey, to whom Bd John said: “The king shall never have my house but against my will and my heart, for I know by my learning that he cannot take it by right and law. Wherefore in my conscience I cannot be content, nor shall he have it with my heart and will.”
Within a year the abbot was in the Tower, charged with treason, in the same way and for the same reason as his fellow-abbots, Richard Whiting and Hugh Faringdon.

During the first four days of November 1539 two commissioners were at Brentwood, in Essex, examining witnesses against Beche, and evidence was given that he had spoken against the suppression of the monasteries, against the king’s marriage with Anne Boleyn, against the royal supremacy, and in favour of the full prerogatives of the Holy See. When interrogated on these accusations the abbot, under duress of captivity and fear, tried to explain them away and affirmed the king’s supremacy as against the pope’s “usurped authority”, and asked Henry “to be good to me for the love of God” * {* The document to this effect, in Abbot Beche’s own handwriting, came to light only after his case had been examined at Rome. When his cause of canonization is brought forward it will be taken into consideration. A decree of equipollent beatification is only permissive. But he seems to have retracted all schismatical admissions at his trial.}

He was nevertheless sent back to Colchester to be tried. There is no record of the proceedings, but one of the judges reported to Cromwell that the prisoner” acknowledged himself in substance to be guilty according to the effect of the indictment “. He was duly sentenced, and was hanged, drawn and quartered at Colchester on December 1, 1539.
Westminster and the English Benedictines keep the feast of Bd John Beche in the diocese of Brentwood and, with the other two martyred abbots. An anonymous pamphleteer, of the king’s party, gave valuable testimony to the cause for which these martyrs died when he wrote scornfully: “It is not to be doubted but his Holiness will look upon their pains as upon Thomas Becket’s, seeing it is for like matter.”

Here again the authorities are the same as in the two previous notices. See Gasquet, pp. 159—176, and Camm, pp. 388—407.
1580 St. Edmund Campion; convert priest; Jesuit; object of most intensive manhunts English history

 1581 Bd Edmund Campion, Martyr
Edmund Campion senior, was a bookseller in the city of London, and he and his wife were Catholics until the time of Queen Elizabeth. Edmund junior was born about 1540, and when he was ten was admitted to the “Bluecoat School” by the interest of the Grocers’ Company. He was an extraordinarily promising boy, and when fifteen was given a scholarship in St John’s College, Oxford, then newly founded by Sir Thomas White. Two years later Campion was appointed a junior fellow, and he made a great reputation as an orator; he was chosen to speak at the re-burial of Lady Amy Dudley (Robsart), at the funeral of Sir Thomas White, and before Elizabeth when she visited Oxford in a 1566: as a bluecoat boy he had been selected to make a speech of welcome to her predecessor at St Paul’s thirteen years before. His talents and personality earned him the goodwill and patronage of the queen, of Cecil and of Leicester; to the last-named he dedicated his History of Ireland, and Cecil later referred to him as “one of the diamonds of England”.

He had taken the oath of royal supremacy and, although his allegiance to Protes­tantism was much shaken by his reading in the fathers, he was persuaded by Dr Cheney, Bishop of Gloucester, to receive the diaconate of the Anglican Church. At Oxford he was very popular (Dr Gregory Martin, with whom he was friendly, wrote from Rome warning him against ambition) and was the centre of a group of personal disciples, rather like Newman two hundred and fifty years later. But the taking of orders in a church about which he was doubtful began to trouble him and, at the end of his term as junior proctor of the university in 1569, the Grocers’ Company (whose exhibitioner he was) being restive about his papistical tendencies, he went to Dublin, where an attempt was being made to revive its university. While there he wrote a short history of the country.*{ * He said of the Irish “The people are thus inclined religious, frank; amorous, irefull, sufferable of paines infinite, very glorious, many sorcerers, excellent horsemen, delighted with warres, great almes-givers, passing in hospitalitie the lewder sort both clarkes and laymen are sensuall and loose to leachery above measure. The same being vertuously bred up or reformed are such mirrours of holinesse and austeritie, that other nations retaine but a shewe or shadow of devotion in comparison of them.”}  The work was not well received in Ireland.

Campion had left Oxford “full of remorse of conscience and detestation of mind” for himself as an Anglican minister, and he took no pains to conceal his sentiments. Accordingly, after the publication of Pope St Pius’s bull against Elizabeth, he was in danger as a suspected person.

In 1571 he returned to England in disguise, was present at the trial of Bd John Storey in Westminster Hall, and then made for Douay. He was stopped on the way for having no passport, but was allowed to escape on giving up his luggage and money. One of his first actions at Douay was to send a long and striking letter, a “vehement epistle”, to Dr Cheney, who had strong Catholic leanings. +{+  Cheney may have been reconciled secretly before his death, though Campion knew nothing of it. The only other Protestant bishop in England who may have died a Catholic was also of Gloucester Dr Godfrey Goodman (1582-1655).}

Campion took his B.D. and was ordained subdeacon at Douay, and then, in 1573, went to Rome and was admitted to the Society of Jesus. As there was yet no English province he was sent to that of Bohemia, and after his novitiate at Brno went to the college of Prague to teach.

In view of the great success of the Society among the Protestants of Germany, Bohemia and Poland, Dr Allen persuaded Pope Gregory XIII to send some Jesuits to England, and at the end of 1579 Father Edmund Campion and Father Robert Persons were chosen as the first to be sent. The night before he left Prague one of the fathers, by an irresistible impulse, wrote over the door of his cell the words: P. Edmundus Campianus, Martyr.

 He left Rome in the spring of one of the party whose adventures are so well described in Bd Ralph Sher­win’s letter to Ralph Bickley.  When they got to the Protestant stronghold of Geneva Campion pretended to be an Irish serving man called Patrick, and they all seem to have behaved with that reckless cheerfulness that makes more serious-minded people think the English mad. At the gate on leaving, after having had a discussion with Beza, Campion disputed with a minister, and then left the “poor shackerel” to be ragged by the rest.*{*When someone asked “Mr Patrick”: “Cujas es?” he replied, “Signor, no.” The questioner tried again: “Potesne loqui latine?” Whereupon the Latin orator and professor of rhetoric shrugged his shoulders with a puzzled expression and walked away.}

From Saint-Omer Persons set out for England disguised as a returning soldier from the Lowlands, followed by Campion as a jewel merchant, with his servant, a coadjutor-brother, Ralph Emerson.
The Jesuits were not welcomed by all the Catholics, many of whom feared what new troubles the arrival of representatives of the redoubtable Society might bring on their heads and it was necessary for the two to declare on oath that “their coming was only Apostolical, to treat of matters of religion in truth and simplicity, and to attend to the gaining of souls without any pretence or knowledge of matters of state”. Their coming was known to the government, and they soon had to leave London, Campion going to work in Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Northamp­tonshire, where he made some notable converts. He wrote to the father general in Rome: “I ride about some piece of the country every day. The harvest is wonderful great…I cannot long escape the hands of the heretics…I am in apparel to myself very ridiculous. I often change it and my name also. I read letters sometimes myself that, in the first front, tell news that Campion is taken, which roused in every place where I come so filleth my ears with the sound thereof that fear itself hath taken away all fear.”

After meeting Persons in London, where persecution was very hot, he went to Lancashire, where he preached almost daily and with conspicuous success, pursued always by spies and several times nearly taken: fifty years later his sermons were still remembered by those who had heard them. All this time he was writing a Latin treatise, which was called Decem Rationes because in it he expounded ten reasons why he had challenged the most learned Protestants openly to discuss religion with him. The greatest difficulty was found in getting this work printed, but eventually it was achieved on a secret press at the house of Dame Cecilia Stonor, in Stonor Park, Berkshire, and on “Commemoration”, June 27, 1581, four hundred copies of it were found distributed on the benches of the university church at Oxford. It made a tremendous sensation, +{+ This book, Libellus aureus, vere digito Del scriptus, has gone through forty-eight editions, printed in all parts of Europe, of which five have been English translations. Of the original edition only four copies are known. Owing to shortage of type it had to be set and printed one sheet at a time, and it took half a dozen men nine weeks. “Campion’s Challenge” or “Brag”, addressed to the Privy Council, had been written for publication in case he were captured, to try and ensure him a fair hearing but the document got spread abroad prematurely and directed the attention of the whole country to him and efforts to capture the writer were redoubled. Three weeks later he was taken.

After the publication of Decem Rationes it was judged prudent that Bd Edmund should retire to Norfolk, and on the way he stayed at the house of Mrs Yate at Lyford, near Wantage. On Sunday, July j6, some forty people assembled there to assist at Mass and hear him preach, but among them was a traitor. Within the next twelve hours the house was searched three times, and at the last Ed Edmund was found with two other priests concealed above the gateway. They were taken to the Tower, from Colnbrook onward being pinioned and Edmund labelled: “Cam­pion, the seditious Jesuit.” After three days in the ‘little-ease “ he was inter­viewed by the Earls of Bedford and Leicester and, it is said, the queen herself, who tried to bribe him into apostasy. Other attempts of the same sort having failed he was racked; and arrests were then made of some who had sheltered him, whose names had already been known to the government but which, it was lyingly said, Campion had betrayed. While still broken by torture he was four times confronted by Protestant dignitaries, whose questions, objections and insults he answered with spirit and effectiveness.* {* Among those present who were permanently affected by his words and bearing was Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, afterwards himself a martyr and now beatified.}
 He was then racked again, so fiercely that when asked the next day how he felt he could reply, “Not ill, because not at all.”

No handle could be found against him, so on November 14 he was indicted in Westminster Hall, with Ralph Sherwin, Thomas Cottam, Luke Kirby and others, on the fabricated charge of having plotted at Rome and Rheims to raise a rebellion in England and coming into the realm for that purpose. When told to plead to the charge he was too weak to move his arms, and one of his companions, kissing his hand, held it up for him. Campion conducted the defence both of himself and the others with much ability, protesting their loyalty to the queen, demolishing the evidence, discrediting the witnesses, and showing that their only offence was their religion. The packed jury brought them in “guilty”, but it took them an hour to make up their minds to do it. Before sentence of death Ed Edmund addressed the court: “... In condemning us you condemn all your own an­cestors. . . . To be condemned with these old lights—not of England only, but of the world—by their degenerate descendants is both gladness and glory to us. God lives. Posterity will live. Their judgement is not so liable to corruption as that of those who now sentence us to death.”

Campion’s sister came to him with a message from 1-lopton, offering him a good benefice as the price of apostasy, and he also had a visit from Eliot, who had both betrayed and given evidence against him, and now went in fear of his life. Ed Edmund freely forgave him and gave him a letter of recommendation to a nobleman in Germany, where he would be safe. On December i, a wet, muddy day, Cam­pion, Sherwin, and Briant were drawn to Tyburn together, and there executed with the usual barbarities. On the scaffold Ed Edmund again refused to give an opinion of the pope’s bull against Elizabeth, and publicly prayed for her: “your queen and my queen, unto whom I wish a long reign with all prosperity”. Some of the blood of this man, “admirable, subtle, exact and of sweet disposition”, splashed on to a young gentleman, one Henry Walpole, who was present: he too became a Jesuit and a beatified martyr. +{+ Among the poems of Walpole on the life and death of Ed Edmund one lyric, “Why do I use my paper, ink and pen”, was beautifully set to music by William Byrd, who was himself frequently “presented” for recusancy. It was first published in his Psalms, Sonnets and Songs in Five Parts in 1588, among the “Songs of Sadness and Piety”.

The feast of Bd Edmund Campion is kept not only by the Society of Jesus but as well by the dioceses of Northampton, Portsmouth, Brno and Prague.

We are very fully informed concerning the mission of Bd Edmund Campion and Father Persons to England, though the sources from which we learn the details are too numerous and scattered to be enumerated here. In the articles which Richard Simpson contributed to The Rambler from 1856 to 1858, and in the full biography which he published in 1867, there is very adequate documentation and this is further supplemented in the account of Campion which fills pp. 266—357 in Camm, LEM., vol. ii. Special mention, however, should be made of the Vita et martyrium Edmundi Campiani, by P. Bombino, printed at Antwerp in 1618 of Father Persons’ account of the journey to England in vol. ii of the Catholic Record Society’s Publications (1906), pp. 186—201 of Cardinal Allen’s Martyrdom of Father Campion...(ed. Pollen, 1908) and of Fr J. H. Pollen’s numerous articles in The Month (notably September 1897, January and December 1905, and January 1910). A very attractive life of Bd Edmund, free from the “Cisalpine pleading” which prejudices Richard Simpson’s work, was published by Evelyn Waugh in 1935. It contains on pp. 224—225 a useful bibliography of relevant literature, to which may now be added A. C. Southern, Elizabethan Recusant Prose (1950), cap. iii. On Campion’s relics see especially Bede Camm, Forgotten Shrines (191,), pp. 377—378. 

Edmund was born in London, the son of a bookseller. He was raised a Catholic, given a scholarship to St. John's College, Oxford, when fifteen, and became a fellow when only seventeen. His brilliance attracted the attention of such leading personages as the Earl of Leicester, Robert Cecil, and even Queen Elizabeth. He took the Oath of Supremacy acknowledging Elizabeth head of the church in England and became an Anglican deacon in 1564. Doubts about Protestanism increasingly beset him, and in 1569 he went to Ireland where further study convinced him he had been in error, and he returned to Catholicism.
Forced to flee the persecution unleashed on Catholics by the excommunication of Elizabeth by Pope Pius V, he went to Douai, France, where he studied theology, joined the Jesuits, and then went to Brno, Bohemia, the following year for his novitiate. He taught at the college of Prague and in 1578 was ordained there. He and Father Robert Persons were the first Jesuits chosen for the English mission and were sent to England in 1580. His activities among the Catholics, the distribution of his Decem rationes at the University Church in Oxford, and the premature publication of his famous Brag (which he had written to present his case if he was captured) made him the object of one of the most intensive manhunts in English history. He was betrayed at Lyford, near Oxford, imprisoned in the Tower of London, and when he refused to apostatize when offered rich inducements to do so, was tortured and then hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn on December 1 on the technical charge of treason, but in reality because of his priesthood. He was canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970 as one of the forty English and Welsh Martyrs. His feast day is December 1.
1581 BD RALPH SHERWIN; priest , MARTYR; M.A. in 1574, “being then accounted”, says Anthony a Wood, “an acute philosopher and an excellent Grecian and Hebrician”. The next year he was reconciled to the Church, went to Douay, and was there ordained priest in 1577.
Sir WILLIAM PETRE, secretary of state to Henry VIII and the three following sovereigns and founder of the fortunes of his house, founded eight fellowships in Exeter College, Oxford, to one of which he nominated, in 1568, Ralph Sherwin, a young gentleman of Rodsley in Derbyshire. He took his M.A. in 1574, “being then accounted”, says Anthony a Wood, “an acute philosopher and an excellent Grecian and Hebrician”. The next year he was reconciled to the Church, went to Douay, and was there ordained priest in 1577.  A few months later he went to the English College at Rome, where he took a leading part in the deplorable dissensions between the English and Welsh students, and was one of the four who petitioned Pope Gregory XIII to entrust the direction of the college to the Society of Jesus. This was eventually done, and Sherwin’s name stands first in the register under the new régime of those who declared their willingness to go on the English mission at any time. He was one of the party which, under the leadership of Bishop Goldwell, set out in 1580. At Milan they were the guests of St Charles Borromeo for a week, and Mr Sherwin preached before him. From Paris he wrote to a friend in Rome, Ralph Bickley, telling particularly of their adventures at Geneva, and broke off the letter because Mr Paschal had come in “with the frip to frenchify me”, i.e. the secular clothes for his disguise, which he much disliked wearing. He ends “My loving Ralph, I request thee once in thy greatest fervour to say over thy beads for me, and procure as many of my friends as you can to do the same there, and let your petition be this that in humility and constancy with perseverance to the end, I may honour God in this vocation, whereunto though unworthy I am called.”

At Rheims the missionaries separated, and on August 1 Ralph Sherwin set out for England. In November he was arrested while preaching in the house of Nicholas Roscarrock in London, and was chained in the Marshalsea. Of his brief apostolate Father Persons wrote that he spent it preaching in various parts of the kingdom, in which work “he enjoyed a very special grace and ascendancy”.

From the prison he managed to write a cheerful note to Persons, referring to the bells, i.e. fetters, on his ankles, and after a month was removed to the Tower. Here he was severely racked on December 15, with the object of getting information about his fellow-missionaries, about a feared invasion of Ireland, etc. Afterwards he was left to lie out in the snow, and next day was tortured again. He told his brother that after he had been twice racked he lay five days and nights without any food or speaking to anybody, “as he thought in a sleep, before our Saviour on the cross. After which time he came to himself, not finding any distemper in his joints by the extremity of the torture.” He was offered a bishopric if he would apostatize. After more than a year’s imprisonment he was brought to trial with Edmund Campion and others, and convicted on the charge of entering the realm in order to raise a rebellion. “The plain reason of our standing here “, he observed, is religion, not treason.”

While awaiting death Ralph wrote several letters to friends, including one to his uncle in Rouen, who had formerly been rector of Ingatestone. In it he says, “Innocency is my only comfort against all the forged villainy which is fathered on my fellow priests and me…God forgive all injustice, and if it be His blessed will to convert our persecutors, that they may become professors of His truth…And so, my good old John, farewell.” On December 1, 1581, he was dragged to Tyburn on the same hurdle as Alexander Briant, and suffered immediately after Campion. On the scaffold he again protested his innocence of treason, professed the whole Catholic faith, and prayed for the Queen, and died amid the open prayers of the crowd. He was thirty-one years old.

Bd Ralph Sherwin was among the martyrs beatified in 1886, and his feast is observed in the diocese of Nottingham; he was the protomartyr of the English College at Rome.

A full account of this martyr has been contributed by E. S. Keogh to the second volume of Camm’s LEM., pp. 358—396. See also MMP., pp. 30-35. The earlier sources of information are indicated by Father Keogh on p. 396 of the first book, but to these should be added Cardinal Mien’s account of Fr Campion and his companions edited by J. H. Pollen in 1908, pp. 34—46.
1581 Bl. Alexander Briant; priest convert, Missionary martyr at 25; From the Tower Bd Alexander contrived to write a long letter to the Jesuits in England, in the course of which he says that the first time he was racked, towards the end “I was without sense and feeling wellnigh of all grief and pain; and not so only, but as it were comforted, eased, and refreshed of the griefs of the torture bypast.” “Whether this that I say be miraculous or no, God he knoweth; but true it is, and thereof my conscience is a witness before God.” On the testi­mony of Norton (for what that is worth), after the torture Bd Alexander experienced pain of a more than usual sharpness. In the same letter he asked that he might be admitted into the Society of Jesus, even in his absence, having made a vow to offer himself if he should be released from jail, and he is in consequence numbered among the martyrs of the Society.
1581 BD ALEXANDER BRIANT MARTYR
WHEN after the appearance of the publications of Fathers Campion and Persons the authorities were making frenzied efforts to lay the two Jesuits by the heels, several other active Catholics were arrested en passant, and among them Alexander Briant. He was a young secular priest, born in Somerset and distinguished for his good looks as well as his zeal, who, while at Hart Hall, Oxford, had been recon­ciled to the Church and gone abroad to the Douay seminary.

He was ordained and came back to England in 1579, where he at first ministered in the west and brought the father of Father Persons back to the Church. Mr Briant was taken in London on April 28, 1581, being in an adjoining house when Persons’ house was fruitlessly searched by order of the Privy Council. It was determined to extract from him information as to the whereabouts of Persons, whatever methods should have to be used, and after six days of almost complete starvation in the Counter prison he was removed to the Tower. Needles were thrust under his finger-nails (he is the only martyr of the time of whom this torture is recorded) to make him betray Persons or compromise himself. When this was not successful he was left in an unlit underground cell for a week, and then racked to the limit on two successive days. The rack-master, Norton, himself admits that Briant was “racked more than any of the rest”, and a public outcry caused Norton to be imprisoned for a few days for his cruelty on this occasion, to save the face of the authorities.

From the Tower Bd Alexander contrived to write a long letter to the Jesuits in England, in the course of which he says that the first time he was racked, towards the end “I was without sense and feeling wellnigh of all grief and pain; and not so only, but as it were comforted, eased, and refreshed of the griefs of the torture bypast.” “Whether this that I say be miraculous or no, God he knoweth; but true it is, and thereof my conscience is a witness before God.” On the testi­mony of Norton (for what that is worth), after the torture Bd Alexander experienced pain of a more than usual sharpness. In the same letter he asked that he might be admitted into the Society of Jesus, even in his absence, having made a vow to offer himself if he should be released from jail, and he is in consequence numbered among the martyrs of the Society.

Bd Alexander was tried in Westminster Hall with Bd Thomas Ford and others, the day after Campion, Sherwin and Cottam, and on the same indictment. He came into court carrying a small crucifix drawn in charcoal on a piece of wooden trencher and with his head tonsured to show he was a priest and in spite of his sufferings his appearance was still of a “serenity, innocency and amiability almost angelic”. He suffered at Tyburn on December s, 1, 1581, after BB. Edmund Campion and Ralph Sherwin. On this day also is commemorated the martyrdom of BD RICHARD LANGLEY, a gentleman of Ousethorpe and Grimthorpe, who was hanged at York on December 1, 1586, for harbouring priests at his mansions.

The archdiocese of Birmingham observes today the feast of all those members of the University of Oxford, over forty in number, who have been beatified for giving their lives as martyrs for the faith during the persecutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Many of the publications noticed in connection with Edmund Campion have also some bearing on the story of his companion martyr. But see especially Camm, LEM., vol. ii, pp. 397—423; and REPSJ., vol. iv, pp. 343—367. Briant seems to have been of good yeoman birth and the will of his father, which mentions him, is preserved. For Mr Langley, cf. Gillow, Biog. Dict. Eng. Caths., Pollen, Acts of Eng. Marts., and REPSJ., vols. iii, and vi.


One of the English priests slain in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Alexander was born in Somerset, England, circa 1556 , and entered Oxford University at a young age. He was called "the beautiful Oxford youth" because of his handsome appearance and the radiance of his holiness. Alexander converted to Catholicism at Oxford and met Richard Holtby, following Holtby to the English seminary college at Reims, France. He was ordained a priest there on March 29, 1578. Returning to England, Alexander worked in Somerset and was caught up in a search by British authorities in April 1581. Taken to the Tower of London, he was subjected to inhuman tortures but did not reveal the names of other priests. He also wrote to the Jesuit Fathers, asking permission to join. He was accepted. In November 1581, he was condemned to death by an English court. Again Alexander suffered hideous tortures and died on December 1,1581, at the age of twenty-five.
1586 Bl. Richard Langley  English martyr member of gentry sheltered priests
he was born at Grimthorpe, where he had extensive estates, as he did in Riding. He was arrested for giving shelter to Catholic priests and hanged, drawn, and quartered at York on December 1. He was beatified in 1929.


THE PSALTER OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY PSALM 202

With my voice I have cried to Our Lady: I have humbly entreated her.

I have poured out my tears in her sight: and I have set before her my grief.

The enemy lieth in wait for my heel: he has spread his net before me.

Help me, O Lady, lest I fall before him: let-him be crushed beneath my feet.

Lead my soul out of prison: that it may praise thee and sing to the mighty God forever.

 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 heaven:  only 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 html  Indulgences 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 2000)  Quang 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  Uniates  Chalcedon
Mary the Mother of Jesus Miracles_BC  Lay Saints  Miraculous_Icons  Miraculous_Medal_Novena Patron Saints
Miracles by Century 100   200   300   400   500   600   700    800   900   1000    1100   1200   1300   1400  1500  1600  1700  1800  1900 2000
Miracles 100   200   300   400   500   600   700    800   900   1000  
 1100   1200   1300   1400  1500  1600  1700  1800   1900 Lay Saints

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

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Saint Frances Xavier Seelos  Practical Guide to Holiness
1. Go to Mass with deepest devotion. 2. Spend a half hour to reflect upon your main failing & make resolutions to avoid it.
3. Do daily spiritual reading for at least 15 minutes, if a half hour is not possible.  4. Say the rosary every day.
5. Also daily, if at all possible, visit the Blessed Sacrament; toward evening, meditate on the Passion of Christ for a half hour, 6.  Conclude the day with evening prayer & an examination of conscience over all the faults & sins of the day.
7.  Every month make a review of the month in confession.
8. Choose a special patron every month & imitate that patron in some special virtue.
9. Precede every great feast with a novena that is nine days of devotion. 10. Try to begin & end every activity with a Hail Mary
My God, I believe, I adore, I trust and I love Thee.  I beg pardon for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not
O most Holy trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly.  I offer Thee the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the Tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifference by which He is offended, and by the infite merits of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  I beg the conversion of poor sinners,  Fatima Prayer, Angel of Peace
The voice of the Father is heard, the Son enters the water, and the Holy Spirit appears in the form of a dove.
THE spirit and example of the world imperceptibly instil the error into the minds of many that there is a kind of middle way of going to Heaven; and so, because the world does not live up to the gospel, they bring the gospel down to the level of the world. It is not by this example that we are to measure the Christian rule, but words and life of Christ. All His followers are commanded to labour to become perfect even as our heavenly Father is perfect, and to bear His image in our hearts that we may be His children. We are obliged by the gospel to die to ourselves by fighting self-love in our hearts, by the mastery of our passions, by taking on the spirit of our Lord.
   These are the conditions under which Christ makes His promises and numbers us among His children, as is manifest from His words which the apostles have left us in their inspired writings. Here is no distinction made or foreseen between the apostles or clergy or religious and secular persons. The former, indeed, take upon themselves certain stricter obligations, as a means of accomplishing these ends more perfectly; but the law of holiness and of disengagement of the heart from the world is general and binds all the followers of Christ.
God loves variety. He doesn't mass-produce his saints. Every saint is unique each the result of a new idea.
As the liturgy says: Non est inventus similis illis--there are no two exactly alike.
It is we with our lack of imagination, who paint the same haloes on all the saints.
Dear Lord, grant us a spirit not bound by our own ideas and preferences.
 Grant that we may be able to appreciate in others what we lack in ourselves.
O Lord, grant that we may understand that every saint must be a unique praise of Your glory.
 Catholic saints are holy people and human people who lived extraordinary lives.
Each saint the Church honors responded to God's invitation to use his or her unique gifts.
The 15 Promises of the Virgin Mary to those who recite the Rosary ) Revealed to St. Dominic and Blessed Alan)
1.    Whoever shall faithfully serve me by the recitation of the Rosary, shall receive signal graces. 2.    I promise my special protection and the greatest graces to all those who shall recite the Rosary. 3.    The Rosary shall be a powerful armor against hell, it will destroy vice, decrease sin, and defeat heresies. 4.    It will cause virtue and good works to flourish; it will obtain for souls the abundant mercy of God; it will withdraw the hearts of people from the love of the world and its vanities, and will lift them to the desire of eternal things.  Oh, that soul would sanctify them by this means.  5.    The soul that recommends itself to me by the recitation of the Rosary shall not perish. 6.    Whoever shall recite the Rosary devoutly, applying themselves to the consideration of its Sacred Mysteries shall never be conquered by misfortune.  God will not chastise them in His justice, they shall not perish by an unprovided death; if they be just, they shall remain in the grace of God, and become worthy of eternal life. 7.    Whoever shall have a true devotion for the Rosary shall not die without the Sacraments of the Church. 8.    Those who are faithful to recite the Rosary shall have during their life and at their death the light of God and the plentitude of His graces; at the moment of death they shall participate in the merits of the Saints in Paradise. 9.    I shall deliver from purgatory those who have been devoted to the Rosary. 10.    The faithful children of the Rosary shall merit a high degree of glory in Heaven.  11.    You shall obtain all you ask of me by the recitation of the Rosary. 12.    I shall aid all those who propagate the Holy Rosary in their necessities. 13.    I have obtained from my Divine Son that all the advocates of the Rosary shall have for intercessors the entire celestial court during their life and at the hour of death. 14.    All who recite the Rosary are my children, and brothers and sisters of my only Son, Jesus Christ. 15.    Devotion to my Rosary is a great sign of predestination.
His Holiness Aram I, current (2013) Catholicos of Cilicia of Armenians, whose See is located in Lebanese town of Antelias. The Catholicosate was founded in Sis, capital of Cilicia, in the year 1441 following the move of the Catholicosate of All Armenians back to its original See of Etchmiadzin in Armenia. The Catholicosate of Cilicia enjoyed local jurisdiction, though spiritually subject to the authority of Etchmiadzin. In 1921 the See was transferred to Aleppo in Syria, and in 1930 to Antelias.
Its jurisdiction currently extends to Syria, Cyprus, Iran and Greece.
Aramaic dialect of Edessa, now known as Syriac
The exact date of the introduction of Christianity into Edessa {Armenian Ourhaï in Arabic Er Roha, commonly Orfa or Urfa, its present name} is not known. It is certain, however, that the Christian community was at first made up from the Jewish population of the city. According to an ancient legend, King Abgar V, Ushana, was converted by Addai, who was one of the seventy-two disciples. In fact, however, the first King of Edessa to embrace the Christian Faith was Abgar IX (c. 206) becoming official kingdom religion.
Christian council held at Edessa early as 197 (Eusebius, Hist. Ecc7V,xxiii).
In 201 the city was devastated by a great flood, and the Christian church was destroyed (“Chronicon Edessenum”, ad. an. 201).
In 232 the relics of the Apostle St. Thomas were brought from India, on which occasion his Syriac Acts were written.

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

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

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

Brief History of our Beloved Holy Priest Here and his published books of Catholic History in North America
Reardon, J.M. Archbishop Ireland; Prelate, Patriot, Publicist, 1838-1918.
A Memoir (St. Paul; 1919); George Anthony Belcourt Pioneer Catholic Missionary of the Northwest 1803-1874 (1955);
The Catholic Church IN THE DIOCESE OF ST. PAUL from earliest origin to centennial achievement 1362-1950 (1952);
The Church of Saint Mary of Saint Paul 1875-1922;  (1932)
The Vikings in the American Heartland;
The Catholic Total Abstinence Society in Minnesota;
James Michael Reardon Born in Nova Scotia, 1872;  Priest, ordained by Bishop Ireland;
Member -- St. Paul Seminary faculty.
Affiliations and Indulgences  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, 201 2023