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.
February is dedicated to the Holy Family since the 17th century and by Copts from early times.
2023
22,600 lives saved since 2007
http://www.haitian-childrens-fund.org/

For the Son of man ... will repay every man for what he has done.

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

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
468  St. Hilary, Pope from 461-468 guardian of Church unity sent decree to Eastern bishops validating decisions of General Councils Nicaea Ephesus and Chalcedon. Hilary consolidated the Church in Sandi, Africa, and Gaul
731 Saint Pope Gregory II served St Sergius I next 4 popes as treasurer of the Church, then librarian, Held synods to correct abuses, stopped heresy, promoted discipline, morality in religious and clerical life
1309 BD ANGELA OF FOLIGNO, WIDOW must always take her place among the great mystics and contemplatives of the middle ages, side by side with Catherine of Siena and Catherine of Genoa.
1936 Blessed Daniel Brottier Senegal, West Africa volunteer chaplain WWI 4yrs
February 28 – 11th apparition of Lourdes (1858) 
Mgr Giovanni Giudici, the bishop of Pavia recognizes a miraculous healing 
 43-year-old Danila Castelli, from Bereguardo (in the diocese of Pavia, Italy), had been suffering from high blood pressure with serious medical effects for nearly 10 years. Several surgical procedures were attempted in the hope of eliminating the points that caused high blood pressure until 1988, but they were unsuccessful.  In May 1989, during a pilgrimage to Lourdes, Danila came out of the shrine’s pools feeling incredibly well. She quickly declared her sudden cure to the Office of Medical Observations of Lourdes.  After five meetings (1989, 1992, 1994, 1997 and 2010) the Office recognized the healing through a formal and unanimous vote: "Danila Castelli was healed, in a comprehensive and sustainable manner, during her pilgrimage to Lourdes in 1989, 21 years ago, from the condition that affected her, in a manner completely unrelated to any surgical interventions or treatments."
Danila Castelli has since resumed a normal life. On June 20, 2013, Mgr Giovanni Giudici, the bishop of Pavia where Danila Castelli lives, declared the healing was "prodigious-miraculous" and had the value of a "sign."
The 69th miraculous healing of Lourdes recognized by Mgr Giovanni Giudici, bishop of Pavia.  rosairealsace.fr

February 28 – Our Lady of Tears (Italy, 1522) – 11th apparition of Lourdes (France, 1858)
 Our Lady of Tears confirms the message of Fatima
Syracuse is a city in southeastern Sicily. Its Catholic shrine of Our Lady of Tears is the most recent shrine in Sicily and one of the busiest with visitors from all over the world.
It contains a bas-relief of painted plaster representing the Virgin Mary and her Immaculate heart crowned with thorns and inflamed (as in Fatima), which was originally in a modest home at the head of the bed of a couple named Lannuso. But from August 29th to September 1, 1953, the image of the Virgin wept human tears, which were scientifically analyzed. The episcopate of Sicily has recognized the supernatural origin of the occurrence and promoted the devotion. Our Lady of Tears took the world by surprise and obtained numerous miracles for the faithful.

Shortly before the miracle, in May 1952, Our Lady appeared to Sister Lucia in Fatima, Portugal, confiding to her that she was still awaiting the consecration of Russia. During the summer of 1952, Sister Lucia wrote: "I am sorry that it has not been done as Our Lady requested."
In this context, the tears of the Virgin of Syracuse in the summer of 1953 were interpreted as a confirmation of the request of Fatima.
 The Mary of Nazareth Team Adapted from Domenico MARCUZZI,
Original article published in Santuari mariani d’Italia, edizioni Paoline, Roma 1982
 
February 28 - Eleventh Apparition at Lourdes (France, 1858) Our Lady’s Messenger (I)
Why does the evangelist specify names in such detail at the Annunciation?
Undoubtedly, it is because he wants us to pay the same amount of attention to his story that he himself accords. Indeed, he introduces us to the Lord who sent the message, the Virgin to whom it is sent and the Virgin’s fiancé, using precise details by stating the family name, the city and the country of origin.
Why does he say all this? Does he speak without reason? Heaven preserve us to believe so, because in truth a leaf does not fall from a tree, nor does a sparrow in the sky fall to the ground without our Father knowing (Mt 10: 31). I cannot believe that one useless word could ever fall from the mouth of an evangelist, especially while telling the story of the Holy Word. No, I cannot believe that. These details are filled with divine mysteries and overflow with celestial sweetness.
If they find a diligent listener who is able to savor the honey running out of rock,
and taste the excellent oil that collects among the rocky ground.
Saint Bernard Sermon on the Missus Est

Mary Mother of GOD 15 Promises of the Virgin Mary to those who recite the Rosary

For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.
-- St. Athanasius, De incarnatione

February 28 - Our Lady of Tears (Italy, 1522) - 11th apparition in Lourdes
Would You Be So Kind As to Do Me the Favor...?
Bernadette's relationship with Our Lady begins with a gesture of poverty. As Jesus came to the world in a humble manger, so did Mary come to Massabielle, a muddy grotto filled with rubbish that washed up from the river, dressed in pure white!
Bernadette was soon to discover in one of the purest dialogues ever exchanged between a human being and the Mother of God, that there is a poverty worse than destitution, hunger, cold, ignorance, social degradation, illness, death, and so on. This poverty is that of human sin. In her own physical poverty, she is enriched with this knowledge and grace. She discovers that true riches consist in the mercy of God, who offers Himself to sinners and transforms them ... if they consent, to His will.
Our Lady speaks respectfully to Bernadette in her own dialect. The young girl soon consents, at first to a simple request ... to meet the Lady again for fifteen days ... and begins her lifelong mission.
Adapted from André Ravier, Les Ecrits de Sainte Bernadette et Sa Voie Spirituelle
(The Writings of Saint Bernadette and Her Spiritual Way), Ed. Buchet-Chastel, 2003.

February 28 – Our Lady of Tears (Italy, 1522) - 11th Apparition of Lourdes (France, 1858) 
Mary knew from the beginning…
     During her whole life, the Blessed Mother's chief concern was to meditate on the virtues and sufferings of her Son.
When she heard the Angels sing their hymns of joy at His birth, and when she saw the shepherds adore Him in the stable, her heart and mind were filled with wonder and she reflected upon all these marvels.
She compared the might of God to the weakness of a Baby—and His wisdom to His simplicity.
One day Our Lady said to Saint Bridget: "Whenever I meditated on the beauty, modesty and wisdom of my Son, my heart was filled with joy:
and whenever I thought of His hands and feet which would be pierced with cruel nails, I wept bitterly and my heart was rent with sorrow and pain."
 Saint Louis de Montfort
In The Secret of the Rosary - Twenty-fourth Rose
 
Mary's Divine Motherhood
Called in the Gospel "the Mother of Jesus," Mary is acclaimed by Elizabeth, at the prompting of the Spirit and even before the birth of her son, as "the Mother of my Lord" (Lk 1:43; Jn 2:1; 19:25; cf. Mt 13:55; et al.). In fact, the One whom she conceived as man by the Holy Spirit, who truly became her Son according to the flesh, was none other than the Father's eternal Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity.
Hence the Church confesses that Mary is truly "Mother of God" (Theotokos).
Catechism of the Catholic Church 495, quoting the Council of Ephesus (431): DS 251.
250  Alexandríæ pássio sanctórum Cæreális, Púpuli, Caji et Serapiónis.
         Ibídem commemorátio sanctórum Presbyterórum, Diaconórum et aliórum plurimórum
        Natális sanctórum Mártyrum Macárii, Rufíni, Justi et Theóphili.
  261 MARTYRS IN THE PLAGUE OF ALEXANDRIA
 460 St. Romanus of Condat Abbot of Gallo Roman hermit in the Jura Mountains
 457 Hieromartyr Proterius Patriarch of Alexandria and those with him teaching Christ as Perfect God and Perfect Man, existing in these two natures "unconfusedly" and "indivisibly" [and "immutably" and "inseparably"] was set forth.
  468  St. Hilary, Pope from 461-468 guardian of Church unity sent decree to Eastern bishops validating decisions of General Councils Nicaea Ephesus// and Chalcedon. Hilary consolidated the Church in Sandi, Africa, and Gaul
      St. Ruellinus Bishop of Treguier, Brittany
      Papíæ Translátio córporis sancti Augustíni Epíscopi, Confessóris et Ecclésiæ Doctóris, ex Sardínia ínsula, ópera Luitprándi, Regis Longobardórum.
 731 Saint Pope Gregory II served St Sergius I next 4 popes as treasurer of the Church, then librarian, Held synods to correct abuses, stopped heresy, promoted discipline and morality in religious and clerical life
 750 Saint Basil the Confessor monk suffered during the reign of the iconoclast emperor Leo the Isaurian (717-741)
 992 ST OSWALD OF WORCESTER, ARCHBISHOP OF York
1309 BD ANGELA OF FOLIGNO, WIDOW must always take her place among the great mystics and contemplatives of the middle ages, side by side with Catherine of Siena and Catherine of Genoa.
1360 BD VILLANA OF FLORENCE, MATRON wonderful visions and colloquies with our Lady and other saints
1377 Bl. Villana hideous demon in mirror wonderful visions olloquies our Lady and saints gift of prophecy
1399  St. Hedwig, Blessed Queen of Poland and model of faith in Lithuania
1472 Blessed Antonia (Antoinette) of Florence, OFM Widow (AC)
1533 BD LOUISA ALBERTONI, WIDOW
1576 Blessed Nicholas of Pskov graced by the Holy Spirit granted gifts of wonderworking and prophecy
1936 Blessed Daniel Brottier Senegal, West Africa volunteer chaplain WWI 4yrs
468  St. Hilary, Pope from 461-468 guardian of Church unity sent decree to Eastern bishops validating decisions of  General Councils Nicaea Ephesus and Chalcedon.
Hilary consolidated the Church in Sandi, Africa, and Gaul
731 Saint Pope Gregory II served St Sergius I next 4 popes as treasurer of the Church, then librarian, Held synods to correct abuses, stopped heresy, promoted discipline and morality in religious and clerical life
Also known as:  Gregory the Younger; Gregory Junior
Christ said his coming would bring not peace but a sword (see Matthew 10:34).  The Gospels offer no support for us if we fantasize about a sunlit holiness that knows no problems. Christ did not escape at the last moment, though he did live happily ever after —after a life of controversy, problems, pain and frustration. Hilary  (415-468) like all saints simply had more of the same.

"All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord;
and all the families of the nations shall worship before him " (Psalm 21:28)

  Romæ natális sanctórum Mártyrum Macárii, Rufíni, Justi et Theóphili. 
      At Rome, the birthday of the holy martyrs Macarius, Rufinus, Justus, and Theophilus. St. Macarius Martyr with Justus. Rufinus. and Theophilus.  Reportedly potters by trade, these martyrs died at Alexandria. Egypt, or in Rome.
  250 St. Caerealis with Pupulus, Gaius, and Serapion Egyptian martyrs in Alexandria.  
They were martyred in Alexandria. Caerealis is sometimes called Cerulus or Celerius.
Alexandríæ pássio sanctórum Cæreális, Púpuli, Caji et Serapiónis.
    At Alexandria, the passion of the Saints Caerealis, Pupulus, Caius, and Serapion.
261 MARTYRS IN THE PLAGUE OF ALEXANDRIA
 Ibídem commemorátio sanctórum Presbyterórum, Diaconórum  et aliórum plurimórum; qui, témpore Valeriáni Imperatóris, cum pestis sævíssima grassarétur, morbo laborántibus ministrántes, libentíssime mortem oppetiére, et quos velut Mártyres religiósa piórum fides venerári consuévit.
       In the same city, in the reign of Emperor Valerian, the commemoration of the holy priests, deacons, and many others.  When a most deadly epidemic was raging, they willingly met their death by ministering to the sick.  The religious sentiment of the pious faithful has generally venerated them as martyrs.
PESTILENCE raged throughout the greater part of the Roman empire during the years from 249 to 263. In Rome, five thousand persons are said to have died in one day and Alexandria in particular suffered severely: St Dionysius of Alexandria tells us that his city had already been afflicted with famine, and this was followed by tumults and violence so uncontrolled that it was safer to travel from one extremity of the known world to the, other than to go from one street of Alexandria to the next.
  To these scourges succeeded the plague, which raged until there was not one house in that great city that escaped or which had not some death to mourn. Corpses lay unburied, and the air was laden with infection, mingled with pestilential vapours from the Nile. The living appeared wild with terror, and the fear of death rendered the pagan citizens cruel to their nearest relations; as soon as anyone was known to have caught the infection, his friends fled from him: the bodies of those not yet dead were thrown into the streets and abandoned.

At this juncture, the Christians of Alexandria came forward and displayed a great example of charity. During the persecutions of Decius, Gallus and Valerian they had been obliged to remain hidden, and had held their assemblies in secret or in ships that put out to sea or in pestilential prisons. Now, however, they came forth, regardless of danger, and set to work to tend the sick and to comfort the dying. They closed the eyes of the plague-stricken and carried them when dead upon their shoulders, washing their bodies and decently burying them, although they knew they were likely to share the same fate. In the words of the bishop:

“Many who had healed others fell victims themselves. The best of our brethren have been taken from us in this manner: some were priests, others deacons and some laity of great worth. This death, with the faith which accompanied it, appears to be little inferior to martyrdom itself.”

The Roman Martyrology, recognizing the force of these words of St Dionysius, in fact honours those loving Christians as martyrs. Their charity in thus relieving their persecutors when attacked by sickness may well make us ask ourselves what our attitude is to the sick poor, who are not our enemies but who are, in most cases, our fellow Christians.

Our knowledge of the charity of the Christians of Alexandria is derived from Eusebius, who in bk vii, ch. 22, of his Ecclesiastical History inserts a long quotation from the letter of St Dionysius referred to above. The Greek text may be conveniently consulted in Feltoe’s edition of The Letters and other Remains of Dionysius of Alexandria, pp. 79—84.
Ibídem commemorátio sanctórum Presbyterórum, Diaconórum  et aliórum plurimórum; qui, témpore Valeriáni Imperatóris, cum pestis sævíssima grassarétur, morbo laborántibus ministrántes, libentíssime mortem oppetiére, et quos velut Mártyres religiósa piórum fides venerári consuévit.
      In the same city, in the reign of Emperor Valerian, the commemoration of the holy priests, deacons, and many others.  When a most deadly epidemic was raging, they willingly met their death by ministering to the sick.  The religious sentiment of the pious faithful has generally venerated them as martyrs.
457 Hieromartyr Proterius Patriarch of Alexandria and those with him teaching Christ as Perfect God and Perfect Man, existing in these two natures "unconfusedly" and "indivisibly" [and "immutably" and "inseparably"] set forth.

 457 ST PROTERIUS, PATRIARCH OF ALEXANDRIA, MARTYR
ST CYRIL’S successor as patriarch of Alexandria was an unprincipled man named­ Dioscorus, who patronized the heretic Eutyches and upheld his errors. The leader of the orthodox party was Proterius, who had been ordained by Cyril. Dioscorus, knowing his great reputation and hoping to win him over to his views, had appointed him archpriest and entrusted him with the care of his church, but when the patriarch began to show himself to be clearly heretical, Proterius openly opposed him. The Council of Chalcedon condemned and deposed Dioscorus in 451, and Proterius was elected in his place.

The city of Alexandria, always notorious for its riots and tumults, divided into two parties, the one demanding the return of Dioscorus and the other supporting Proterius. The schismatic party was headed by two priests, Timothy Elurus and Peter Mongus (Elurus, means “cat”, and Mongus , means “croaker”). So great and so frequent were the tumults they raised against Proterius that during the whole of his pontificate he was never out of danger of falling a victim to violence, in spite of the decision of the Council of Chalcedon and of the imperial orders. Dioscorus being dead, Elurus, who had contrived to get himself consecrated, was proclaimed by his party the sole lawful bishop in Alexandria. The imperial commander drove Elurus out, and this so enraged the Eutychian party that their menaces obliged St Proterius to take sanctuary in the baptistery adjoining the church of St Quirinus. The rabble had no respect for sanctuary, and, breaking into the church, they stabbed him to death during Holy Week in the year 457. Not satisfied with this, they dragged his dead body through the streets, cut it in pieces, burnt it and scattered the ashes in the air. The bishops of Thrace, in a letter they wrote to the Emperor Leo soon after, declared that they reckoned Proterius among the martyrs and hoped to find mercy through his inter­cession

There is no special biography of Proterius, but in the Acta Sanctorum, February, vol. iii, the principal texts, letters, etc., which make reference to him have been collected. See also Hefele-Leclercq, Conciles, vol. ii, p. 858.

 The priest Proterius lived in Alexandria during the patriarchal tenure of Dioscorus (444-451), an adherent of the Monophysite heresy of Eutyches. Proterius fearlessly denounced the heretics and confessed the Orthodox Faith.  In 451 at the Fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon, the heresy of Eutyches was condemned and the teaching of Christ as Perfect God and Perfect Man, existing in these two natures "unconfusedly" and "indivisibly" [and "immutably" and "inseparably"] was set forth. The heretic Dioscorus was deposed and exiled, and Proterius, distinguished for his strict and virtuous life, was placed upon the patriarchal throne of Alexandria. However, many supporters of Dioscorus remained in Alexandria. Rebelling against the election of Proterius, they rioted and burned the soldiers who were sent out to pacify them. The pious emperor Marcian (450-457) deprived the Alexandrians of all the privileges they were accustomed to, and sent new and reinforced detachments of soldiers. The inhabitants of the city then quieted down and begged Patriarch Proterius to intercede with the emperor to restore their former privileges to them. The kindly saint consented and readily obtained their request.
After the death of Marcian the heretics again raised their heads.

Presbyter Menignus ("the Cat"), himself striving for the patriarchal dignity, and taking advantage of the absence of the prefect of the city, was at the head of the rioters. St Proterius decided to leave Alexandria, but that night he saw in a dream the holy Prophet Isaiah, who said to him, "Return to the city, I am waiting to take you." The saint realized that this was a prediction of his martyric end. He returned to Alexandria and concealed himself in a baptistry.
The insolent heretics broke into this refuge and killed the Patriarch and six men who were with him. The fact that it was Holy Saturday and the Canon of Pascha was being sung did not stop them. In their insane hatred they tied a rope to the body of the murdered Patriarch, and dragged it through the streets. They beat and lacerated it, and finally they burned it, scattering the ashes to the wind.
The Orthodox reported this to the holy Emperor Leo (457-474) and St Anatolius, Patriarch of Constantinople (July 3). An army arrived at Alexandria, the rebellion was crushed, and Menignus was brought to trial and exiled.  Regarding the death of the Hieromartyr Proterius, four Thracian bishops of his time wrote:  "We consider His Holiness Proterius to be in the ranks and choir of the saints, and we beseech God to be compassionate and merciful to us through his prayers."
460 St. Romanus of Condat  reputation for virtues and miracles Abbot of Gallo hermit in the Jura Mountains
  In território Lugdunénsi, locis Jurénsibus, deposítio sancti Románi Abbátis, qui primum illic eremíticam vitam duxit, et, multis virtútibus ac miráculis clarus, plurimórum póstea Pater éxstitit Monachórum.
       In the territory of Lyons, in the Jura Mountains, the death of St. Romanus, abbot, who first had led the life of a hermit there.  His reputation for virtues and miracles brought under his guidance many monks.
460 AND 480 SS. ROMANUS AND LUPICINUS, ABBOTS
ST ROMANUS had reached the age of thirty-five when he withdrew into the forests of the Jura Mountains between Switzerland and France to live there as a hermit. He took with him Cassian’s Lives of the Fathers of the Desert, a few tools and some seeds, and found his way to an uninhabited spot at the confluence of the Bienne and the Alière, enclosed between steep heights and difficult of access. Here under the shelter of an enormous fir tree he spent his time praying, reading and cultivating the soil. At first his solitude was disturbed only by the beasts and an occasional huntsman, but before long he was joined by his brother Lupicinus and by one or two more. Other recruits soon flocked to them, including their sister and a number of women.

The two brothers soon built the monastery of Condat and then that of Leuconne, two miles to the north, whilst for the women they established the nunnery of La Beaume (the site of the present village of Saint-Romain-de-la-Roche). The brothers ruled as joint abbots in perfect harmony, although Lupicinus was inclined to be the stricter; he generally lived at Leuconne, and when at one time the brethren at Condat were making their food more palatable, he came over and forbade the innovation. Although they strove to imitate the anchorites of the East, they were obliged to modify some of their austerities owing to climatic and other differences. The Gauls were naturally great eaters, and these monks spent much of their time in very hard manual labour, but they never touched flesh-meat and were only allowed milk and eggs when they were ill. They wore wooden sabots and the skins of animals sewn together, which protected them from the rain, but not from the bitter cold in winter or from the summer rays of the sun reflected from the perpendicular rocks.

St Romanus made a pilgrimage to what is now Saint-Maurice in the Valais, to visit the place of martyrdom of the Theban Legion. He cured two lepers on the way, and, the fame of this miracle reaching Geneva, the bishop, the clergy and the whole town turned out to greet him as he was passing through. He died about the year 460, and was buried, as he had desired, in the church of the nunnery where his sister ruled.
Lupicinus survived his elder brother by some twenty years, and he is commemorated separately on March 21. In the longer Latin biography the austerity of Lupicinus is much dilated on, but there are also wonderful things told of his compassion for his monks and of his spirit of faith. When starvation seemed to threaten he obtained from God by his prayers a multiplication of the corn which remained to them; and when his subjects, yielding to temptation, planned to leave or actually quitted the monastery, he did not deal harshly with them, but was only intent on animating them with courage to persevere in their vocation.

The historical value of the Lives of Romanus, Lupicinus and Eugendus (January 1), which had gravely been called in question not only by Bruno Krusch, but also by Quesnel and Papebroch, was vindicated by Mgr Duchesne in a remarkable paper called “La Vie des Pères du Jura” in Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire, vol. xviii (1898), pp. 3—16. M. Poupardin in Le Moyen Age, vol. xi (1898), pp. 31—48, pronounced in a similar sense. Cf. M. Besson, Nos origines chrétiennes. The text of the Life of Romanus and Lupicinus may be found in the Acta Sanctorum, February, vol. iii, but it has been more recently edited by Krusch in MGH., Scriptores Merov., vol. iii, pp. 131—153. In the former it has been divided into two sections, so far as it treated separately of Romanus and Lupicinus; the latter prints the whole continuously.
In the territory of Lyons, in the Jura Mountains, the death of St. Romanus, abbot, who first had led the life of a hermit there.  His reputation for virtues and miracles brought under his guidance many monks.  Roman descent, he adopted the life of a hermit in the Jura Mountains, France, at age thirty five and was joined by his brother, St. Lupicinus, and many other disciples. The two brothers thus found it necessary to establish two monasteries, at Condat and Leuconne, and a convent at La Beaume which was governed by their sister. Romanus famed for his healing 2 lepers at Saint Maurice.  He is buried at La Beaume.
468  St. Hilary, Pope from 461-468 guardian of Church unity sent decree to Eastern bishops validating decisions of General Councils Nicaea Ephesus and Chalcedon. Hilary consolidated the Church in Sandi, Africa, and Gaul
Rom æ sancti Hílari, Papæ et Confessóris. At Rome, St. Hilary, pope and confessor.

 468 ST HILARUS, POPE
UNDER St Flavian of Constantinople on February 18 mention has been made of the ominously-named “Robber Council” held at Ephesus in 449, when the heresiarch Eutyches was upheld by rebel bishops and those who maintained orthodoxy were abused and physically maltreated, St Flavian so that he died. The legates of Pope St Leo I were powerless: they made their protest and withdrew, barely escaping with their lives. One of these legates was Hilarus, a Sardinian by birth. His letter to the Empress St Pulcheria is extant, in which he apologizes for not personally delivering to her the pope’s letter after the synod, explaining that owing to the violence and intrigues of Dioscorus he could not get to Constantinople and was only just able to escape to Rome. As a votive offering for his preservation at this time he afterwards built the chapel of St John the Apostle in the baptistery of St John Lateran. Over the door may still be seen the inscription he put up there:

Liberatori suo beato Johanni evangelistae Hilarus episcopus famulus Christi:
“Hilarus, bishop and servant of Christ, to his liberator, the blessed John the Evangelist.”

On the death of Leo the Great in 461 the deacon Hilarus was elected to the pontifical chair, and he was a worthy successor to Leo. Little or nothing is known of his personal life; but his chief work as pope seems to have been the strengthening of ecclesiastical discipline and administration in Gaul and Spain, both by curbing the excesses of individual bishops and by maintaining their rights. On one occasion he publicly rebuked the Emperor Anthemius in St Peter’s for favouring teachers of unsound doctrine. Pope St Hilarus died on February 28, 468 and was buried in the church of St Laurence outside the walls of Rome, where also he had provided a library and two public baths.

Beside the notice in the Liber Pontificalis (Duchesne~ vol. i, pp. 242—248) and the letters, which may be consulted in Thiel and in Jaffe, the Bollandists reproduce most of the relevant materials in the Acta Sanctorum, September, vol. iii. See also Hefele-Leclercq, Conches, vol. ii; Grisar, Geschichte Roms und der Päpste, pp. 323 and passim; and DCB., vol. iii, pp. 72—74.
He was born in Sardinia, Italy, and was a papal legate to the Robber Council of Ephesus in 449, barely escaping with his life from this affair.  Hilary was used by Pope St. Leo I the Great on many assignments. When Leo died, Hilary was elected pope and consecrated on November 19, 461. He worked diligently to strengthen the Church in France and Spain, calling councils in 462 and 465. Hilary also rebuilt many Roman churches and erected the chapel of St. John Lateran. He also publicly rebuked Emperor Anthemius in St. Peter’s for supporting the Macedonian heresy and sent a decree to the Eastern bishops validating the decisions of the General Councils of Nicaea, Ephesus, and Chalcedon. Hilary consolidated the Church in Sandi, Africa, and Gaul.  He died in Rome on February 28.
Pope Saint Hilarus [Also spelled HILARIUS]
Elected 461; the date of his death is given as 28 Feb., 468. After the death of Leo I, an archdeacon named Hilarus, a native of Sardinia, according to the "Liber Pontificalis", was chosen to succeed him, and in all probability received consecration on 19 November, 461. Together with Julius, Bishop of Puteoli, Hilarus acted as legate of Leo I at the "Robber Synod" of Ephesus in 449. There he fought vigorously for the rights of the Roman See and opposed the condemnation of Flavian of Constantinople (see FLAVIAN, SAINT). He was therefore exposed to the violence of Dioscurus of Alexandria, and saved himself by flight. In one of his letters to the Empress Pulcheria, found in a collection of letters of Leo I ("Leonis I Epistolae", num. xlvi., in P.L., LIV, 837 sq.), Hilarus apologizes for not delivering to her the pope's letter after the synod; but owing to Dioscurus, who tried to hinder his going either to Rome or to Constantinople, he had great difficulty in making his escape in order to bring to the pontiff the news of the result of the council. His pontificate was marked by the same vigorous policy as that of his great predecessor. Church affairs in Gaul and Spain claimed his special attention. Owing to political disorganization in both countries, it was important to safeguard the hierarchy by strengthening church government. Hermes, a former archdeacon of Narbonne, had illegally acquired the bishopric of that town. Two Gallican prelates were dispatched to Rome to lay before the pope this and other matters concerning the Church in Gaul. A Roman synod held on 19 November, 462, passed judgment upon these matters, and Hilarus made known the following decisions in an Encyclical sent to the provincial bishops of Vienne, Lyons, Narbonne, and the Alps: Hermes was to remain Titular Bishop of Narbonne, but his episcopal faculties were withheld. A synod was to be convened yearly by the Bishop of Arles, for those of the provincial bishops who were able to attend; but all important matters were to be submitted to the Apostolic See. No bishop could leave his diocese without a written permission from the metropolitan; in case such permission be withheld he could appeal to the Bishop of Arles. Respecting the parishes (paroeciae) claimed by Leontius of Arles as belonging to his jurisdiction, the Gallican bishops could decide, after an investigation. Church property could not be alienated until a synod had examined into the cause of sale.

Shortly after this the pope found himself involved in another diocesan quarrel. In 463 Mamertus of Vienne had consecrated a Bishop of Die, although this Church, by a decree of Leo I, belonged to the metropolitan Diocese of Arles. When Hilarus heard of it he deputed Leontius of Arles to summon a great synod of the bishops of several provinces to investigate the matter. The synod took place and, on the strength of the report given him by Bishop Antonius, he issued an edict dated 25 February, 464, in which Bishop Veranus was commissioned to warn Mamertus that, if in the future he did not refrain from irregular ordinations, his faculties would be withdrawn. Consequently the consecration of the Bishop of Die must be sanctioned by Leontius of Arles. Thus the primatial privileges of the See of Arles were upheld as Leo I had defined them. At the same time the bishops were admonished not to overstep their boundaries, and to assemble in a yearly synod presided over by the Bishop of Arles. The metropolitan rights of the See of Embrun also over the dioceses of the Maritime Alps were protected against the encroachments of a certain Bishop Auxanius, particularly in connection with the two Churches of Nice and Cimiez.

In Spain, Silvanus, Bishop of Calahorra, had, by his episcopal ordinations, violated the church laws. Both the Metropolitan Ascanius and the bishops of the Province of Tarragona made complaint of this to the pope and asked for his decision. Before an answer came to their petition, the same bishops had recourse to the Holy See for an entirely different matter. Before his death Nundinarius, Bishop of Barcelona, expressed a wish that Irenaeus might be chosen his successor, although he had himself made Irenaeus bishop of another see. The request was granted, a Synod of Tarragona confirming the nomination of Irenaeus, after which the bishops sought the pope's approval. The Roman synod of 19 Nov., 465, took the matters up and settled them. This is the oldest Roman synod whose original records have been handed down to us. It was held in the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. After an address of the pope, and the reading of the Spanish letters, the synod decided that the church laws must not be tampered with. In addition to this Hilarus sent a letter to the bishops of Tarragona, declaring that no consecration was valid without the sanction of the Metropolitan Ascanius; and no bishop was permitted to be transferred from one diocese to another, so that some one else must be chosen for Barcelona in place of Irenaeus. The bishops consecrated by Silvanus would be recognized if they had been appointed to vacant sees, and otherwise met the requirements of the Church. The "Liber Pontificalis" mentions an Encyclical that Hilarus sent to the East, to confirm the Oecumenical Councils of Nicaea, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, and the dogmatic letter of Leo I to Flavian, but the sources at our disposal furnish us no further information. In Rome Hilarus worked zealously for the integrity of the Faith. The Emperor Anthemius had a favourite named Philotheus, who was a believer in the Macedonian heresy and attended meetings in Rome for the promulgation of this doctrine, 476. On one of the emperor's visits to St. Peter's, the pope openly called him to account for his favourite's conduct, exhorting him by the grave of St. Peter to promise that he would do all in his power to check the evil. Hilarus erected several churches and other buildings in Rome. Two oratories in the baptistery of the Lateran, one in honour of St. John the Baptist, the other of St. John the Apostle, are due to him. After his flight from the "Robber Synod" of Ephesus, Hilarus had hidden himself in the crypt of St. John the Apostle, and he attributed his deliverance to the intercession of the Apostle. Over the ancient doors of the oratory this inscription is still to be seen: "To St. John the Evangelist, the liberator of Bishop Hilarus, a Servant of Christ". He also erected a chapel of the Holy Cross in the baptistery, a convent, two public baths, and libraries near the Church of St. Laurence Outside the Walls. He built another convent within the city walls. The "Liber Pontificalis" mentions many votive offerings made by Hilarus in the different churches. He died after a pontificate of six years, three months, and ten days.
He was buried in the church of St. Laurence Outside the Walls. His feast day is celebrated on 17 November.
6th v St. Ruellinus Bishop of Treguier, Brittany France he succeeded St. Tudwal there.
Papíæ Translátio córporis sancti Augustíni Epíscopi, Confessóris et Ecclésiæ Doctóris, ex Sardínia ínsula, ópera Luitprándi, Regis Longobardórum.
       At Papia, the transfer, ordered by the Lombard King Luitprand, of the body of St. Augustine, bishop, away from the island of Sardinia.
731 Saint Pope Gregory II served St Sergius I next 4 popes as treasurer of the Church, then librarian, Held synods to correct abuses, stopped heresy, promoted discipline and morality in religious and clerical life
Also known as:  Gregory the Younger; Gregory Junior
Profile  Involved in Church affairs from an early age. Pope Saint Sergius I ordained Gregory a sub-deacon. He served the next four popes as treasurer of the Church, then librarian. Assigned important missions. Accompanied Pope Constantine to Constantinople for discussions with Emperor Justinian II.

Pope in 715. Held synods to correct abuses, stopped heresy and promoted discipline and morality in religious and clerical life. Rebuilt a great portion of the walls of Rome to protect the city against the Lombards. Restored churches, cared for the sick and aged, reestablished monasteries and abbeys. Consecrated Saint Boniface and Saint Corbinian as missionary bishops to the tribes in Germany. England pilgrims increased to the point that they required a church, cemetery, and school of their own.

In his dealings with Emperor Leo III, Gregory's showed strength and patience. Leo demanded destruction of holy images. When bishops failed to convince him of his error, they disobeyed and appealed to the pope. Gregory tried to change the emperor's thinking, counseled the people to maintain allegiance to the prince, and encouraged the bishops to oppose the heresy. It appears he won out.   Born:  at Rome, Italy  Papal Ascension:  19 May 715  Died:  early February 731 at Rome
750 Saint Basil the Confessor monk suffered during the reign of the iconoclast emperor Leo the Isaurian (717-741)
When a persecution started against those who venerated holy icons, St Basil and his companion St Procopius of Decapolis (February 27) were subjected to much torture and locked up in prison. Here both martyrs languished for a long while, until the death of the impious emperor. When the holy Confessors Basil and Procopius were set free along with other venerators of holy icons, they continued in their monastic struggles, instructing many in the Orthodox Faith and the virtuous life. St Basil died peacefully in the year 750.
992 ST OSWALD OF WORCESTER, ARCHBISHOP OF York
ST OSWALD, of Danish extraction, was the nephew of St Odo, Archbishop of Canterbury. He was educated by Odo and became a priest of Winchester, but he crossed over to. France and took the monastic habit at Fleury. In spite of invitations from his uncle to return to England he could not be prevailed upon to do so until he heard that the archbishop was dying, but he arrived too late to see him alive. Oswald then joined his other uncle, Oskitell, Archbishop of York, remaining with him for some years. Oswald’s piety and great qualities attracted the attention of St Dunstan who, upon being appointed to Canterbury, recom­mended him to King Edgar, by whose order he was made bishop of Worcester. He at once founded a monastery of twelve monks at Westbury-on-Trym, and he subsequently built the great abbey of Ramsey on an island formed by marshes and the River Ouse in Huntingdonshire, C. 970.

Oswald was a great supporter of St Dunstan’s plans for the revival of religion and for the spread of the monastic order. He and St Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, were the prelates specially charged to enforce the decree that the clergy must either live single lives or resign their cures. In his own diocesan city Oswald showed great forbearance and tact in dealing with the lax clergy of St Peter’s. Instead of removing them, he founded another church near by which was served by Benedictine monks and to which all the people soon flocked. Seeing their church empty the clergy of St Peter decided that they also would embrace the monastic rule, and they carried out their resolution.

The saint spent much of his time in visiting his diocese, preaching without intermission and reforming abuses; he also fostered the study of letters and encouraged learned men to come from abroad. In the year 972, he was promoted to the see of York, but by the wish of the king and with the pope’s sanction he retained Worcester, and although he divided his time between the two dioceses, Worcester remained the place of his predilection, and he loved to worship with the monks in the monastery church of St Mary which he had founded and which became the cathedral of Worcester. Every day St Oswald used to wash the feet of twelve poor persons whom he afterwards fed at his own table. On February 29, 992 he had just wiped and kissed the feet of the last poor man and was yet on his knees, saying, “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost”, when he gently passed away. As his body was being borne to burial at Worcester it was noticed that a white dove was hovering over it. St Oswald’s feast is observed in the archdiocese of Birmingham.

There are several early lives of St Oswald, the more valuable of which have been edited by James Raine for the Rolls Series in the first and second volumes of his Historians of the Church of York. The earliest biography there printed must have been written by a monk of Ramsey between 995 and 1005, shortly after the saint’s death. See also Stanton, Menology, pp. 89—91, from which we may learn that St Oswald’s name is entered under this day in a considerable number of medieval English calendars, and D. Knowles, The Monastic Order in England (1949), pp. 40—56 and passim.
1309 BD ANGELA OF FOLIGNO, WIDOW must always take her place among the great mystics and contemplatives of the middle ages, side by side with Catherine of Siena and Catherine of Genoa.
ANGELA of Foligno must always take her place among the great mystics and contemplatives of the middle ages, side by side with Catherine of Siena and Catherine of Genoa.
She has a very marked and distinct individuality of her own, and presents an unusual type of the great Franciscan revival which influenced central Italy so strongly: She seems in many ways the opposite to her great spiritual father, St Francis. His life was action, Angela’s was thought, vision; Francis saw God in all His creatures—Angela saw all creatures in God; but the underlying principle is the same, namely, joyful love. Very little is known of Bd Angela’s history—not even her surname.* [*Father Ferré is able to tell us from his examination of the Assisi manuscript that she was known among her family and intimates as “Lella”, but this was probably only a pet name derived from Angela,]

GENERAL AUDIENCE: SPIRITUAL JOURNEY OF ANGELA OF FOLIGNO
VATICAN CITY, 13 OCT 2010 (VIS) - Benedict XVI dedicated his catechesis during this morning's general audience to the Italian Blessed Angela of Foligno (ca. 1248 - 1309). The audience was celebrated in St. Peter's Square in the presence of 25,000 people.
  This great mediaeval mystic generally arouses admiration "for the heights she scaled in her experience of union with God", said the Pope. "However, perhaps too little attention has been given to her first steps, to her conversion and the journey that led her from her starting point of a 'great fear of hell', to her goal of complete union with the Trinity".
  Angela was born into a rich family and received a worldly education. She married very young, had a number of children and lived a carefree life until dramatic events such as the violent earthquake of 1279 and the consequences of a war with the city of Perugia led her to question the meaning of her existence.
In 1285 she received a vision of St. Francis of Assisi whom she asked for help in making a general confession of her sins. Three years later, her husband and children having all died, Angela sold her goods and in 1291 entered the Third Order of St. Francis.
  Her story is recounted by her confessor in the "Book of Blessed Angela of Foligno". At the beginning of her spiritual itinerary the blessed felt the fear of hell for her sins. "This fear", the Pope explained, "reflected the kind of faith that Angela had at the moment of her conversion; a faith still poor in charity; that is, in love for God. Penance, fear of hell and atonement opened before Angela the prospect of the painful 'way of the cross', which ... would lead her to the 'way of love'".
  "Angela felt she had to give something to God to make up for her sins, but she slowly came to realise that she had nothing to give Him; indeed, that she was 'nothing' before Him. She understood that it was not her will that could give her the love of God, because her will could give her 'nothing', it could only give her 'non-love'". Little by little "she came to a profound understanding of the central reality: that what would save her from her 'unworthiness' and from her 'deserving hell' would not be her 'union with God' or her possession of the 'truth', but the crucified Jesus, ... His love, ... and her self-identification and self-transformation in the love and suffering of the crucified Christ".
  "Angela's conversion", the Holy Father concluded, "reached maturity only when in her heart she saw God's forgiveness as a gratuitous gift of the love of the Father, Who is the source of love". On her spiritual journey, "the move from conversion to mystical experience, from that which can be expressed to that which is inexpressible, came about through the crucified Christ. ... All her mystical experience thus tended to perfect 'likeness' with Him through increasingly profound and radical purifications and transformations. ... Such identification also meant living as Jesus lived, facing poverty, contempt and suffering. ... A sublime journey, the secret of which was constant prayer". AG/   VIS 20101013 (540)

The date of her birth must have been about 1248, and she belonged to a good family of Foligno, where she was born and lived. She was married to a rich man and was the mother of several sons. In her early life she was careless and worldly; indeed, according to her own account, her life was not only pleasure-seeking and self-indulgent, but actually sinful. Then suddenly about 1285 there came to her the vision of the True Light, the call to a love full of fruitful suffering, to the peace of greater and more living joys than any on earth. It was a sudden, vivid conversion, a conversion of her whole point of view, impetuous, painful, joyous. The life she had thought harmless, even if without any higher aim, she now saw in its true perspective, as sinful, and from this conviction of sin was born in her a craving for penance, suffering, renunciation—renunciation complete and joyful, that has lost all to find all, the victorious faith of her great model, St Francis, whose third order she eventually joined.
For some time after her conversion she continued outwardly her life in the world, Then gradually all ties were broken. Her mother, to whom she was much attached, though, perhaps naturally, she hindered her in her new life, died; then before long her husband; and finally her sons, and though her biographer exults over the providence displayed in thus removing all hindrances to her spiritual ascent, she was herself not inhuman, and Brother Arnold tells us how cruelly she suffered as blow after blow fell upon her. Still, her conversion had been so complete, so violent, that all things, joy or sorrow, as with St Francis, were but one, a living unity. For these early Franciscans nothing existed but the love of God.

What little we know of Angela’s life is told us mostly by Brother Arnold, a Friar Minor, who was her confessor and who prevailed upon her to dictate the account of her visions to him. [Later research has shown that the third of the three sections into which the manuscript is divided cannot, as was previously supposed, have been written or edited by Brother Arnold.]
He tells us that after a time she gave up all her possessions, selling last of all a “castle” which she loved very much. That this sacrifice was asked of her had been revealed in a vision, in which she was told that if she would be perfect she must follow St Francis in his absolute poverty. Arnold tells us pathetically how, time after time, when he read over to her what he had written, she exclaimed that he had misunderstood her and given quite a wrong meaning to her words. At other times she would cry out that when her visions were put into words they were blasphemous, and Arnold warns us not to be scandalized at the heights of ecstasy to which Angela rises, and adds that the greater her ecstasy the deeper was her humility. For instance, when she says she has been raised “for ever” to a new state of light and joy, she does not speak in any spirit of overconfidence or spiritual pride. She simply tells us that her state is one of continual progress, that she is entering into a new light, a new sense of God, a solitude which she has not yet inhabited.

She gathered round her a family of tertiaries, both men and women. We hear from Brother Arnold that she had one special companion, “una vergine Cristiana”, who lived with her and who was evidently not exempt from human respect, for when she and Angela were walking from Foligno, perhaps climbing the heights to Spello or Assisi, or going along that wonderful plain of Umbria to Rivotorto or Santa Maria degli Angeli, Angela would fall into ecstasy, her face shining and her eyes burning. The companion became much embarrassed and, thinking to set a good example, covered her own head, imploring Angela to do the same, telling her that her eyes were like lamps. “Hide yourself—what will people say of you? Hide yourself from the eyes of men.” “Never mind,” said Angela, “if we meet anyone God will take care of us.” Arnold adds that the companion had to accustom herself to such episodes as Angela’s states of ecstasy occurred at any moment.

One Holy Thursday she said to the companion, “Let us go and look for Christ our Lord. We will go to the hospital and perhaps amongst the sick and suffering we shall find Him.” She could not go empty-handed, and the only things they possessed were their veils for covering their heads on which the companion set such store. These Angela hastily sold to buy food to take to the hospital, “and so we offered food to these poor sick people, and then we washed the feet of the women, and the men’s hands, as they lay lonely and forsaken on their wretched pallets— more especially was a poor leper much consoled”, and great was the joy and sweet­ness they experienced on their way home, and so they found the Lord Christ on this Maundy Thursday. And so this strange life of great simplicity and of such overwhelming spiritual experience ran its course, and at the end of 1308 she knew that death was near. She had all her spiritual children assembled and laid her hand in blessing on the head of each, leaving them as her last will and testament words of wonderful confidence and assurance. Bd Angela died happily and in great peace on January 4, 1309.

We have one other detail of her outer life.

Ubertino di Casale entered the Order of Friars Minor in 1273. For fourteen years his life was zealous and exemplary. He was a man of great learning, and these years were spent in various universities. He then fell away grievously into carelessness and sin. He tells us he made Angela’s acquaintance in a wonderful manner which he does not relate, and that she revealed to him his most secret thoughts, “God speaking through her”, as he says, and that she brought him back to a holy life. He adds that he was only one of a large family of spiritual children who owed the life of their souls to her, Though so little is known of her outer life, she has revealed her inner life very fully.

“I, called Angela of Foligno, walking in the path of penance, made eighteen spiritual steps before I knew all the imperfection of my life.” These eighteen steps begin with the consciousness of sin, then, through the shame of confession, to the mercy of God, to self-knowledge, to the cross of Christ. At the ninth step, “the way to the cross”, she discards her rich clothing, her delicate food, but this is all still done very much against the grain, for she is not yet really controlled by divine love. At the tenth step comes the vision of Jesus Christ, which is granted to her in answer to her prayer: “What can I do to please thee?” The vision of Christ and His passion reveals to her the smallness of all her sufferings, and she tells us that she wept so continuously and so bitterly that she had to bathe her eyes for a long time with cold water, After the vision of the Cross she knows true penitence, and she decides on a life of absolute poverty. So one by one she climbs her steps. She learns more and more of the Passion. God Himself through the Lord’s Prayer teaches her to pray. She finds what graces come from our Blessed Lady, and at the eighteenth step she says that she realizes God most vividly, and so delights in prayer that she forgets to eat. At this stage she sells her much-loved castle.

Angela tells us that she has dwelt in two abysses, of height and of depth. Now, after the eighteenth step, she is hurled from the abyss of height and we have a terrible chapter telling of her temptations. She seems to herself to be stripped of every good wish or thought. She is tried by the most horrible sensual temptations, haunted by longings for sins of which she had never heard. At last the light broke through and she had a short reprieve. What she calls the next abyss was the temp­tation to false humility, great self-consciousness and scrupulosity. She wanted to tear off her clothes and run about the town naked, with fish and meat hung round her neck, crying out, “This is a most vile woman who stinks of evil and falsehood, who spreads vice and sin wherever she goes. Yes, that is what I am—a humbug. I pretend I eat no fish or meat, and really I am a glutton and a drunkard. I pretend I wear common rough clothing, but at night I sleep under the softest coverings, which I hide in the morning.” She implored the Friars Minor and her tertiaries to believe these self-accusations.
    At last she was delivered from this curse of false humility only to fall into the other extreme of great spiritual pride. She was filled with anger, bitterness, ill-nature. This state of torment began in 1294 and lasted more than two years. At last her poor tortured soul was lifted out of this abyss of darkness and she was comforted with a vision of God as the highest good, and more and more, as her life proceeded, she was filled with great joy and happiness—that joy which was the keynote of the early Franciscan life. Over and over again in her visions she is shown the love and goodness and kindness of God; more and more she grasps the underlying principle that St Francis taught, which binds all things together and “makes of all things one”—namely, love. When she is in the state of love everything that could be said about God or the life of Christ in Holy Scripture would only be a hindrance—she is “in God” and reads much greater and incomparable words. When she comes to herself after this experience she is so peaceful and happy that she says she is full of love “even for the devils”. She is so lost in love that not even the passion of our Lord can sadden her—all is joy. Sometimes the soul contemplates the human flesh of God which died for us, at other times joyful love wipes out all the sorrow of the Passion. “Therefore” she concludes, “the Passion is to me only a shining path of life.”

A large part of the book of visions is taken up with these wonderful, vivid, but always restrained descriptions of every detail of Christ’s passion and crucifixion. More and more she rises above the pain and suffering in the spirit of her Lord Himself, “who for the joy set before Him endured the cross and despised the shame”. She tells us that assisting at a representation of the Passion (apparently a kind of mystery play) in the open air she was so overcome with this spirit of joy that she seemed to herself to be taken up and hidden in the shining wound of the side of Christ. Wonderful favours and visions were granted her at Mass and holy communion. One of the last recorded visions is Peace. Something had disturbed her and she had lost her joy and peace. At last God spoke to her and told her she was favoured above anyone in the valley of Spoleto. Her soul cried out, Why, then, did God desert her? The answer was that she must trust more and more, and gradually peace returned to her, greater than she had ever known.

The book concludes with a vision she calls the path of salvation, in which she speaks of the blessedness of those who know God, not by what He gives, but by what He is in Himself. “Lord”, she cried, “tell me what thou dost want of me I am all thine. But there was no answer, and I prayed from Matins till Terce— then I saw and heard.” There was an abyss of light—an abyss in which the truth of God was spread out like a road on which those passed who went to Him and those also who turned away from Him, and the voice of God said to me, “In truth the only way of salvation is to follow my footsteps from the cross on earth to this light”. Here the divine Word became clearer and more distinct, and the path was bathed in light and splendour as far as the eye could reach.

We know very little about Bd Angela of Foligno apart from her own disclosures regarding herself. These are printed in the Acta Sanctorum for January 4, and they were re-edited by Boccolini in the eighteenth century, and by Faloci-Pulignani from 1899. An Italian arrangement of the same materials had appeared in 1536, of which there is an English render­ing by Mary G. Steegman, which was published under the title The Book of the Divine Consolation of Bd Angela of Foligno (1909). But a re-editing of the sources was highly desirable (cf. the article “ Les oeuvres authentiques d’Angéle de Foligno” in the Revue d’histoire franciscaine, July, 1924); this was done from MS 342 in the municipal library at Assisi by Fr P. Doncoeur, text (1925) and French translation (1926), and by Fr M. J. Ferré (text and translation, 1927). See also L. Lecléve, Ste Angéle de Foligno (1936) and Fr Doncoeur’s bibliography in the Revue d’ascétique et de mystique, July, 1925. The cultus of Bd Angela has been approved by Pope Innocent XII and other pontiffs (she is sometimes called Saint).
 1360 BD VILLANA OF FLORENCE, MATRON wonderful visions and colloquies with our Lady and other saints.
        
         Bd VILLANA was the daughter of Andrew de’ Botti, a Florentine merchant, and was born in 1332. When she was thirteen she ran away from home to enter a convent, but her attempts were unsuccessful and she was forced to return. To prevent any repetition of her flight, her father shortly afterwards gave her in marriage to Rosso di Piero. After her marriage she appeared completely changed: she gave herself up to pleasure and dissipation and lived a wholly idle and worldly life.
One day, as she was about to start for an entertainment clad in a gorgeous dress adorned with pearls and precious stones, she looked at herself in a mirror. To her dismay the reflection that met her eyes was that of a hideous demon. A second and a third mirror showed the same ugly form. Thoroughly alarmed and recognizing in the reflection the image of her sin-stained soul, she tore off her fine attire and, clad in the simplest clothes she could find, she betook herself weeping to the Dominican fathers at Santa Maria Novella to make a full confession and to ask absolution and help. This proved the turning point of her life, and she never again fell away.                    -
           Ere long Villana was admitted to the third order of St Dominic, and after this she advanced rapidly in the spiritual life. Fulfilling all her duties as a married woman, she spent all her available time in prayer and reading. She particularly loved to study St Paul’s epistles and the lives of the saints. At one time, in her self-abasement and in her love for the poor, she would have gone begging for them from door to door had not her husband and parents interposed. So completely did she give herself up to God that she was often rapt in ecstasy, particularly during Mass or at spiritual conferences but she had to pass through a period of persecution when she was cruelly calumniated and her honour was assailed. Her soul was also purified by strange pains and by great bodily weakness. However, she passed unscathed through all these trials and was rewarded by wonderful visions and colloquies with our Lady and other saints.

Occasionally the room in which she dwelt was filled with supernatural light, and she was also endowed with the gift of prophecy. As she lay on her deathbed she asked that the Passion should be read to her, and at the words “He bowed His head and gave up the ghost”, she crossed her hands on her breast and passed away.
Her body was taken to Santa Maria Novella, where it became such an object of veneration that for over a month it was impossible to proceed with the funeral. People struggled to obtain shreds of her clothing, and she was honoured as a saint from the day of her death. Her bereaved husband used to say that, when he felt discouraged and depressed, he found strength by visiting the room in which his beloved wife had died. Bd Villana’s cultus was confirmed in 1824.
           See the Acta Sanctorum for August 26 (Aug. vol. v) Procter, Lives of Dominican Saints,
         pp. 50—52; M. C. Ganay, Les Bienheureuses Dominicaines, pp. 153—175.
1377 Bl. Villana hideous demon in mirror wonderful visions olloquies our Lady and saints gift of prophecy

 1360 BD VILLANA OF FLORENCE, MATRON
BD VILLANA was the daughter of Andrew de’ Botti, a Florentine merchant, and was born in 1332. When she was thirteen she ran away from home to enter a convent, but her attempts were unsuccessful and she was forced to return. To prevent any repetition of her flight, her father shortly afterwards gave her in marriage to Rosso di Piero. After her marriage she appeared completely changed: she gave herself up to pleasure and dissipation and lived a wholly idle and worldly life. One day, as she was about to start for an entertainment clad in a gorgeous dress adorned with pearls and precious stones, she looked at herself in a mirror. To her dismay the reflection that met her eyes was that of a hideous demon. A second and a third mirror showed the same ugly form. Thoroughly alarmed and recognizing in the reflection the image of her sin-stained soul, she tore off her fine attire and, clad in the simplest clothes she could find, she betook herself weeping to the Dominican fathers at Santa Maria Novella to make a full confession and to ask absolution and help. This proved the turning point of her life, and she never again fell away.

Ere long Villana was admitted to the third order of St Dominic, and after this she advanced rapidly in the spiritual life. Fulfilling all her duties as a married woman, she spent all her available time in prayer and reading. She particularly loved to study St Paul’s epistles and the lives of the saints. At one time, in her self-abasement and in her love for the poor, she would have gone begging for them from door to door had not her husband and parents interposed. So completely did she give herself up to God that she was often rapt in ecstasy, particularly during Mass or at spiritual conferences but she had to pass through a period of perse­cution when she was cruelly calumniated and her honour was assailed. Her soul was also purified by strange pains and by great bodily weakness. However, she passed unscathed through all these trials and was rewarded by wonderful visions and colloquies with our Lady and other saints. Occasionally the room in which she dwelt was filled with supernatural light, and\she was also endowed with the gift of prophecy. As she lay on her deathbed she asked that the Passion should be read to her, and at the words “He bowed His head and gave up the ghost”, she crossed her hands on her breast and passed away. Her body was taken to Santa Maria Novella, where it became such an object of veneration that for over a month it was impossible to proceed with the funeral. People struggled to obtain shreds of her clothing, and she was honoured as a saint from the day of her death. Her bereaved husband used to say that, when he felt discouraged and depressed, he found strength by visiting the room in which his beloved wife had died. Bd Villana’s cultus was confirmed in 1824.

See the Acta Sanctorum for August 26 (Aug. vol. v); Procter, Lives of Dominican Saints, pp. 50—52 ; M. C. Ganay, Les Bienheureuses Dominicaines, pp. 153—175.

Blessed Villana was the daughter of Andrew de'Botti, a Florentine merchant, and was born in 1332. When she was thirteen she ran away from home to enter a convent but her attempts were unsuccessful and she was forced to return. To prevent any repetition of her flight, her father shortly afterwards gave her in marriage to Rosso di Piero. After her marriage she appeared completely changed; she gave herself up to pleasure and dissipation and lived a wholly idle and worldly life. One day, as she was about to start for an entertainment clad in a gorgeous dress adorned with pearls and precious stones, she looked at herself in a mirror. To her dismay, the reflection that met her eyes was that of a hideous demon. A second and a third mirror showed the same ugly form. Thoroughly alarmed and recognizing in the reflection the image of herself sin-stained soul, she tore off her fine attire and, clad in the simplest clothes she could find, she betook herself weeping to the Dominican Fathers at Santa Maria Novella to make a full confession and to ask absolution and help. This proved the turning point of her life, and she never again fell away.
Before long Villana was admitted to the Third Order of St. Dominic, and after this she advanced rapidly in the spiritual life.
Fulfilling all her duties as a married woman, she spent all her available time in prayer and reading. She particularly loved to read St. Paul's Epistles and the lives of the saints. At one time, in a self-abasement and in her love for the poor, she would have gone begging for them from door to door had not her husband and parents interposed. So completely did she give herself up to God that she was often rapt in ecstacy, particularly during Mass or at spiritual conferences; but she had to pass through a period of persecution when she was cruelly calumniated and her honor was assailed.
Her soul was also purified by strong pains and by great bodily weakness.
However, she passed unscathed through all these trials and was rewarded by wonderful visions and olloquies with our Lady and other saints. Occasionally the room in which she dwelt was filled with supernatural light, and she was also endowed with the gift of prophecy. As she lay on her deathbed, she asked that the Passion should be read to her, and at the words "He bowed His head and gave up the ghost", she crossed her hands on her breast and passed away.
    Her body was taken to Santa Maria Novella, where it became such an object of veneration that for over a month it was impossible to proceed with the funeral. People struggled to obtain shreds of her clothing, and she was honored as a saint from the day of her death. Her bereaved husband use to say that, when he felt discouraged and depressed, he found strength by visiting the room in which his beloved wife had died. Blessed Villana's cultus was confirmed in 1824.
1399  St. Hedwig, Blessed Queen of Poland and model of faith in Lithuania
She was the daughter of King Louis I of Hungray, ascending the throne at age thirteen. She married Jagiello of Lithuania only after he became a christian, and then actively promoted Christianity in Lithuania.

 1399 BD HEDWIG OF POLAND, MATRON
THERE are two Hedwigs (Jadwiga) of royal blood, both of whom Butler com­memorates on the same day (October 27). The younger of these, whose claim to liturgical celebration is not clearly made out, seems to be honoured in her own country on the last day of February with a popular cultus. The cause of her beatification was indeed introduced, but it has never been prosecuted to a successful issue. She was born in 1371, and was the youngest daughter of Louis, nephew and successor to Casimir III, King of Poland. After his death in 1382 it was pressed upon Hedwig as a religious duty to accept for a husband the still pagan Jagiello, Duke of Lithuania. Diplomatically such an alliance seemed most ad­vantageous for Poland and the Church, as the duke was not only willing in view of the marriage to accept Christianity himself, but promised that all his people should become Christians also. Hedwig, child as she still was in years (she was then thirteen), had to make a decision according to her conscience. A sympathetic pen in modem times has given this account of her surrender:

Covering herself with a thick black veil she proceeded on foot to the cathedral of Cracow, and repairing to one of the side chapels, threw herself on her knees, where for three hours with clasped hands and streaming eyes she wrestled with the repugnance that surged within her. At length she rose with a detached heart, having laid at the foot of the cross her affections, her will, her hopes of earthly happiness; offering herself, and all that belonged to her, as a perpetual holocaust to her crucified Redeemer, and esteeming herself happy, if so by this sacrifice she might purchase the salvation of those precious souls for whom He had shed His blood. Before leaving the chapel she cast her veil over the crucifix, hoping under that pall to bury all human infirmity that might still linger round her heart, and then hastened to establish a founda­tion for the perpetual renewal of this type of her soul’s sorrow. This founda­tion yet exists within the same chapel the crucifix still stands, covered by its sable drapery, being commonly known as the “crucifix of Hedwig.”

Jagiello seems to have been sincere. He received baptism, together with the new name of Ladislaus, and we read strange stories of the “conversion” of the Lithuanian people—how the temples of the false gods were destroyed wholesale, and how men, women and children drawn up in platoons, “were sprinkled [for their baptism] by the bishops and priests, every division receiving the same, name.”

All through the troubled years which followed, Hedwig was the most stable as well as the most judicious element in the government of the kingdom. She exercised a moderating influence upon the policy of her husband, she came to the rescue of the poor suffering people, who too often had to pay the penalty for the mistakes or the selfishness of their rulers, she won the love of her subjects by her gentleness and boundless charity, and yet she showed that she could defend herself with dignity against Ladislaus’s irrational outbursts of jealousy. It was only in her asceticism that she seemed to forget the need of a measure of prudence. But she was conscientious in all wifely duties, and her husband beyond doubt regarded her with deep affection as well as with a certain feeling of awe. When at last there was promise of an heir to the throne he was extravagant in the preparations he wished made. From the frontier where he was conducting a campaign he wrote about providing jewels and rich draperies. Hedwig replied “Seeing that I have so long renounced the pomps of this world, it is not on that treacherous couch—to so many the bed of death—that I would willingly be surrounded by their glitter. It is not by the help of gold or gems that I hope to render myself acceptable to that Almighty Father who has mercifully removed from me the reproach of barrenness, but rather by resignation to His will and a sense of my own nothingness.” Humanly speaking, she was not altogether wise in her use of penance and prayer. On the anniversary of her great renunciation she went out unattended to make a vigil in the cathedral before the veiled crucifix. Her ladies-in-waiting found her there, hours later, rapt in ecstasy or possibly in a swoon. Not long afterwards the birth of a daughter, who lived only a few days, cost the mother her life. It was believed that many miracles were wrought at her tomb.

See the Dublin Review, October, 1864, pp. 311—343; A. B. C. Dunbar, Dictionary of Saintly Women, vol. i, pp. 366—369; H. Sienkiewicz, Knights of the Cross, ch. 4 and the Cambridge History of Poland, vol. (1950), for the historical background of the marriage that united Poland and Lithuania for 400 years.
1472 Blessed Antonia (Antoinette) of Florence, OFM Widow (AC)
Born in Florence, Italy, in 1400; died 1472; cultus confirmed in 1847. Twice widowed, twice prioress, Antonia joined the Franciscan tertiaries when she was widowed while still very young. She was chosen as superioress of Aquila and adopted the original rule of the Poor Clares. She contracted a painful disease, which afflicted her for 15 years, but this and other trials she bore bravely under the guidance of Saint John of Capistrano (Benedictines, Encyclopedia).

1472 BD ANTONIA OF FLORENCE, WIDOW
THE town of Aquila in the Abruzzi contains the relics of three distinguished Franciscans—St Bernardino of Siena, Bd Vincent of Aquila and Bd Antonia of Florence. Antonia married whilst still quite young, lost her husband after a few years and, desiring after her widowhood to consecrate herself to God, she resisted the efforts of her relations who wished her to marry again. When in 1429 Bd Angelina of Marsciano sent two of her religious to found in Florence the fifth of her convents of regular tertiaries of St Francis. Antonia was one of the first to enter the new house. The following year. the superioress of the Observance, who recognized her exceptional merits and powers, transferred her to Foligno and placed her in, charge of the convent of St Anne, which was the original house founded by Bd Angelina. Here Antonia had the privilege of being under the immediate direction of the foundress. Three years later she was sent to rule a recently established community at Aquila, and once again she set the example of a holy life poured forth in acts of charity. Bd Angelina died the second year after Antonia had gone to Aquila, and she lost another of her chief supports in the person of St Bernardino of Siena, who died in 1444 at Aquila.

When St John Capistran visited the town, Antonia told him that she desired a stricter rule, and he so fully sympathized with her wishes that he obtained for her the monastery of Corpus Christi, which had just been built for another order, and thither she retired in 1447 with eleven of her nuns to practise the original rule of St Clare in all its rigour. Girls gave up brilliant prospects to join her and the convent soon had to be enlarged to contain the hundred or more nuns who sang the divine praises day and night. Humility and patience were the outstanding qualities of Bd Antonia, who for fifteen years bore uncomplainingly a most painful disease, and in her spiritual life had to undergo severe trials. Her son was nothing but a trouble to her he dissipated his whole fortune, and he and her other relations used to come and worry her with their quarrels and affairs. It was also a great blow to her when the Franciscans of Aquila, to whom St John Capistran had entrusted the care of the convent, gave up the direction of the nuns; but they subsequently resumed the spiritual guidance of the community. She was a true daughter of St Francis in her love for poverty, which she called the Queen of the House. She was full of tenderness to her spiritual daughters, and when after seven years she resigned her office, she retained the affection and veneration of the whole community. Bd Antonia at times was seen to be in ecstasy and upraised from the ground, and once a fiery globe appeared to rest upon her head and to light up the place in which she prayed. When she died in 1472 the bishop, magistrates and people of Aquila insisted on conducting her funeral with great solemnity at the public charge. Her cult was confirmed in 1847.

See Léon, L’Auréole Séraphique (Eng. trans.), vol. ii, pp. 36—40; Mazzara, Leggendario Francescano, vol. i, pp. 287—289.
1533 BD LOUISA ALBERTONI, WIDOW
LOUISA’S (Lodovica) father, Stephen Albertoni, and her mother, Lucrezia Tebaldi, belonged to distinguished Roman families. She was born in 1473, and lost her father while yet an infant. Her mother married again, and Louisa was brought up first by her grandmother, and then by two of her aunts; and she was induced by family influence to marry James de Cithara, a young man of noble family and great wealth. She bore him three daughters and lived with him on terms of deep affection, but he died in 1506.
Becoming in this way her own mistress, Louisa gave herself up almost entirely to prayer, assuming finally the habit of the third order of St Francis. Her contemplation of the Passion was so uninterrupted, and the devotion with which she called to mind the sufferings of our Lord so intense, that she is said to have nearly lost her sight by the tears in which these hours of prayer were spent. What remained of her time was given to the service of the sick and the poor, and to visiting the seven great basilicas of Rome. She lived in the deepest poverty, her whole fortune expended in alleviating the distress of those around her.
The methods of relief which her humility adopted were often somewhat original, as when, for example, she baked a great batch of bread to be distributed at random to the poor, putting into the loaves gold and silver coins of different values, and praying at the same time that the largest alms might providentially find their way to those who most needed help. Louisa in fact stripped herself so generously of all she possessed that the time came when she had nothing left to give : her relatives supplied her with her daily food, but she kept little even of this for herself. In these last years of her life she enjoyed profound peace of soul and was constantly rapt in ecstasy, during which times, as we are told by her biographers, she was not seldom raised physically from the ground. She fell asleep in the Lord on January 31, 1533, as she repeated, like her Divine Master, the words “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit”.
Many miracles are said to have taken place when her body lay in the church awaiting burial, and afterwards at her tomb. Her cultus was confirmed in 1671.

See G. Peolo, Vita della B. Lodovica Albertoni (1672) Léon, L’Auréole Séraphique (Eng. trans.), vol. i, pp. 127—132 B. Mazzara, Leggendario Francescano (1676), vol. i, pp. 145—155.
1576 Blessed Nicholas of Pskov graced by the Holy Spirit granted gifts of wonderworking and prophecy
Blessed Nicholas of Pskov lived the life of a holy fool for more than three decades. Long before his death he acquired the grace of the Holy Spirit and was granted the gifts of wonderworking and of prophecy. The Pskov people of his time called him Mikula [Mikola, Nikola] the Fool. Even during his lifetime they revered him as a saint, even calling him Mikula the saintly.
In February 1570, after a devastating campaign against Novgorod, Tsar Ivan the Terrible Liubyatov Tenderness Icon of the Mother of God (March 19) in the Monastery of St Nicholas (the Tsar's army was at Lubyatov). "Be tender of heart," he said to his soldiers. "Blunt your swords upon the stones, and let there be an end to killing."

All the inhabitants of Pskov came out upon the streets, and each family knelt at the gate of their house, bearing bread and salt to the meet the Tsar. On one of the streets Blessed Nicholas ran toward the Tsar astride a stick as though riding a horse, and cried out: "Ivanushko, Ivanushko, eat our bread and salt, and not Christian blood."  The Tsar gave orders to capture the holy fool, but he disappeared.
Though he had forbidden his men to kill, Ivan still intended to sack the city.
The Tsar attended a Molieben at the Trinity cathedral, and he venerated the relics of holy Prince Vsevolod-Gabriel (February 11), and expressed his wish to receive the blessing of the holy fool Nicholas. The saint instructed the Tsar "by many terrible sayings," to stop the killing and not to plunder the holy churches of God. But Ivan did not heed him and gave orders to remove the bell from the Trinity cathedral.
    He moved against Pskov, suspecting the inhabitants of treason. As the Pskov Chronicler relates, "the Tsar came ... with great fierceness, like a roaring lion, to tear apart innocent people and to shed much blood."   On the first Saturday of Great Lent, the whole city prayed to be delivered from the Tsar's wrath. Hearing the peal of the bell for Matins in Pskov, the Tsar's heart was softened when he read the inscription on the fifteenth century wonderworking
Then, as the saint prophesied, the Tsar's finest horse fell dead.

The blessed one invited the Tsar to visit his cell under the belltower. When the Tsar arrived at the cell of the saint, he said, "Hush, come in and have a drink of water from us, there is no reason you should shun it." Then the holy fool offered the Tsar a piece of raw meat.
"I am a Christian and do not eat meat during Lent", said Ivan to him. "But you drink human blood," the saint replied.

Frightened by the fulfillment of the saint's prophecy and denounced for his wicked deeds, Ivan the Terrible ordered a stop to the looting and fled from the city. The Oprichniki, witnessing this, wrote: "The mighty tyrant ... departed beaten and shamed, driven off as though by an enemy.
    Thus did a worthless beggar terrify and drive off the Tsar with his multitude of a thousand soldiers."
Blessed Nicholas died on February 28, 1576 and was buried in the Trinity cathedral of the city he had saved. Such honors were granted only to the Pskov princes, and later on, to bishops.

The local veneration of the saint began five years after his death. In the year 1581, during a siege of Pskov by the soldiers of the Polish king Stephen Bathory, the Mother of God appeared to the blacksmith Dorotheus together with a number of Pskov saints praying for the city. Among these was Blessed Nicholas (the account about the Pskov-Protection Icon of the Mother of God is found under October 1).
At the Trinity cathedral they still venerate the relics of Blessed Nicholas of Pskov, who was "a holy fool in the flesh, and by assuming this holy folly he became a citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem" (Troparion). He also "transformed the Tsar's wild thoughts into mercy" (Kontakion).
1936 Blessed Daniel Brottier Senegal, West Africa volunteer chaplain WWI 4yrs
b. 1876 Daniel spent most of his life in the trenches—one way or another.  Born in France in 1876, Daniel was ordained in 1899 and began a teaching career. That didn’t satisfy him long. He wanted to use his zeal for the gospel far beyond the classroom. He joined the missionary Congregation of the Holy Spirit, which sent him to Senegal, West Africa. After eight years there, his health was suffering. He was forced to return to France, where he helped raise funds for the construction of a new cathedral in Senegal.
At the outbreak of World War I Daniel became a volunteer chaplain and spent four years at the front. He did not shrink from his duties. Indeed, he risked his life time and again in ministering to the suffering and dying. It was miraculous that he did not suffer a single wound during his 52 months in the heart of battle.

After the war he was invited to help establish a project for orphaned and abandoned children in a Paris suburb. He spent the final 13 years of his life there. He died in 1936 and was beatified by Pope John Paul II in Paris only 48 years later.


THE PSALTER OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY PSALM 278

O Lady, the heathen have come into the inheritance of God: which thou hast established in Christ by thy merits.

Let thy speech be sweet before Him: and unite me to Him who hath redeemed me.

Stretch forth thine arm against the cruel enemy: and unfold to me his craft.

Thy voice is sweet above every melody: the angelic harmony cannot be compared with it.

Drop down on me the sweetness of thy graces: and the fragrance of thy heavenly gifts.

Let every spirit praise Our Lady

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

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

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

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost as it was in the beginning and will always be.
God loves variety. He doesn't mass-produce his saints. Every saint is unique, for each is the result of a new idea. 
As the liturgy says: Non est inventus similis illis--there are no two exactly alike. It is we with our lack of imagination, who paint the same haloes on all the saints. Dear Lord, grant us a spirit that is not bound by our own ideas and preferences. 
Grant that we may be able to appreciate in others what we lack in ourselves. O Lord, grant that we may understand that every saint must be a unique praise of Your glory. Catholic saints are holy people and human people who lived extraordinary lives.  Each saint the Church honors responded to God's invitation to use his or her unique gifts.   God calls each one of us to be a saint in order to get into 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.

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

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

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

680 Shiite saint Imam Hussein, grandson of Islam's Prophet Muhammad Known as Ashoura and observed by Shiites across the world, the 10th day of the lunar Muslim month of Muharram: the anniversary of the 7th century death in battle of one of Shiite Islam's most beloved saints.  Imam Hussein died in the 680 A.D. battle fought on the plains outside Karbala, a city in modern Iraq that's home to the saint's shrine.  The battle over a dispute about the leadership of the Muslim faith following Muhammad's death in 632 A.D. It is the defining event in Islam's split into Sunni and Shiite branches.  The occasion is the source of an enduring moral lesson. "He sacrificed his blood to teach us not to give in to corruption, coercion, or use of force and to seek honor and justice."  According to Shiite beliefs, Hussein and companions were denied water by enemies who controlled the nearby Euphrates.  Streets get partially covered with blood from slaughter of hundreds of cows and sheep. Volunteers cook the meat and feed it to the poor.  Hussein's martyrdom recounted through a rich body of prose, poetry and song remains an inspirational example of sacrifice to many Shiites, 10 percent of the world's estimated 1.3 billion Muslims.
Meeting of the Saints  walis (saints of Allah)
Great men covet to embrace martyrdom for a cause and principle.
So was the case with Hazrat Ali. He could have made a compromise with the evil forces of his time and, as a result, could have led a very comfortable, easy and luxurious life.  But he was not a person who would succumb to such temptations. His upbringing, his education and his training in the lap of the holy Prophet made him refuse such an offer.
Rabia Al-Basri (717–801 C.E.) She was first to set forth the doctrine of mystical love and who is widely considered to be the most important of the early Sufi poets. An elderly Shia pointed out that during his pre-Partition childhood it was quite common to find pictures and portraits of Shia icons in Imambaras across the country.
Shah Abdul Latif: The Exalted Sufi Master born 1690 in a Syed family; died 1754. In ancient times, Sindh housed the exemplary Indus Valley Civilisation with Moenjo Daro as its capital, and now, it is the land of a culture which evolved from the teachings of eminent Sufi saints. Pakistan is home to the mortal remains of many Sufi saints, the exalted among them being Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai, a practitioner of the real Islam, philosopher, poet, musicologist and preacher. He presented his teaching through poetry and music - both instruments sublime - and commands a very large following, not only among Muslims but also among Hindus and Christians. Sindh culture: The Shah is synonymous with Sindh. He is the very fountainhead of Sindh's culture. His message remains as fresh as that of any present day poet, and the people of Sindh find solace from his writings. He did indeed think for Sindh. One of his prayers, in exquisite Sindhi, translates thus: “Oh God, may ever You on Sindh bestow abundance rare! Beloved! All the world let share Thy grace, and fruitful be.”
Shia Ali al-Hadi, died 868 and son Hassan al-Askari 874. These saints are the 10th and 11th of Shia's 12 most revered Imams. Baba Farid Sufi 1398 miracle, Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki renowned Muslim Sufi saint scholar miracles 569 A.H. [1173 C.E.] hermit gave to poor, Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti greatest mystic of his time born 533 Hijri (1138-39 A.D.), Hazrat Ghuas-e Azam, Hazrat Bu Ali Sharif, and Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia Sufi Saint Hazrath Khwaja Syed Mohammed Badshah Quadri Chisty Yamani Quadeer (RA) 1236-1325 welcomed people of all faiths & all walks of life.
801 Rabi'a al-'Adawiyya Sufi One of the most famous Islamic mystics
(b. 717). This 8th century saint was an early Sufi who had a profound influence on later Sufis, who in turn deeply influenced the European mystical love and troubadour traditions.  Rabi'a was a woman of Basra, a seaport in southern Iraq.  She was born around 717 and died in 801 (185-186).  Her biographer, the great medieval poet Attar, tells us that she was "on fire with love and longing" and that men accepted her "as a second spotless Mary" (186).  She was, he continues, “an unquestioned authority to her contemporaries" (218).
Rabi'a began her ascetic life in a small desert cell near Basra, where she lost herself in prayer and went straight to God for teaching.  As far as is known, she never studied under any master or spiritual director.  She was one of the first of the Sufis to teach that Love alone was the guide on the mystic path (222).  A later Sufi taught that there were two classes of "true believers": one class sought a master as an intermediary between them and God -- unless they could see the footsteps of the Prophet on the path before them, they would not accept the path as valid.  The second class “...did not look before them for the footprint of any of God's creatures, for they had removed all thought of what He had created from their hearts, and concerned themselves solely with God. (218)
Rabi'a was of this second kind.  She felt no reverence even for the House of God in Mecca:  "It is the Lord of the house Whom I need; what have I to do with the house?" (219) One lovely spring morning a friend asked her to come outside to see the works of God.  She replied, "Come you inside that you may behold their Maker.  Contemplation of the Maker has turned me aside from what He has made" (219).  During an illness, a friend asked this woman if she desired anything.
"...[H]ow can you ask me such a question as 'What do I desire?'  I swear by the glory of God that for twelve years I have desired fresh dates, and you know that in Basra dates are plentiful, and I have not yet tasted them.  I am a servant (of God), and what has a servant to do with desire?" (162)
When a male friend once suggested she should pray for relief from a debilitating illness, she said,
"O Sufyan, do you not know Who it is that wills this suffering for me?  Is it not God Who wills it?  When you know this, why do you bid me ask for what is contrary to His will?  It is not  well to oppose one's Beloved." (221)
She was an ascetic.  It was her custom to pray all night, sleep briefly just before dawn, and then rise again just as dawn "tinged the sky with gold" (187).  She lived in celibacy and poverty, having renounced the world.  A friend visited her in old age and found that all she owned were a reed mat, screen, a pottery jug, and a bed of felt which doubled as her prayer-rug (186), for where she prayed all night, she also slept briefly in the pre-dawn chill.  Once her friends offered to get her a servant; she replied,
"I should be ashamed to ask for the things of this world from Him to Whom the world belongs, and how should I ask for them from those to whom it does not belong?"  (186-7)
A wealthy merchant once wanted to give her a purse of gold.  She refused it, saying that God, who sustains even those who dishonor Him, would surely sustain her, "whose soul is overflowing with love" for Him.  And she added an ethical concern as well:
"...How should I take the wealth of someone of whom I do not know whether he acquired it lawfully or not?" (187)
She taught that repentance was a gift from God because no one could repent unless God had already accepted him and given him this gift of repentance.  She taught that sinners must fear the punishment they deserved for their sins, but she also offered such sinners far more hope of Paradise than most other ascetics did.  For herself, she held to a higher ideal, worshipping God neither from fear of Hell nor from hope of Paradise, for she saw such self-interest as unworthy of God's servants; emotions like fear and hope were like veils -- i.e., hindrances to the vision of God Himself.  The story is told that once a number of Sufis saw her hurrying on her way with water in one hand and a burning torch in the other.  When they asked her to explain, she said:
"I am going to light a fire in Paradise and to pour water on to Hell, so that both veils may vanish altogether from before the pilgrims and their purpose may be sure..." (187-188)
She was once asked where she came from.  "From that other world," she said.  "And where are you going?" she was asked.  "To that other world," she replied (219).  She taught that the spirit originated with God in "that other world" and had to return to Him in the end.  Yet if the soul were sufficiently purified, even on earth, it could look upon God unveiled in all His glory and unite with him in love.  In this quest, logic and reason were powerless.  Instead, she speaks of the "eye" of her heart which alone could apprehend Him and His mysteries (220).
Above all, she was a lover, a bhakti, like one of Krishna’s Goptis in the Hindu tradition.  Her hours of prayer were not so much devoted to intercession as to communion with her Beloved.  Through this communion, she could discover His will for her.  Many of her prayers have come down to us:
       "I have made Thee the Companion of my heart,
        But my body is available for those who seek its company,
        And my body is friendly towards its guests,
        But the Beloved of my heart is the Guest of my soul."  [224]
To Save A Life is Earthly; Saving A Soul is Eternal Donation by mail, please send check or money order to:
Eternal Word Television Network 5817 Old Leeds Rd. Irondale, AL 35210  USA
  Catholic Television Network  Supported entirely by donations from viewers  help  spread the Eternal Word, online Here
Mother Angelica saving souls is this beautiful womans journey  Shrine_of_The_Most_Blessed_Sacrament
Colombia was among the countries Mother Angelica visited. 
In Bogotá, a Salesian priest - Father Juan Pablo Rodriguez - brought Mother and the nuns to the Sanctuary of the Divine Infant Jesus to attend Mass.  After Mass, Father Juan Pablo took them into a small Shrine which housed the miraculous statue of the Child Jesus. Mother Angelica stood praying at the side of the statue when suddenly the miraculous image came alive and turned towards her.  Then the Child Jesus spoke with the voice of a young boy:  “Build Me a Temple and I will help those who help you.” 

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

Brief History of our Beloved Holy Priest Here and his published books of Catholic History in North America
Reardon, J.M. Archbishop Ireland; Prelate, Patriot, Publicist, 1838-1918.
A Memoir (St. Paul; 1919); George Anthony Belcourt Pioneer Catholic Missionary of the Northwest 1803-1874 (1955);
The Catholic Church IN THE DIOCESE OF ST. PAUL from earliest origin to centennial achievement 1362-1950 (1952);
The Church of Saint Mary of Saint Paul 1875-1922;  (1932)
The Vikings in the American Heartland;
The Catholic Total Abstinence Society in Minnesota;
James Michael Reardon Born in Nova Scotia, 1872;  Priest, ordained by Bishop Ireland;
Member -- St. Paul Seminary faculty.
Affiliations and 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, 278 2023