Friday Saints of this Day November  04  Prídie Nonas Novémbris   
Et álibi aliórum plurimórum sanctórum Mártyrum et Confessórum, atque sanctárum Vírginum.

And elsewhere in divers places, many other holy martyrs, confessors, and holy virgins.
Пресвятая Богородице спаси нас!  (Santíssima Mãe de Deus, salva-nos!)
RDeo grátias. R.  Thanks be to God.
November is the month of the Holy Souls in Purgatory since 1888;
  2023
23,658  Lives Saved Since 2007

Make a Novena and pray the Rosary to Our Lady of Victory
Mary Mother of GOD

Pray that the witness of 40 Days for Life bears abundant fruit, and that we begin again each day to storm the gates of hell until God welcomes us into the gates of heaven.
Dear Readers, Day 41 intention Pray that the witness of 40 Days for Life bears abundant fruit
  15 Promises of the Virgin Mary to those who recite the Rosary

CAUSES OF SAINTS April  2014

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 .

United States Senator Charles Carroll was unique. He was the only Roman Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence and he outlived all the other signers. At his death, Charles Carroll was considered the wealthiest citizen in America. His statue was chosen to represent the State of Maryland in the U.S. Capitol's Statuary Hall.
Charles' cousin, John Carroll, founded Georgetown University and was the United States' first Catholic Bishop. Another cousin, U.S. Congressman Daniel Carroll, gave much of the land where the U.S. Capitol is located and was one of two Catholics to sign the U.S. Constitution.
Charles Carroll's nephew, Robert Brent, was the first mayor of Washington, D.C., being reappointed by Jefferson and Madison. In a letter to James McHenry, the signer of the Constitution for whom Fort McHenry was named, Charles Carroll wrote on NOVEMBER 4, 1800: “Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time. Carroll continued: They therefore who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime and pure and which insures to the good eternal happiness, are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments.
"Virtues are formed by prayer. Prayer preserves temperance.
Prayer suppresses anger. Prayer prevents emotions of pride and envy.
Prayer draws into the soul the Holy Spirit, and raises man to Heaven." -- St Ephraem


November 4 – Our Lady of Máriapócs (Hungary, 1696) 
 
They mixed their tears with those of the Virgin
Máriapócs is a commune in the county of Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg, Hungary. Its shrine of Our Lady of Máriapócs is known for the lacrimation of an icon of Mary Odigitria. The same incident has occurred at three different times in history: in 1696, 1715, and 1905.
Here are some remarks made by ​​Saint John Paul II at the Angelus of August 17, 1988:
"Máriapócs is a place of unity, where the faithful of different nations venerate Mary's maternal love, Mary who is saddened by the sins of her children and who intercedes for them before her divine Son. It is as if they go there to unite their own tears to the Virgin's tears, to purify and let their tears melt together into a single offering, united to the redemptive offering of Jesus the Savior." www.zenit.org
 
November 4 - Our Lady of Mariapocs (Hungary, 1696 - First Miracle) 
They Come to Unite Their Own Tears to the Virgin's Tears
According to tradition, on 4 November 1696, the faithful who were attending Mass in the small Greek-Catholic village church saw the Virgin of the “Odigitria icon weeping tears. The phenomenon repeated itself until December 8, and was witnessed by a great number of people flocking from neighboring villages. The priest saved these precious pearls of mercy tears in a silk handkerchief and sent them to the bishop, who had them examined by ecclesiastical and lay witnesses. Results of these examinations were unanimous.
    The royal family became interested in the prodigy as well. Emperor Leopold I ordered that the icon of the crying Virgin be transferred to Vienna and exhibited inside the cathedral. In the capital, this miraculous icon instantly became the object of a great veneration among the faithful, who invoked her in all necessities, especially during the war against the Turks, who were definitively expelled from the Autrio-Hungarian territory in 1697.
Meanwhile, a copy of the icon, placed in Mariapocs, also began to shed tears in 1715, during the first half of the month of August. Pilgrims came in great numbers and the civil authorities decided to build a larger church.  Construction began in 1749, but the interior was only completed in 1946. Afflux of pilgrims in the course of the following 2 centuries increased steadily, partly because a 3rdmiraculous lacrimation in 1905 lasted more than a month.
Pope John Paul II during the Angelus of 17 August 1988, declared,
Mariapocs is a place of unity, where the faithful of different nations venerate Mary's maternal love, Mary who is saddened by the sins of her children and who intercedes for them before her divine Son. It is as if they go there to unite their own tears to the Virgin's tears, to purify and let their tears melt together into a single offering,
united to the redemptive offering of Jesus the Savior.

November 4, 2006 Memorial of Saint Charles Boromeo, bishop
November 4 - Our Lady of Port Louis (Milan, Italy)
 
      Apparitions of Our Lady of Coromoto in Venezuela (II)
According to tradition, the Blessed Virgin appeared to the Indian chief a second time during the night of September 8, 1652, in the presence of his wife, his wife's sister-in-law and her nephew.
The chief was by no means a convert. He grabbed his bow and arrow and aimed at her. Mary remained insensitive to the threat. She approached him and he lowered his arrow. Then she disappeared, leaving a small parchment in his hand: her image. The chief wanted to burn it, but a child providentially took the image from him. Juan Sanchez was alerted and went to the place of the apparition with two of his companions, Bartolommeo Sanchez and Juan Sibrian to collect the invaluable relic. He announced a "miracle" to the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, but they remained incredulous.
The apparition of Coromoto ? the new name given to the place of the apparition ? has created cultural and religious unity in Venezuela around a place of devotion that became the center and the religious symbol of the nation, just like the apparitions of Guadalupe in Mexico have done. On February 1, 1654, in thanksgiving for these apparitions, the image was carried to the Church of Guanare (today a Basilica). The image was venerated there in a noble metal reliquary.
Adapted from the Dictionary of Apparitions (le dictionnaire des Apparitions)
By Father Rene Laurentin, Ed. Fayard 2007


November 4 - St Charles Borromeo, Cardinal, Bishop of Milan (Italy, d. 1584)
- Our Lady of Pötsch (Mariapocs, Hungary)
Before the Beginning of Time
From all eternity, before the beginning of time, the Immaculate Queen was already intimately united to the Word, in the providential dual plan that the Savior was to accomplish for the salvation of his fallen children.
The Redeemer with the Co-redemptrix—the Son with the Mother—the Author of Grace with the universal Mediatrix of all Graces.
While admiring this wonderful plan, let us look with awe upon the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary that God inseparably united in time and eternity.
Father Matéo In Jésus, Roi d’amour, (Jesus, King of Love,) Editions Téqui, Paris 1980 
1st v.St. Philologus and Patrobas  mentioned by St. Paul in his Letter to the Romans
 St. Nicander bishop and Hermas priest Martyrs at Myra, Lycia disciples of the holy Apostle Paul's follower and fellow ascetic, the holy Apostle Titus of the Seventy (August 25), ordained by him to the priesthood:  Hieromartyrs
1st v. St. Ilia Chavchavadze, well known as the “father” and “uncrowned king” of the Georgian nation, and Sts. John, Steven, and Isaiah the Georgians; It is believed that Holy John, Steven, and Isaiah lived in Jerusalem and guarded the Tomb of our Lord.
  304 St. Vitalis Martyr, also called Agricola
  310 St. Pierius Scholar and confessor Catechetical School of Alexandria
  542 St. Proculus Bishop of Narni, Italy, who was put to death by the Gothic king Totila.
 580 John Zedazneli, Abbot, and Companions evangelized Georgia and introduced monastic life there
  680 St. Modesta Benedictine abbess at Trier
        St. Clarus martyred priest Benedictine monk
  846 St. Joannicus  Hermit prophet miracle worker defied Byzantine emperor Theophilus;
Mt. Olympus Saint Theodore the Studite and Saint Methodius of Constantinople consulted him. Hermit (RM)
  875 Saint Clarus of Rouen first a monk and then a hermit in the diocese OSB M
  934 St. Birrstan Benedictine bishop
; noted for his devotion to the holy souls in Purgatory for whose repose he nightly
 repeated the Psalms. He also frequently said prayers for them in the cemetary (once was answered, “Amen!”)

999 Saint Gregory of Burtscheid built for him the abbey of Burtscheid, near Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen) OSB Abbot
1031 St. Emeric son of St. Stephen Hungary’s first Christian king  many miracles
1123 Gerard of Bazonches rustic, singular, very penitent, and a doctor OSB
1212 St. Felix of Valois project of founding an order for the redemption of captives
1242 Blessed Helen Enselmini age of 12 received the veil of the Poor Clares from Saint Francis himself at Arcella, near
        Padua Poor Clare
1250 Blessed Henry of Zwiefalten Benedictine of Zwiefalten abbey prior OSB
1485 Blessed Frances d'Amboise great benefactress of the Carmelite Blessed John Soreth Carmelite at the convent she had founded at Nantes OC
1584 St. Charles Borromeo Council of Trent Patron of learning arts; With Pope St Pius V, St Philip Neri and St Ignatius Loyola he is one of the four outstanding public men of the so-called Counter-reformation
1698 Rev Claude Brousson; Unter Ludwig XIV. mußten die Hugenotten vor allen nach der Aufhebung des Edikts von Nantes neue Verfolgungen erleiden. Der Prediger Claude Brousson (geboren 1647) feierte am 27. Juni 1683 mit Gleichgesinnten in Toulouse und Umgebung öffentliche reformierte Gottesdienste. Er löste damit eine neue Verfolgung aus und mußte in die Schweiz fliehen. Kehrte dann wieder nach Frankreich zurück und zog monatelang durch die reformierten Gemeinden in Südfrankreich.
Popes Associated with St Charles Borromeo
Paul IV, Pius IV, St Pius V, Pope Gregory XIII,
St Pius V 1566-1572 St Pius V  Feast Day April 30
1566-1572 Pope St. Pius V (MICHELE GHISLERI).
Pope Pius V made this Missal mandatory throughout the Latin rite of the Catholic Church, except where a Mass liturgy dating from before 1370 was in use . He worked incessantly to unite the Christian princes against the hereditary enemy, the Turks. In the first year of his pontificate he had ordered a solemn jubilee, exhorting the faithful to penance and almsgiving to obtain the victory from God. He supported the Knights of Malta, sent money for the fortification of the free towns of Italy, furnished monthly contributions to the Christians of Hungary, and endeavoured especially to bring Maximilian, Philip II, and Charles I together for the defence of Christendom.

Born at Bosco, near Alexandria, Lombardy, 17 Jan., 1504 elected 7 Jan., 1566; died 1 May, 1572. Being of a poor though noble family his lot would have been to follow a trade, but he was taken in by the Dominicans of Voghera, where he received a good education and was trained in the way of solid and austere piety. He entered the order, was ordained in 1528, and taught theology and philosophy for sixteen years. In the meantime he was master of novices and was on several occasions elected prior of different houses of his order in which he strove to develop the practice of the monastic virtues and spread the spirit of the holy founder. He himself was an example to all. He fasted, did penance, passed long hours of the night in meditation and prayer, traveled on foot without a cloak in deep silence, or only speaking to his companions of the things of God. In 1556 he was made Bishop of Sutri by Paul IV. His zeal against heresy caused him to be selected as inquisitor of the faith in Milan and Lombardy, and in 1557 Paul II made him a cardinal and named him inquisitor general for all Christendom. In 1559 he was transferred to Mondovì, where he restored the purity of faith and discipline, gravely impaired by the wars of Piedmont. Frequently called to Rome, he displayed his unflinching zeal in all the affairs on which he was consulted. Thus he offered an insurmountable opposition to Pius IV when the latter wished to admit Ferdinand de' Medici, then only thirteen years old, into the Sacred College. Again it was he who defeated the project of Maximilian II, Emperor of Germany, to abolish ecclesiastical celibacy. On the death of Pius IV, he was, despite his tears and entreaties, elected pope, to the great joy of the whole Church.

He began his pontificate by giving large alms to the poor, instead of distributing his bounty at haphazard like his predecessors. As pontiff he practiced the virtues he had displayed as a monk and a bishop. His piety was not diminished, and, in spite of the heavy labours and anxieties of his office, he made at least two meditations a day on bended knees in presence of the Blessed Sacrament. In his charity he visited the hospitals, and sat by the bedside of the sick, consoling them and preparing them to die. He washed the feet of the poor, and embraced the lepers. It is related that an English nobleman was converted on seeing him kiss the feet of a beggar covered with ulcers. He was very austere and banished luxury from his court, raised the standard of morality, laboured with his intimate friend, St. Charles Borromeo, to reform the clergy, obliged his bishops to reside in their dioceses, and the cardinals to lead lives of simplicity and piety. He diminished public scandals by relegating prostitutes to distant quarters, and he forbade bull fights. He enforced the observance of the discipline of the Council of Trent, reformed the Cistercians, and supported the missions of the New World. In the Bull "In Coena Domini" he proclaimed the traditional principles of the Roman Church and the supremacy of the Holy See over the civil power.

But the great thought and the constant preoccupation of his pontificate seems to have been the struggle against the Protestants and the Turks. In Germany he supported the Catholics oppressed by the heretical princes. In France he encouraged the League by his counsels and with pecuniary aid. In the Low Countries he supported Spain. In England, finally, he excommunicated Elizabeth, embraced the cause of Mary Stuart, and wrote to console her in prison. In the ardour of his faith he did not hesitate to display severity against the dissidents when necessary, and to give a new impulse to the activity of the Inquisition, for which he has been blamed by certain historians who have exaggerated his conduct. Despite all representations on his behalf he condemned the writings of Baius, who ended by submitting.

He worked incessantly to unite the Christian princes against the hereditary enemy, the Turks. In the first year of his pontificate he had ordered a solemn jubilee, exhorting the faithful to penance and almsgiving to obtain the victory from God. He supported the Knights of Malta, sent money for the fortification of the free towns of Italy, furnished monthly contributions to the Christians of Hungary, and endeavoured especially to bring Maximilian, Philip II, and Charles I together for the defence of Christendom. In 1567 for the same purpose he collected from all convents one-tenth of their revenues. In 1570 when Solyman II attacked Cyprus, threatening all Christianity in the West, he never rested till he united the forces of Venice, Spain, and the Holy See. He sent his blessing to Don John of Austria, the commander-in-chief of the expedition, recommending him to leave behind all soldiers of evil life, and promising him the victory if he did so. He ordered public prayers, and increased his own supplications to heaven. On the day of the Battle of Lepanto, 7 Oct., 1571, he was working with the cardinals, when, suddenly, interrupting his work opening the window and looking at the sky, he cried out, "A truce to business; our great task at present is to thank God for the victory which He has just given the Christian army". He burst into tears when he heard of the victory, which dealt the Turkish power a blow from which it never recovered. In memory of this triumph he instituted for the first Sunday of October the feast of the Rosary, and added to the Litany of Loreto the supplication "Help of Christians". He was hoping to put an end to the power of Islam by forming a general alliance of the Italian cities Poland, France, and all Christian Europe, and had begun negotiations for this purpose when he died of gravel, repeating "O Lord, increase my sufferings and my patience!" He left the memory of a rare virtue and an unfailing and inflexible integrity. He was beatified by Clement X in 1672, and canonized by Clement XI in 1712.
1559-1565 Pope Pius IV (31 March 1499 – 9 December 1565), born Giovanni Angelo Medici, was Pope from 1559 to 1565. He is notable for presiding over the culmination of the Council of Trent.
Pius_IV_portrait.jpg
On 18 January 1562 the council of Trent, which had been suspended by Pope Julius III, was opened for the third time. Great skill and caution were necessary to effect a settlement of the questions before it, inasmuch as the three principal nations taking part in it, though at issue with regard to their own special demands, were prepared to unite their forces against the demands of Rome. Pius IV, however, aided by Moroni and Charles Borromeo, proved himself equal to the emergency, and by judicious management – and concession – brought the council to a termination satisfactory to the disputants and favourable to the pontifical authority. Its definitions and decrees were confirmed by a papal bull dated 26 January 1564; and, though they were received with certain limitations by France and Spain, the famous Creed of Pius IV, or Tridentine Creed, became an authoritative expression of the Catholic faith. The more marked manifestations of stringency during his pontificate appear to have been prompted rather than spontaneous, his personal character inclining him to moderation and ease.
Pope Paul IV  1555 -- 1559 (GIOVANNI PIETRO CARAFFA ).
Born near Benevento, 28 June, 1476; elected 23 May, 1555; died 18 Aug., 1559. The Caraffa were one of the most illustrious of the noble families of Naples, and had given distinguished scions to Church and State. The name of Cardinal Oliviero Caraffa recurs frequently in the history of the papacy during the days of the Renaissance. One of the great cardinal's merits was that of superintending the training of his young relative, Giovanni Pietro, whom he introduced to the papal Court in 1494, and in whose favour he resigned the See of Chieti (in Latin, Theate), from which word he was thenceforward known as Theatinus. Leo X sent him on an embassy to England and retained him for some years as nuncio in Spain. His residence in Spain served to accentuate that detestation of Spanish rule in his native land which characterized his public policy during his pontificate. From early childhood he led a blameless life; and that longing for asceticism which had prompted him to seek admission into the Dominican and the Camaldolese Orders asserted itself in 1524 when he persuaded Clement VII, though with difficulty, to accept the resignation of his benefices and permit him to enter the congregation of clerics regular founded by St. Cajetan, but popularly named "Theatines", after Caraffa, their first general. The young congregation suffered more than its share during the sack of Rome in 1527, and its few members retired to Venice. But the sharp intellect of Paul III had perceived the importance of the institute in his projected reform of the clergy, and he summoned the Theatines back to Rome. Caraffa was placed by the pontiff on the committee named to outline the project of reform of the papal Court; and on 22 Dec., 1536 he was created cardinal with the title of San Pancrazio. Later he was made Archbishop of Naples; but, owing to the emperor's distrust and fear of him, it was only with difficulty he could maintain his episcopal rights. Although Caraffa was highly educated and surpassed most of his contemporaries in the knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, still he remained throughout medieval in life and thought. His favourite author was St. Thomas Aquinas. The few opuscula which he found time to write were Scholastic in character. For the party of Pole, Contarini, and Morone he had the most heartfelt detestation; and his elevation boded them no happiness. Caraffa was the head and front of every effort made by Paul III in the interest of reform. He reorganized the Inquisition in Italy on papal lines and for a generation was the terror of misbelievers. How so austere a person could be chosen pope was a mystery to everyone, especially to himself. "I have never conferred a favour on a human being", he said. It is most likely that the octogenarian would have refused the dignity, were it not that the emperor's agent, Cardinal Mendoza, had pronounced decidedly that Charles would not permit Caraffa to be pope. This was to challenge every principle for which the aged cardinal had stood during his long career. He was elected in spite of the emperor, and for four years held aloft the banner of the independence of Italy. Historians seem to be unjust towards Paul IV. That unbending Italian patriot, born whilst Italy was "a lyre with four strings", Naples, Rome, Florence, and Venice, was certainly justified in using the prestige of the papacy to preserve some relics of liberty for his native country. The Austrian and Spanish Habsburgers treated Paul IV with studied contempt, and thus forced him to enter an alliance with France. Neither in the matter of the succession to the empire nor in the conclusion of the religious peace were the interests of the Holy See consulted in the slightest degree.
1572-1585 Pope Gregory XIII (January 7, 1502 – April 10, 1585), born Ugo Boncompagni; No other act of Gregory has gained for him a more lasting fame than reform of the Julian calendar completed introduced 1578. Closely connected with the reform of the calendar is the emendation of the Roman martyrology ordered by Gregory 1580.  In a brief, dated 14 January, 1584, Gregory XIII ordered that the new martyrology should supersede all others. Another great literary achievement of Gregory XIII is an official Roman edition of the Corpus juris canonici. Shortly after the conclusion of the Council of Trent, Pius IV appointed a committee to bring out a critical edition of the Decree of Gratian; increased to 35 (correctores Romani) by Pius V 1566. Gregory XIII a member from the beginning; finally completed in 1582. In the Briefs "Cum pro munere", dated 1 July, 1580, and "Emendationem", dated 2 June, 1582, Gregory ordered that henceforth only the emended official text was to be used and that in the future no other text should be printed.
Perhaps one of the happiest events during his pontificate was his arrival at Rome of four Japanese ambassadors on 22 March, 1585. They had been sent by the converted kings of Bungo, Arima, and Omura, in Japan, to thank the pope for the fatherly care he had shown their country by sending them Jesuit missionaries who had taught them the religion of Christ.
In the spring of 1580 St Charles entertained at Milan for a week a dozen young Englishmen, who were going on the English mission, and one of them preached before him. This was Bd Ralph Sherwin, who in some eighteen months’ time was to give his life for the faith at Tyburn. In the same way he met his fellow martyr, Bd Edmund Campion, and talked with him.
   A little later in the same year St Charles met St Aloysius Gonzaga, then twelve years old, to whom he gave his first communion. At this time he was doing much travelling and the strain of work and worry was beginning to tell on him; moreover, he curtailed his sleep too much and Pope Gregory personally had to warn him not to overdo his Lenten fasting.


1st century St. Philologus and Patrobas  mentioned by St. Paul in his Letter to the Romans.
Eódem die natális sanctórum Philólogi et Pátrobi, sancti Pauli Apóstoli discipulórum.
    On the same day, the birthday of the Saints Philologus and Patrobas, disciples of the apostle St. Paul.
 Members of the Christian community in Rome who were mentioned by St. Paul in his Letter to the Romans with Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Hermas, Julia, Nereus, and Olympas.
1st v. St. Ilia Chavchavadze, well known as the “father” and “uncrowned king” of the Georgian nation, and Sts. John, Steven, and Isaiah the Georgians; It is believed that Holy John, Steven, and Isaiah lived in Jerusalem and guarded the Tomb of our Lord.

Among the multitude of saints we remember those Christians who dedicated their earthly lives to glorifying God and serving others. In a single lifetime they performed all the spiritual feats of the venerable and devout fathers, confessors, and martyrs.  Among the saints canonized by the Georgian Church, only four have been called “Righteous.” It is believed that Holy John, Steven, and Isaiah lived in Jerusalem and guarded the Tomb of our Lord. It is probable that the Georgian Orthodox Church proclaimed them deserving of exceptional honor in recognition of their dedicated service at the Tomb of the Savior.

For several centuries the Georgian Church has glorified the Righteous John, Steven, and Isaiah and asked for their intercessions before the Lord.

Nicander, Bishop of Myra, and Hermas the Presbyter, were disciples of the holy Apostle Paul's follower and fellow ascetic, the holy Apostle Titus of the Seventy (August 25), and they were ordained by him to the priesthood:  Hieromartyrs St. Nicander bishop and Hermas priest Martyrs at Myra, Lycia
Myræ, in Lycia, sanctórum Mártyrum Nicándri Epíscopi, et Hermæ Presbyteri, sub Libánio Præside.

   
Nicander, a bishop, and Hermes, a priest At Myra in Lycia, under the governor Libanius, the holy martyrs .
Asia Minor. Nicander was a bishop and Hermas a priest. Hermas should not be confused with the second century author of The Shepherd.
Nicander and Hermas MM (RM) Dates unknown. Bishop Saint Nicander and Saint Hermas, a priest, were martyred at Myra in Lycia (Asia Minor) (Benedictines).
Living the ascetic life amid incessant pastoral works, the saints converted many pagans to Christ. For this they were arrested and brought before the city prefect, Libanius. Neither flattery nor threats swayed the holy martyrs to renounce Christ. Then Libanius gave orders that they be tortured.
The saints endured fierce and inhuman torments: they were tied to horses and dragged over stones, their bodies were raked with iron hooks, and they were cast into a hot oven. The Lord helped them endure things that a mere man by his own strength could not endure. Towards the end, iron nails were hammered into their heads and hearts. They were thrown into a pit, then covered over with earth.
After enduring such a cruel death, now they live forever in the joy of the Lord (Mt. 25:21).
304 St. Vitalis Martyr, also Agricola.
Bonóniæ sanctórum Mártyrum Vitális et Agrícolæ; quorum prior postérioris servus ántea fuit, póstea consors et colléga martyrii.  In ipsum porro Vitálem persecutóres ómnia tormentórum génera ita exercuérunt, ut non esset in córpore ejus sine vúlnere locus, quæ ipse constánter pérferens, in oratióne spíritum Deo réddidit; Agrícolam vero, plúrimis clavis cruci affigéntes, interemérunt.  Eórum translatióni sanctus Ambrósius cum interésset, Mártyris clavos, sánguinem triumphálem et crucis lignum se collegísse refert, ac sub sacris altáribus condidísse.
    At Bologna, the holy martyrs Vitalis and Agricola.  The former was first the servant of the latter, and afterwards his partner and companion in martyrdom.  He was subjected by the persecutors to all kinds of torments, so that there was no part of his body without wounds.  After having suffered with constancy, he yielded up his soul unto God in prayer.  Agricola was put to death by being fastened to a cross with many nails.  St. Ambrose relates that being present at the translation, he took the martyr's nails, his glorious blood, and the wood of his cross, and deposited them under consecrated altars.
Put to death in Bologna, Italy, to whom the basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna was dedicated. According to one legend, Vitalis was the slave of St. Agricola and a dedicated Christian. Arrested and condemned for his faith, Vitalis faced his death with such aplomb that Agricola was converted and accepted his own crucifixion. In another legend, Vitalis was a relative of Agricola. The cult began when thc remains of two martyrs were discovered in Bologna and St. Ambrose of Milan and Eusebius of Bologna attached some story to the relics. Owing to the questions related to the details of the martyrs' lives, their cult was confined in 1969 to local calendars.

WE are told that in the year 393 it was revealed to Eusebius, Bishop of Bologna, that the bodies of two Christian martyrs, Vitalis and Agricola, rested in the Jewish cemetery of that city. Their remains were duly found and removed, and St Ambrose of Milan was present on that occasion. Ambrose refers to the martyrs in a discourse on virginity, bidding his hearers receive with respect the presents of salvation—relics—which were laid under the altar. This mention by St Ambrose is the sole authority for the passion of SS. Vitalis and Agricola, who were formerly much more celebrated in the West than they are today.

But although nobody had heard of these martyrs before attention was super­naturally drawn to them, accounts of their confession were in due course forth­coming. It is said by these that Agricola was a resident of Bologna, greatly beloved for his gentleness and virtue by the people amongst whom he lived. Vitalis was his slave, learned the Christian religion from him, and first received the crown of martyrdom. He was put to death in the amphitheatre, no part of his body being left unwounded. His master’s execution was deferred out of a cruel compassion, that delay and the sight of the sufferings of his faithful servant might daunt his resolution. But he was fortified and encouraged by such an example, whereupon the affection of the judges and people was turned to anger. Agricola was hung on a cross and his body pierced with so many nails that he had more wounds than limbs.

St Gregory of Tours complains that no proper passio of these martyrs was to be found in his day. This omission was supplied at a later period by two fictitious accounts unwarrant­ably fathered upon St Ambrose. In the Acta Sanctorum, November, vol. ii, are printed both the authentic statement of St Ambrose, with much illustrative matter, as well as the text of the “pseudo Ambrosian acts”. On the widespread early cultus of these saints, see Delehaye in his Origines du culte des martyrs, and in CMH, pp. 623—624. This last note is attached to November 27, on which day “Agricola and Vitalis”, in that order, appear in the Hieronymianum, but the observance of their feast on November 4 at Bologna seems to go back to the eighth century or earlier, as is proved by the ancient calendar described by Dom 0. Morin in the Revue Bénédictine, vol. xix (1902), p. 355. Consult further Dom Quentin, Martyrologes historiques, pp. 251 and 627.

Vitalis und Valeria von Ravenna Vitalis und Agricola
Katholische Kirche: Vitalis und Valeria - 28. April Katholische Kirche: Vitalis und Agricola - 4. November
Um 380 wurden in Bologna Reliquien aufgefunden und im Beisein von Bischof Ambrosius feierlich erhoben. Die Reliquien wurden Vitalis und Valeria zugeschrieben. Der Vitaliskult breitete sich in Italien schnell aus, im 6, Jahrhundert entstanden auch zwei Legenden. Nach der einen Legende war Vitalis ein reicher Italiener, der mit seiner Ehefrau Valeria und den Kindern Gervasius und Protasius in Mailand lebte. Vitalis stand einem Christen, der in Ravenna hingerichtet wurde, bei und wurde daraufhin ergriffen, gefoltert und lebendig verbrannt oder lebendig begraben oder enthauptet. Seine Ehefrau wurde ebenfalls hingerichtet. Ihr Martyrium soll unter Kaiser Mark Aurel geschehen sein.

Nach der anderen Legende soll Vitalis ein Sklave des Agricola in Bologna gewesen sein und mit diesem um 304 unter Diokletian das Martyrium erlitten haben. Agricola hatte seinen Sklaven zum Christentum bekehrt und als dieser das Martyrium erlitt, bekannte sich auch Agricola zu Christus. Er soll mit zahlreichen Nägeln durchbohrt und gekreuzigt worden sein. Ihre Leichen wurden auf dem jüdischen Friedhof von Bologna verscharrt, wo Ambrosius sie 393 erhob. Die katholische Kirche gedenkt dieser beiden Märtyrer am 4. November. Um 409 überführte Kaiserin Galla Placida Reliquien von Vitalis sowie von Gervasius und Protasius nach Ravenna. Möglicherweise liegt hier der Anlaß für die Zusammenfassung dieser Märtyrer zu einer Familie.

Auch die orthodoxe Kirche gedenkt am 28. April eines Märtyrers Vitalis.
310  St. Pierius Scholar and confessor Catechetical School of Alexandria.
Ephesi sancti Porphyrii Mártyris, sub Aureliáno Imperatóre.
    At Ephesus, St. Porphyrias, a martyr under Emperor Aurelian.

Pierius was the director of the Catechetical School of Alexandria and was called “the Younger” owing to the doctrinal errors of the elder Origen which found their way into Pierius’ writings. A priest, he was the author of various treatises on philosophy and theology and was a brilliant preacher and teacher praised by both Eusebius of Caesarea and St. Jerome. He died in Rome, but not from the persecution of the times.
310 ST PIERIUS
AT the time that St Theonas was bishop at Alexandria the priest Pierius was head of the catechetical school there, and was the master of St Pamphilus, a defender of Origen, who was afterwards martyred. Pierius himself was so distinguished for love of work and learning, and his discourses to the people were so popular and instructive, that he was called the “Younger Origen”. Both Eusebius and St Jerome praise him, and we know from the last named that he survived the persecution of Diocletian and spent his last years at Rome. Photius speaks of his temperance and poverty, and the clear, brilliant and spontaneous qualities of his writings. The Roman Martyrology has a long elogium of St Pierius.
All the texts bearing on St Pierius are quoted and fully discussed in the Acta Sanctorum, November, vol. ii. See also L. B. Radford, Three Teachers of Alexandria (1908), and DTC., vol. xii, cc. 1744-1746.  
580 6th v. John Zedazneli, Abbot, and Companions evangelized Georgia and introduced monastic life there (AC).
The leader of the group of 12 Syrian monks, who evangelized Georgia and introduced the monastic life there (Benedictines). It is said that he found it easier to tame bears than the infidels who massacred the whole community (Encyclopedia).

THOUGH the title Apostle of Iberia (Georgia) is accorded to St Nino (December 15), the evangelization of that country came from more than one direction and over a considerable period of time. About the middle of the sixth century a band of thirteen Syrian monks came into the Caucasus country, led by John Zedazneli, and made the beginning of that intense monastic life for which the early Christian centuries in Georgia were notable. One of St John’s disciples, St Scio Mghvimeli, is reputed to have had two thousand monks under his direction, and St David Garejeli also had a large community in the mountains above Tiflis, where for a time he had lived as a solitary in a cave. St Antony the Recluse, said to have been a disciple of the younger St Simeon Stylites, himself became a stylite, living on, or in, a column, while two of the missionaries became bishops. One of them, St Abibus of Nekressi, was a martyr, being stoned to death by Persians for opposing “fire-worshipping” Mazdaism. So well did these monks do their work that soon monasteries of native Georgians were founded not only in their own land, but in Palestine, Syria and Sinai, and so far west as Salonika and Crete. Each of the thirteen is venerated individually as a saint in Georgia, and on this day they have as well a common feast under the name of the “Fathers of the Iberian Church”.

A sufficient account of St John of Zedazen and his companions may be found in M. Tamarati, L’Eglise Géorgienne des origines jusquà nos fours (1910), especially pp. 211—220. There is something in the nature of a legendary history of St John incorporated in the Georgian text of the Life of St Scio Mghvimeli, as is pointed out by Fr Peeters in his article “L’Eglise Géorgienne du Clibanion” in the Analecta Bollandiana, vol. xlvi (1928), pp. 254 and 283. He there calls attention to the anachronisms and inconsistencies which render these records unsatisfactory, besides indicating the printed sources where orientalists may consult the texts. See further DTC., in the article “Géorgie” (vol. v, especially c. 1255), and Brosset, Histoire de la Géorgie, vol. i.

542 St. Proculus Bishop of Narni, Italy, who was put to death by the Gothic king Totila. 
680 St. Modesta Benedictine first abbess at Trier.
 niece of St. Modoald, who appointed her to head Oehren Convent at Trier.
Modesta of Oehren, OSB Abbess (RM). Saint Modesta, niece of Saint Modoald, was appointed first abbess of the convent of Oehren (Horreum) at Trèves (Trier) by her uncle, its founder (Benedictines).

846 Saint Joannicius the Great; miracle worker; youth - shielded his herd with Sign of the Cross, neither thieves nor wild beasts came near; brave soldier served imperial army 6 years; learned 30 David Psalms by heart; After each verse he made a prayer, The Father is my hope, the Son is my refuge, the Holy Spirit is my protection.; seventy years in ascetic deeds and attained to a high degree of spiritual perfection. Through the mercy of God the saint acquired the gift of prophecy, as his disciple Pachomius has related. The Elder also levitated above the ground when he prayed. Once, he crossed a river flooded to overflowing. The saint could make himself invisible for people and make others also hidden from sight.
Defied Byzantine emperor Theophilus and his Iconoclast policies. Born in Bithynia, in modern Turkey, Joannicus was an Iconoclast until he was converted to the religious life at the age of forty. He became a recluse on Mount Olympus in Bithynia and a monk. Later, he defied the emperor and declared that sacred images would be restored to the Church. Empress Theodora did restore the icons.

Joannicius of Mt. Olympus Saint Theodore the Studite and Saint Methodius of Constantinople consulted him. Hermit (RM)
Born at Bithynia; died at Antidium, 846; feast day formerly on February 4.
A soldier in the Byzantine army, seeing active service against the Bulgars; left the service at 40 became a monk and hermit on the Bithynian Olympus. While at the monastery near Brusa the second iconoclast controversy began in 818; Joannicius, who had formerly favored the iconoclasts, now showed himself a vigorous opponent of them.  He was greatly respected among the prophetical figures of his time, and both Saint Theodore the Studite and Saint Methodius of Constantinople consulted him. He counselled moderation in their treatment of iconoclasts--unusual enough advice from a monk in that struggle.
Joannicius was born in Bithynia in the year 752 in the village of Marikat. His parents were destitute and could not provide him even the basics of an education. From childhood he had to tend the family cattle, their sole wealth. Love for God and prayer completely dominated the soul of the child Joannicius. Often, having shielded the herd with the Sign of the Cross, he went to a secluded place and spent the whole day praying, and neither thieves nor wild beasts came near his herd.
By order of the emperor Leo IV (775-780), a multitude of officials went through the cities and towns to draft young men for military service. Young Joannicius was also drafted into the imperial army. He earned the respect of his fellow soldiers for his good disposition, but he was also a brave soldier who struck fear in the hearts of his enemies. St Joannicius served in the imperial army for six years. More than once he was rewarded by his commanders and the emperor. But military service weighed heavily on him, his soul thirsted for spiritual deeds and solitude.
    St Joannicius, having renounced the world, longed to go at once into the wilderness. However, on the advice of an Elder experienced in monastic life, he spent a further two years at the monastery. Here the saint became accustomed to monastic obedience, to monastic rules and practices. He studied reading and writing, and he learned thirty Psalms of David by heart.
After this, commanded by God to go to a certain mountain, the monk withdrew into the wilderness. For three years he remained in deep solitude in the wilderness, and only once a month a shepherd brought him some bread and water. The ascetic spent day and night in prayer and psalmody. After each verse of singing the Psalms St Joannicius made a prayer, which the Orthodox Church keeps to this day in a somewhat altered form,
The Father is my hope, the Son is my refuge, the Holy Spirit is my protection.
    By chance, he encountered some of his former companions from military service. The saint fled the wilderness and withdrew to Mount Kountourea to hide himself from everyone. Only after twelve years of ascetic life did the hermit accept monastic tonsure. The saint spent three years in seclusion after being tonsured. wrapped in chains, Then he went to a place called Chelidon to see the great ascetic St George (February 21). The ascetics spent three years together. During this time St Joannicius learned the entire Psalter by heart. As he grew older, St Joannicius settled in the Antidiev monastery and dwelt there in seclusion until his death.
    St Joannicius spent seventy years in ascetic deeds and attained to a high degree of spiritual perfection. Through the mercy of God the saint acquired the gift of prophecy, as his disciple Pachomius has related. The Elder also levitated above the ground when he prayed. Once, he crossed a river flooded to overflowing. The saint could make himself invisible for people and make others also hidden from sight.
    Once, St Joannicius led Greek captives out of prison under the very eyes of the guards. Poison and fire, with which the envious wanted to destroy the saint, did him no harm, and predatory beasts did not touch him. He freed the island of Thasos from a multitude of snakes. St Joannicius also saved a young nun who was preparing to leave the monastery to marry; he took upon himself the agonized maiden's suffering of passion, and by fasting and prayer, he overcame the seductive assault of the devil.
Foreseeing his death, St Joannicius fell asleep in the Lord on November 4, 846, at the age of 94.
Saint Joannicius was over 90 when he died at the monastery of Antidium (Attwater). He is highly venerated among the Greeks (Attwater, Benedictines).
THIS saint, by long penance after a dissolute youth, arrived at so high a degree of sanctity as to be ranked by the Greek Church amongst the illustrious saints of the monastic order and honoured with the title of “the Great”; and his name occurs in the Roman Martyrology on this day. He was a native of Bithynia, and when a boy was a swineherd. At the age of nineteen he became a soldier in the guard of Constantine Copronymus; he was carried away with the torrent of the times, and became a supporter of the persecutors of holy images. By the conversation of a holy monk he was reclaimed from his errors and dissolute ways, and led an exem­plary life for six years. At forty he quitted the service, and retired to Mount Olympus in Bithynia, where he was instructed in the rudiments of monastic life till he had learned to read and to recite the psalter by heart, and had exercised himself in all the duties of his new state. Joannicius called this process the “seasoning of his heart”. He afterwards led an eremitical life and became famous for gifts of miracles and prophecy and for his prudence in directing souls. Among his miracles were the release of a number of prisoners taken by the Bulgarians and the freeing of St Daniel of Thasion from an evil spirit.

St Joannicius became a monk at Eraste, near Brusa, and zealously defended orthodoxy against the Emperor Leo V and other iconoclasts, being closely associated with the great confessors St Theodore Studites and St Methodius of Constantinople. On the advice of Joannicius, the last named restrained the over-zealous ones among his followers, who were for treating as invalid the orders of those ordained by iconoclastic bishops. “They are erring brethren”, said the monk, “Treat them as such while they persist in their errors, but when they repent receive them into their proper rank, unless they have been notoriously violent heretics and per­secutors”.

   He was particularly fearless in rebuking the Emperor Theophilus, who added to the prohibition of sacred images an order that the word “holy” should be erased before the names of saints but the prophecy of St Joannicius that Theophilus would eventually restore images to the churches was only fulfilled in the person of his widow, Theodora, who throughout had remained orthodox.

Among the monks who were trained by St Joannicius in his old age was St Euthymius the Thessalonian. At length, after having for long been one of the most prominent ascetics and prophetical figures of his age, Joannicius retired to a hermitage, and there died on November 3, 846. He was ninety-two years old and had lived to see the second triumph of orthodoxy over that iconoclast heresy which he had himself once professed and then so vigorously opposed.

The Bollandists in their second volume for November have printed at length two detailed Greek lives of this saint, each with a Latin translation. The authors, Peter and Sabas, were both monks who had lived under the rule of St Joannicius. The life by Peter seems to have been the earlier written, but that by Sabas is better executed and on the whole more complete. On the question of the date of his death see Pargoire in Échos d’Orient, vol. iv (1900), pp. 75—80. A short sketch of Joannicius is included in Verborgene Heilige des griech. Ostens, by Dom Hermann (1931).  

Every now and again critics have accused Christians of idol-worship because they venerate sacred statues and pictures. At first glance, those who criticize seem to have a point. Does not the First Commandment say, You shall not carve idols for yourself.  You shall not bow down before them or worship them. (Exodus, 20:4,5)?  Yet you and I hold images of Jesus, the saints, the cross, etc. in traditional reverence.
    There will always be a possibility that some Christians, in using sacred images, will fall into idolatrous notions, or at least superstitious ones.  In the earliest centuries of Christianity, Church leaders were careful not to emphasize image use for this reason.  But as the ancient world became more Christian, the danger lessened.  Even the Old Testament did not totally forbid images, nor did Jesus renew, in the New Testament, the strict condemnations of the Old Law. By the fourth and fifth centuries, Christians were already accustomed to using images for illustrative purposes: (the cross, Scripture scenes, for instance, in the wall decorations of churches and the catacombs).  They were also beginning to use images for veneration (praying before them, surrounding them with lights, etc.). It was the eighth-century heresy called iconoclasm (destruction of ikons) that brought forth a defense of Christian image use.  St. Joannicius, as we shall see, was a symbolic figure in this strange controversy.
    By the eighth century, especially in Asia Minor, there were people, especially in the Mideast, who still criticized this image devotion.  Jews, Muslims, and some Christian heretics were among them.  Emperor Leo the Isaurian, though a Christian, took a strong dislike to images, for puzzling reasons; and in 726 issued an edict forbidding their use.  Because of the decree, there was an international reaction against him, but he stuck by his meddlesome decision even though it produced armed revolts.
Meanwhile, the monk St. John of Damascus replied with three treatises explaining why it is permissible to venerate images.  Praising them as tools for instruction, as reminders of holy things, and as incentives to holy deeds, he pointed out that in venerating an image, we do not adore it; in its presence we simply address the person it represents.
Emperor Leo died in 740.  His son Constantine V wickedly picked up the tyrannous battle for iconoclasm, and convoked a phony church council at Hieria in 753, which completely outlawed the use of images. He was even bent on abolishing the veneration of relics and the invocation of Our Lady and the saints.  The job of enforcing his decrees was put into the harsh hands of his soldiers.  Thus, several Christians who upheld the true doctrine were martyred.  The ikon war lasted until 842.  But the official answer of the church came under Empress Irene.  In 787 she summoned the Second Ecumenical Council of Nicaea.  Representing the pope and all the bishops East and West, this council defended the use of images, and said that the honor we pay to them and relics is not idolatrous, but passes over to the holy person whom they represent or symbolize.
  These decrees became the Magna Carta of Christian art.
Now for St. Johannicius: an iconoclast and sinner who turned saint.  A native of Asia Minor, he joined the army of Emperor Constantine V, became a rowdy, and played his part as a soldier in violently imposing iconoclasm.  But finally he met a holy monk who instructed him in correct Catholic belief and won him back to decent behavior.  When this soldier left the army at 40, he became a hermit noted for strict life, wise counsel, miracles and prophecies.
    Johannicius eventually joined a monastery at Eraste.  Eastern monks were in the vanguard of those who fought iconoclasm; and our saint, who had once upheld it, defended orthodoxy staunchly against the iconoclastic Emperor Leo V. He likewise strongly rebuked Emperor Theophilus, who had ordered that the word holy no longer be used of saints. Eventually, as Johannicius had foretold, the widow of Theophilus, Empress Theodora, restored images to the Church. Sacred images thus retain to this day their just position in both Eastern and Western orthodox Christianity.
St. Joannicius died at 92.  In later years he had more than made up for his false doctrines and evil ways.  Let us thank him for helping us to retain those holy images that lift up our hearts to holy things.--Father Robert F. McNamara
875 Saint Clarus of Rouen first a monk and then a hermit in the diocese OSB M RM)
In pago Vilcassíno, in Gállia, sancti Clari, Presbyteri et Mártyris.
    In the district of Vexin in France, St. Clarus, priest and martyr.

Born in Rochester, England; died c. 875 (or 894?). After his ordination, the English priest Clarus is described as having crossed over to France. There he was first a monk and then a hermit in the diocese of Rouen. He roamed throughout the countryside preaching the Good News. Clarus was murdered by two hired assassins at the instigation of a woman whose advances he had rejected. The village of his martyrdom and shrine, Saint-Clair- sur-Epte near Pontoise, is named after him and still visited by pilgrims. Another town in the diocese of Coutances, where he lived for a time, also bears his name. Saint Clarus is venerated in the dioceses of Rouen, Beauvais, and Paris (Benedictines, Husenbeth).
1031 St. Emeric son of St. Stephen Hungary’s first Christian king  many miracles

THE ninth centenary of the death of Bd Emeric (Imre) was kept with solemnity in Hungary in 1931, but not many reliable particulars of his short life are available. He was the only son of St Stephen, King of Hungary, born in the year 1007, and was educated by St Gerard Sagredo. When the Emperor Conrad II planned to disendow the diocese of Bamberg he proposed to give the young prince Emeric an interest in the spoliation, but this St Stephen would not allow. The authenticity of Stephen’s “instructions” to his son is denied, but he was desirous of handing over some of his responsibilities to Emeric (it is not true that he resigned his crown to him); before this could be done Emeric was killed while hunting. “God loved him, and so He took him away soon”, exclaimed St Stephen when the news was brought to him. The prince was buried in the church at Szekesfehervar, and many marvels were wrought at his tomb. The bodies of father and son were “elevated” together in 1083, and he is generally referred to as Saint Emeric, but he is called only beatus in the Roman Martyrology.

There is a Latin life which was written by some ecclesiastic whose name is not recorded, but who compiled it when Emeric had been dead for nearly a century. The text has been critically edited by Father Poncelet in the Acta Sanctorum, November, vol. ii. As a historical document this life is not very reliable, but it may be supplemented by information derived from such sources as the Annales Hildesheimenses, the Life of St Stephen, etc. Cf. C. A. Macartney, The Medieval Hungarian Historians (1953).  

Born in 1007, he did not live to inherit St. Stephen’s throne, as he died in a hunting accident. His tomb at Szekesfehervar was a pilgrim’s site, and many miracles were reported there. He was canonized with his father in 1083.
Emeric of Hungary, Prince (RM) (also known as Henry or Imre). The only son of Saint Stephen, the first Christian king of Hungary, and Gisela, the sister of Emperor Saint Henry II. Stephen planned to have Emeric succeed him as king and, for this reason provided him with a fitting education under Saint Gerard of Czanad (Gerard Sagredo or Saint Collert). Emeric gave promise of being a model king, but was killed prematurely in a hunting accident before inheriting the crown. Many miracles were reported at his tomb at Szekesfehervar, and he was canonized, with his father (Attwater, Benedictines, Delaney, Encyclopedia). In art Saint Emeric is a prince, crowned and bearded, holding a lily and a dagger. At times he is with his father, Saint Stephen of Hungary. Other times he is shown before the altar with his wife, making a vow of continence, watched by Saint Stephen. Saint Emeric is venerated in Hungary and San Martino a Mensola, Florence, Italy (Roeder).

934 St. Birrstan Benedictine bishop; noted for his devotion to the holy souls in Purgatory for whose repose he nightly repeated the Psalms. He also frequently said prayers for them in the cemetary (once was answered, “Amen!”)
also called Birnstan and Brynstan. He was a disciple of St. Grimbold and the successor of St. Frithestan in Winchester, England.
Birnstan of Winchester OSB B (AC) (also known as Beornstan, Brintan, Birrstan, Brynstan). According to William of Malmesbury, in 931, Saint Birnstan succeeded Saint Frithestan in the see of Winchester. This disciple of Saint Grimbald was noted for his devotion to the holy souls in Purgatory for whose repose he nightly repeated the Psalms. He also frequently said prayers for them in the cemetary (and once was answered, “Amen!
). Daily he washed the feet of some of the poor, whom he served at table and performed other works of charity. His cultus was neglected for some time until Saint Ethelwold had a vision of Birnstan which showed that he enjoyed glory in heaven equal to that of the more popular Saints Birinus and Swithun of Winchester (Benedictines, Farmer, Husenbeth).
999 Saint Gregory of Burtscheid  built for him the abbey of Burtscheid, near Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen) OSB Abbot (AC)
A Basilian monk at Cerchiara in Calabria, Italy, who fled from the Saracens and met the Emperor Otto III in Rome. The emperor befriended him, invited him to Germany, and built for him the abbey of Burtscheid, near Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen), under the Benedictine rule (Benedictines).

St. Clarus martyred priest Benedictine monk
probably born at Rochester, England, Clarus went to Normandy, became a Benedictine monk, lived as a hermit, and settled at Naqueville, near Rouen. When he repulsed the advances of a noblewoman, she had him killed and beheaded near Saint-Calir-sur-Eph.

1123 Gerard of Bazonches rustic, singular, very penitent, and a doctor OSB (AC)
A Benedictine monk-priest of Saint Aubin in Angers (Benedictines). The Encyclopedia says he was rustic, singular, very penitent, and a doctor.

1212 St. Felix of Valois project of founding an order for the redemption of captives
In cœnóbio Cervi Frígidi, territórii Meldénsis, natális sancti Felícis Valésii, Presbyteri et Confessóris; qui Fundátor fuit Ordinis sanctíssimæ Trinitátis redemptiónis captivórum.  Ipsíus autem festum, ex dispositióne Innocéntii Papæ Undécimi, celebrátur duodécimo Kaléndas Decémbris.
    In the monastery of Cerfroid, in the territory of Meaux, St. Felix of Valois, priest and confessor, and founder of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives, whose feast is celebrated on the 20th of November by order of Pope Innocent XI.

Born in 1127; d. at Cerfroi, 4 November, 1212. He is commemorated 20 November. He was surnamed Valois because, according to some, he was a member of the royal branch of Valois in France, according to others, because he was a native of the province of Valois. At an early age he renounced his possessions and retired to a dense forest in the Diocese of Meaux, where he gave himself to prayer and contemplation. He was joined in his retreat by St. John of Matha, who proposed to him the project of founding an order for the redemption of captives. After fervent prayer, Felix in company with John set out for Rome and arrived there in the beginning of the pontificate of Innocent III. They had letters of recommendation from the Bishop of Paris, and the new pope received them with the utmost kindness and lodged them in his palace.

The project of founding the order was considered in several solemn conclaves of cardinals and prelates, and the pope after fervent prayer decided that these holy men were inspired by God, and raised up for the good of the Church. He solemnly confirmed their order, which he named the Order of the Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives. The pope commissioned the Bishop of Paris and the Abbot of St. Victor to draw up for the institute a rule, which was confirmed by the pope, 17 December, 1198. Felix returned to France to establish the order. He was received with great enthusiasm, and King Philip Augustus authorized the institute France and fostered it by signal benefactions.

Margaret of Blois granted the order twenty acres of the wood where Felix had built his first hermitage, and on almost the same spot he erected the famous monastery of Cerfroi, the mother-house of the institute. Within forty years the order possessed six hundred monasteries in almost every part of the world. St. Felix and St. John of Matha were forced to part, the latter went to Rome to found a house of the order, the church of which, Santa Maria in Navicella, still stands on the Caeclian Hill. St. Felix remained in France to look after the interests of the congregation. He founded a house in Paris attached to the church of St. Maturinus, which afterwards became famous under Robert Guguin, master general of the order. Though the Bull of his canonization is no longer extant, it is the constant tradition of his institute that he was canonized by Urban IV in 1262. Du Plessis tells us that his feast was kept in the Diocese of Meaux in 1215. In 1666 Alexander VII declared him a saint because of immemorial cult. His feast was transferred to 20 November by Innocent XI in 1679.

1242 Blessed Helen Enselmini age of 12, Helen received the veil of the Poor Clares from Saint Francis himself at Arcella, near Padua Poor Clare V (AC)
Born in Padua, Italy; cultus approved in 1695. At the age of 12, Helen received the veil of the Poor Clares from Saint Francis himself at Arcella, near Padua. It is said that her only food for months was the Blessed Sacrament. Before her death she became dumb and blind (Benedictines).

1250 Blessed Henry of Zwiefalten Benedictine of Zwiefalten abbey prior OSB (PC)
Henry, a Benedictine of Zwiefalten abbey, became prior of Ochsenhausen in Swabia (Benedictines).

1485 Blessed Frances d'Amboise great benefactress of the Carmelite Blessed John Soreth Carmelite at the convent she had founded at Nantes OC (AC)
1485 BD FRANCES D’AMBOISE, WIDOW
IN 1431 John V, Duke of Brittany, arranged a matrimonial alliance between his house and that of Thouars, and Louis d’Amboise sent his four-year-old daughter Frances to be brought up at the ducal court. When she was fifteen she married Duke John’s second son, Peter, and found she had a rather troublesome husband:  he was jealous, sulky and sometimes violent. She put up with her troubles uncom­plainingly, did her best to compose incessant family quarrels, and by her patience and prayers wrought a considerable improvement in her husband. They had no children.

  In 1450 Peter succeeded as duke, and Frances took full advantage of her position to forward the work of God. She founded a convent at Nantes for Poor Clares, interested herself in the canonization of St Vincent Ferrer, and spent large sums in relief of the poor and other benefactions. In 1457 her husband died, and his successors did not relish the popularity and influence of the dowager duchess (who was still only thirty), so that she withdrew herself more and more from public affairs, resisting the attempts of Louis XI of France to entice her into another marriage. She spent much time at the Nantes convent and afterwards with the Carmelite nuns at Vannes. These she established and endowed there in 1463, with the help and encouragement of Bd John Soreth, prior general of the order.

That she was not free from the tendency of foundresses to interest themselves too closely in the affairs of their foundations is illustrated by the story that she once obtained the services of an extraordinary confessor for a nun, without referring the matter to the prioress. But when she was rebuked for her interference Duchess Frances humbly apologized and asked the prioress to impose on her a suitable penance. In 1468 she became a nun herself at the Vannes convent, being clothed by John Soreth. She filled the office of infirmarian, and four years after profession was elected prioress for life. Under her rule the Vannes house became too small, and she opened another at Couets, near Nantes. Here she died in 1485. Bd Frances was the means of Bd John Soreth introducing Carmelite nuns into France, and was in some measure the co-founder of the women’s branch of the order. Her virtues and the miracles wrought at her tomb caused her to be venerated as a saint, but the cultus was not confirmed until 1863.

No early biography of Bd Frances is known, and the Bollandists put the reader on his guard against accepting as historical such narratives as were published at a later date by Albert Le Grand of Morlaix and other enthusiastic panegyrists. In the second volume of the Acta Sanctorum for November will be found only a general discussion of doubtful points, and an abstract of the more prominent happenings connected with the life of the beata. The approval of her cultus in 1863 was conceded upon the presentment of the case submitted by the Abbe F. Richard, who afterwards became archbishop of Paris and cardinal in 1865.  Mgr Richard published in two volumes a Vie de la bse Françoise d’Amboise. There are also other French lives, for the most part uncritical, notably that by the Vicomte Sioc’han de Kersabiec (1865). See also B. Zimmerman, Monumenta Historica Carmelitana (1907), pp. 520-521.  

Beatified in 1863. Reared at the court of Brittany, Frances became the wife of Duke Peter of Brittany. She spent her life trying to please and pacify her jealous husband--no easy task- -and in charitable works. She was a great benefactress of the Carmelite Blessed John Soreth. In 1470, after her husband's death, Frances became a Carmelite at the convent she had founded at Nantes (Benedictines).
1584 St. Charles Borromeo Council of Trent Patron of learning arts; With Pope St Pius V, St Philip Neri and St Ignatius Loyola he is one of the four outstanding public men of the so-called Counter-reformation
Sancti Cároli Borromæi Cardinális, Epíscopi Mediolanénsis et Confessóris, qui migrávit in cælum prídie hujus diéi.
    St. Charles Borromeo, cardinal, bishop of Milan, and confessor, whose birthday is on the day previous.

1584 ST CHARLES BORROMEO, Archbishop OF MILAN AND CARDINAL
OF the great and holy churchmen who in the troubled days of the sixteenth century worked for a true and much-needed reformation within the Church, and sought by the correction of real abuses and evil living to remove the basic excuses for the destructive and false reformation which was working such havoc in Europe, none was greater and holier than Cardinal Charles Borromeo.
 With Pope St Pius V, St Philip Neri and St Ignatius Loyola he is one of the four outstanding public men of the so-called Counter-reformation. He was an aristocrat by birth, his father being Count Gilbert Borromeo, himself a man of talent and sanctity. His mother, Margaret, was a Medici, of the newly risen house of that name at Milan, whose younger brother became Pope Pius IV.

FOURTH CENTENARY OF CANONISATION OF ST. CHARLES BORROMEO
VATICAN CITY, 4 NOV 2010 (VIS) - Made public today was a Message from the Pope addressed to Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, archbishop of Milan, Italy, marking the fourth centenary of the canonisation of St. Charles Borromeo, on 1 November 1610.

  “The time in which Charles Borromeo lived was a very delicate one for Christianity, writes the Pope. In a period obscured by many trials facing the Christian community, with divisions and doctrinal confusion, the clouding of the purity of faith and custom, and the bad example of many sacred ministers, Charles Borromeo did not limit himself to deploring and condemning, nor simply to expressing hope that others would change; rather, he began to reform his own life.

  St. Charles was aware that serious and credible reform had to begin with pastors. To this end he focused on the centrality of the Eucharist, ... the spirituality of the cross, ... assiduous participation in the Sacraments, ... the Word of God, ... and love and devotion for the Supreme Pontiff, readily and filially obedient to his directives as a guarantee of true and complete ecclesial communion.

  May St. Charles encourage us always to begin with a serious commitment to personal conversion, writes the Holy Father, going on to encourage priests and deacons to make of their lives a courageous path of sanctity and expressing the hope that the Church in Milan may always find in her ministers a clear faith and a sober and pure life, renewing that apostolic ardour which characterised St. Ambrose, St. Charles and so many of your holy pastors.

  St. Charles was recognised, Benedict XVI continues, as a true loving father to the poor. ... He founded institutions for the assistance and recovery of those in need. ... During the plague of 1576, the saintly archbishop chose to remain among his people to encourage, serve and defend them with the weapons of prayer, penance and love.

  The Pope highlights how St. Charles Borromeo's charity cannot be understood without an understanding of his relationship of passionate love with the Lord Jesus. In this context the Holy Father refers to the contemplation of the holy mystery of the altar and the Crucified Christ which awakened the saint's feelings of compassion for man's misery and aroused in his heart the apostolic longing to bring the evangelical message to everyone.

  Let us make the Eucharist the true centre of our communities, let us allow ourselves to be educated and moulded by that well of charity. Each apostolic and charitable action will draw strength and fruitfulness from that source.

  The Holy Father concludes his Message with an appeal to young people: Like St. Charles, you too are can make your youth an offering to Christ and your fellows. ... Dear young people, you are not only the hope of the Church, you are part of her present moment. And if you have the courage to believe in sanctity, you will become the greatest treasure of your Ambrosian Church, which is built upon saints. MESS/ VIS 20101104 (510)

Charles, the second of two sons in a family of six, was born in the castle of Arona on Lake Maggiore on October 2, 1538, and from his earliest years showed himself to be of a grave and devout disposition. At the age of twelve he received the clerical tonsure, and his uncle, Julius Caesar Borromeo, resigned to him the rich Benedictine abbey of SS. Gratinian and Felinus, at Arona, which had been long enjoyed by members of his family in commendam.
   It is said that Charles, young as he was, reminded his father that the revenue, except what was expended on his necessary education for the service of the Church, was the patrimony of the poor and could not be applied to any secular uses. Charles learned Latin at Milan and was afterwards sent to the university of Pavia, where he studied under Francis Alciati, who was later promoted cardinal by St Charles’s interest.
On account of an impediment in his speech and a lack of brilliance he was esteemed slow, yet he made good progress. The prudence and strictness of his conduct made him a model to the youth in the university, who had an evil reputation for vice. Count Gilbert made his son a strictly limited allowance from the income of his abbey, and we learn from his letters that young Charles was continually short of cash, owing to the necessity in his position of keeping up a household. It was not till after the death of both his parents that he took his doctor’s degree, in his twenty-second year. He then returned to Milan, where he soon after received news that his uncle, Cardinal de Medici, was chosen pope, in 1559 at the conclave held after the death of Paul IV.

Early in 1560 the new pope created his nephew cardinal-deacon and on February 8 following nominated him administrator of the vacant see of Milan. Pius IV, however, detained him at Rome and intrusted him with many duties. In quick succession Charles was named legate of Bologna, Romagna and the March of Ancona, and protector of Portugal, the Low Countries, the Catholic cantons of Switzerland, and the orders of St Francis, the Carmelites, the Knights of Malta, and others. The recipient of all these honours and responsibilities was not yet twenty-three years old and still in minor orders. It is marvellous how much business Charles despatched without ever being in a hurry, by dint of unwearied application and being regular and methodical in all that he did. He found time to look after his family affairs, and took recreation in music and physical exercise.
    He was a patron of learning, and promoted it among the clergy; and, among other establishments for this end, having also in view the amenities of the pope’s court, he instituted in the Vatican a literary academy of clergy and laymen, some of whose conferences and studies appear among the saint’s works as Noctes Vaticanae. He judged it so far necessary to conform to the custom of the renaissance papal court as to have a magnificent palace, to keep a large household and a table suitable to his secular rank, and to give entertainments. Yet he was in his heart disengaged from these things, mortified in his senses, humble and patient in his conduct.

   Many are converted to God by adversity; but St Charles, in the full tide of prosperity, by taking a near view of its emptiness, became more and more disentangled from it. He had provided for the diocese of Milan, for its government and the remedying of its disorders, in the best manner he was able, but the command of the pope by which he was obliged to attend in Rome did not make him entirely easy on that head.
It happened that the Venerable Bartholomew de Martyribus, Archbishop of Braga, came to Rome, and to him as to a faithful servant of God St Charles opened his heart. “You see my position”, he said. You know what it is to be a pope’s nephew, and a nephew beloved by him; nor are you ignorant what it is to live in the court of Rome. The dangers are infinite. What ought I to do, young as I am, and without experience? God has given me ardour for penance; and I have some thoughts of going into a monastery, to live as if there were only God and myself in the world.”
Whereupon Archbishop Bartholomew cleared his doubts, assuring him that he ought not to quit his hold of the plough which God had put into his hands for the service of the Church, but that he ought to contrive means to attend to his own diocese as soon as God should open him a way. When Borromeo discovered that the archbishop himself was in Rome because he wanted to resign his see he required an explanation of the advice that had been given him, and Bartholomew had to use all his tact.

   Pope Pius IV had announced soon after his election his intention of reassembling the council of Trent, which had been suspended in 1552. St Charles used all his influence and energy to bring this about, amid the most difficult and adverse ecclesiastical and political conditions. He was successful, and in January 1562 the council was reopened.  But as much work, diplomacy and vigilance were required of Charles during the two years it sat as during the negotiations for its assembly. Several times it nearly broke up with its work unfinished, but St Charles’s never-failing attention and his support of the papal legates kept it together, and in nine sessions and numerous meetings for discussion many of the most important dogmatic and disciplinary decrees of the great reforming council were passed. To the efforts of St Charles more than of any other single man this result was due; he was the mastermind and the ruling spirit of the third and last period of the Council of Trent.
During its assembly Count Frederick Borromeo died, so that St Charles found himself the head of this noble family, and in a more disturbing position than ever.  Many took it for granted that he would leave the clerical state and marry. But Charles would have none of it. He resigned his family position to his uncle Julius and received the priesthood in 1563. Two months later he was consecrated bishop. 
He was not allowed to go to his diocese, and, in addition to his other duties, he had to supervise the drawing-up of the Catechism of the Council of Trent and the reform of liturgical books and church-music to his commission we owe the composition of Palestrina’s mass called “Papae Marcelli”.  Milan had been without a resident bishop for eighty years, and was in a deplorable state. St, Charles’s vicar there had done his best to carry out a programme of reform, assisted by a number of Jesuits specially sent, but he was far from successful and at length St Charles was given permission to go and hold a provincial council and make a visitation. The pope, before his departure, created him legate a latere for all Italy. The saint was received at Milan with the utmost joy, and he preached in his cathedral from the text, “With desire I have desired to eat this pasch with you”.
Ten suffragans attended the provincial council, and the excellence of its regulations for the observance of the decrees of the Council of Trent for the discipline and training of the clergy, the celebration of divine service, the administration of the sacraments, the giving of catechism on Sundays, and many other points, caused the pope to write to St Charles a letter of congratulation. But while discharging legatine duties in Tuscany he was summoned to Rome to assist Pius IV on his deathbed, where St Philip Neri was also present. The new pope, St Pius V, induced St Charles to stay on at Rome for a time in the same offices, which he had discharged under his predecessor. But Charles saw the opportunity for which he had been waiting, and pressed his return to his people with such zeal that the pope presently dismissed him with his blessing.

St Charles arrived at Milan in April 1566 and went vigorously to work for the reformation of his diocese. He began by the regulation of his household, and, the episcopal character being a state of perfection, he was most severe towards himself. Yet his austerities were always discreet, lest his strength should fail him for his duties it seemed to redouble when extraordinary fatigues presented themselves. He enjoyed a very considerable income from one source and another, but he allotted a large part of it to charity and was uncompromisingly opposed to all ostentation and luxury.
When someone would have had a bed warmed for him, he said with a smile, “The best way not to find a bed cold is to go colder to bed than the bed is”. Francis Panigarola, Bishop of Asti, said in his funeral oration, “Out of his income he expended nothing for his own use except what was absolutely necessary. When I attended him in making a visitation in the valley of Mesolcina, a very cold place, I found him studying at night in a single tattered old cassock. I entreated him, if he would not perish with cold, to put on some better garment. He answered me smiling, ‘What if I have no other? I am obliged to wear a cardinal’s robes in the day but this cassock is my own and I have no other, either for winter or summer.’”
When St Charles came first to reside at Milan he sold plate and other effects to the value of thirty thousand crowns, and applied the whole sum for the relief of distressed families. His almoner was ordered to give the poor two hundred crowns a month, besides whatever extra sums he should call upon the stewards for, which were very many. His liberality appears too in many monuments, and his help to the English College at Douay was such that Cardinal Allen called St Charles its founder.
   He arranged retreats for his clergy and himself, went into retreat twice a year, and it was his rule to confess himself every morning before celebrating Mass. His ordinary confessor was Dr Griffith Roberts, of the diocese of Bangor, author of a famous Welsh grammar. St Charles appointed another Welshman, Dr Owen Lewis (afterwards a bishop in Calabria), to be one of his vicars general, and He always had with him a little picture of St John Fisher.*{* Thomas Goldwell, Bishop of Saint Asaph, the last survivor of the old English hierarchy, was also a vicar of St Charles for a while. He had a great regard for the Church’s liturgy, and never said any prayer or carried out any religious rite with haste, however much he was pressed for time or however long the rite continued.}

   From this spirit of prayer and the love of God which burned within him, his words infused a spiritual joy into others, gained their hearts, and kindled a desire of persevering in virtue and cheerfully suffering all things for its sake. And in this spirit St Charles, who laboured so strenuously for the sanctification of his own soul, began the reformation of his diocese by the regulation of his own large household it consisted of about a hundred persons, the greater part being clergy, who were allowed good salaries and were strictly forbidden to receive presents from anyone.
Throughout the diocese religion was little known or understood and religious practices were profaned by gross abuses and disgraced by superstition. The sacraments were neglected, for many of the clergy scarcely knew how to administer them and were lazy, ignorant and debauched monasteries were full of disorder. St Charles, in provincial councils, diocesan synods and by many pastoral instructions, made regulations for the reform both of clergy and people which pastors have ever since regarded as a model and studied to emulate.
He was one of the foremost of the great pastoral theologians who arose in the Church to remedy the disorders engendered by the decay of medieval life and the excesses of Protestant reformers. Partly by tender entreaties and zealous remonstrances and partly by inflexible firmness in the execution of these decrees, without favour, distinction of persons or regard to rank or pretended privileges, the saint in time overcame the obstinate and broke down difficulties which would have daunted the most courageous.
He had even to contend with a handicap to his own preaching. An impediment in his speech seemed to disqualify him: this too he overcame by much patience and attention. “I have often wondered”, says his friend Achille Gagliardi,
how it was that, without any natural eloquence or anything attractive in his manner, he was able to work such changes in the hearts of his hearers. He spoke but little, gravely, and in a voice barely audible—but his words always had effect.”
St Charles directed that children in particular should be properly instructed in Christian doctrine. Not content with enjoining parish-priests to give public catechism every Sunday and holyday, he established the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, whose schools are said to have numbered 740, with 3000 catechists and 40,000 pupils. Thus St Charles was an originator of “Sunday-schools”, two hundred years before Robert Raikes, whose great work for Protestant children has naturally been better known in England. Among religious congregations St Charles made special use of the Clerks Regular of St Paul (“Barnabites
) whose constitutions he had helped to revise, and he instituted in 1578 the society of secular priests called Oblates of St Ambrose, who voluntarily offer themselves to the bishop, making a simple vow of obedience to him, as ready at his discretion to be employed in any manner whatever for the salvation of souls. +{+ Pope Pius XI was a member of this society, now known as the Oblates of St Ambrose and St Charles. The Oblates of St Charles in London were founded by H. E. Manning (afterwards cardinal), at the direction of Cardinal Wiseman, on the model of St Charles Borromeo’s society.
But the saint’s reforms were far from being well received everywhere, and some were carried through only in the face of violent and unscrupulous opposition.*{*One of the strongly opposed regulations of St Charles was that all his clergy should be clean-shaven. This aroused as much surprise and indignation in sixteenth-century Italy as would a direction in the opposite sense in the United States of America today. If to the archbishop a well-kept beard savoured too much of worldliness, to his opponents a smooth chin was decadent and effeminate.}
 In 1567 he had a contest with the senate. Certain laypersons that lived notoriously evil lives, and could not be reclaimed by remonstrances, were imprisoned by his order. The senate threatened the officers of the archiepiscopal court for this action and the matter was referred to the king, Philip II of Spain, and the pope. Meanwhile the episcopal sheriff was seized, beaten and driven from the city, and St Charles, after much deliberation, declared the civil officers concerned excommunicated for having assaulted an officer of the ecclesiastical court. Eventually this conflict of jurisdiction was settled in favour of the archbishop, who had some civil executive authority by ancient right, but the governor of Milan nevertheless issued a decree against it.
   In the meantime St Charles set out on the visitation of the three Alpine valleys of Levantina, Bregno and La Riviera, which had been as it were abandoned by former archbishops and were full of disorders, the clergy there more corrupt even than the laity. He preached and catechized everywhere, displaced the unworthy clergy, and put in their room others who were capable of restoring the faith and morals of the people and resisting the inroads of Zwinglian Protestantism.

 Soon his enemies at Milan were at work again. The conduct of some of the canons of the collegiate church of Santa Maria della Scala (which claimed exemption from the jurisdiction of the ordinary) not being conformable to their state, St Charles consulted St Pius V, who answered him that he had a right to make the visitation of this church and to proceed against any of its clergy. The archbishop therefore went to make a canonical visitation, but the church door was shut in his face by the canons, and the cross, which in the tumult he had taken into his own hand, was shot at. The senate took up the cause of these canons, and sent the most virulent charges against the archbishop to Philip of Spain, accusing him of invading the king’s rights, this church being under the royal patronage, and the governor of Milan wrote to Pope Pius threatening to banish Cardinal Borromeo as a traitor. At length the king wrote to the governor, ordering him to support the archbishop. The canons persisted for a time in their obstinacy, but eventually submitted.
Before this affair was over the life of St Charles was again, and more seriously, in danger. The religious order called Humiliati having been reduced to a few members, but having many monasteries and great possessions, had submitted to reform at the hands of the archbishop, but the order was thoroughly degenerate and the submission was unwilling and only apparent. They tried every means to prevail upon the pope to annul regulations made, and when these failed three priors of the order hatched a plot to assassinate St Charles. One of the Humiliati themselves, a priest called Jerome Donati Farina, agreed to do the deed for forty gold pieces, which sum was raised by selling the ornaments from a church. On October 26, 1569, Farina posted himself at the door of the chapel in the archbishop’s house, whilst St Charles was at evening prayers with his household. An anthem by Orlando di Lasso was being sung, and at the words “It is time therefore that I return to Him that sent me”, Charles being on his knees before the altar, the assassin discharged a gun at him. Farina made good his escape during the ensuing confusion, and St Charles, imagining himself mortally wounded, commended himself to God. But it was found that the bullet had only struck his clothes in the back, raising a bruise, and fallen harmlessly to the floor. After a solemn thanksgiving and procession, he shut himself up for some days in a Carthusian monastery to consecrate his life anew to God.*{*The attempt was traced to its true authors, and Farina and two others were, in spite of St Charles’s plea for leniency, tortured and executed.}
  In the following year Pope St Pius V abolished the order of Humiliati entirely. In its earlier days it had given many holy men to the Church.
   St Charles then returned to the three valleys of his diocese in the Alps, and took that opportunity of visiting each of the Catholic cantons, wherein he converted a number of Zwinglians and restored discipline in the monasteries.
The harvest having failed, Milan was afflicted the following year with a great famine. St Charles by his care and appeals procured supplies for the relief of the poor, and himself fed 3000 people daily for three months. He had been very unwell for some time and at doctors’ orders he modified his way of life, but without getting any relief.
After visiting Rome for the conclave, which elected Pope Gregory XIII, he returned to his normal habits, and soon recovered his health. He now again came into collision with the civil power at Milan, where a new governor, Don Luis de Requesens, was trying to curtail the local jurisdiction of the Church and to embroil the archbishop with the king. St Charles fearlessly excommunicated Requesens, who retorted by patrolling the neighbourhood of the episcopal residence with soldiers and forbidding the meeting of confraternities except in the presence of a civil official. King Philip eventually removed the governor. But such public triumphs were not the most important part of the “pastoral care” to which the prayer of the office of St Charles alludes as having made him glorious. Above all it was to form a virtuous and capable clergy that he directed his energies. When a certain exemplary priest was sick and likely to die, the great concern shown by the archbishop was a subject of comment. “Ah,” he said, “you do not realize the worth of the life of one good priest.”

  The successful institution of the Oblates of St Ambrose has already been mentioned, and during his episcopate of eighteen years he held five provincial councils and eleven diocesan synods. He was indefatigable in parochial visitations, and when one of his suffragans said he had nothing to do, wrote out for him a long list of episcopal duties, adding the comment to each one, “Can a bishop ever say that he has nothing to do?”
The archdiocese of Milan owed three seminaries to the zeal of St Charles, for the requirements of three different classes of clerical student, and everywhere he urged that the Tridentine directions for sacerdotal training should be put into effect. In 1575 he went to Rome to gain the jubilee indulgence and in the following year published it at Milan. Huge crowds of penitents and others flocked to the city, and they brought with them the plague, which broke out with great virulence.  The governor fled and many of the rest of the nobility left the town. St Charles gave himself up completely to the care of the stricken. The number of priests of his own clergy to attend the sick not being sufficient, he assembled the superiors of the religious communities and begged their help. The effect of this appeal was that a number of religious at once volunteered, and were lodged by Charles in his own house. He then wrote to the governor, Don Antony de Guzman, upbraiding him for his cowardice, and induced him and other magistrates to return to their posts and try to cope with the disaster. The hospital of St Gregory was entirely inadequate, overflowing with dead, dying, sick and suspects, having nobody to care for them. The sight of their terrible state reduced St Charles to tears, but he had to send for priests and lay helpers to the Alpine valleys, for at first the Milanese clergy would not go near the place. With the coming of the plague commerce was at an end and want began. It is said that food had to be found daily for sixty or seventy thousand persons. St Charles literally exhausted all his resources in relief and incurred large debts on behalf of the sufferers. He even made use of the coloured fabrics that hung up from his house to the cathedral during processions, having it made up into clothes for the needy. Empty houses for the sick were taken outside the walls and temporary shelters built, lay helpers were organized for the clergy, and a score of altars set up in the streets so that the sick could assist at public worship from their windows. But the archbishop was not content with prayer and penance, organization and distribution; he personally ministered to the dying, waited on the sick and helped those in want. The pestilence lasted with varying degrees of intensity from the summer of 1576 until the beginning of 1578. Even during its continuance the magistrates of Milan tried to make mischief between St Charles and the pope. It is possible that some of their complaints were not altogether ill founded, but the matters complained of were ultimately due to their own supineness and inefficiency. When it was over St Charles wanted to reorganize his cathedral chapter on a basis of common life, and it was the canons’ refusal that finally decided him to organize his Oblates.


In the spring of 1580 he entertained at Milan for a week a dozen young Englishmen, who were going on the English mission, and one of them preached before him. This was Bd Ralph Sherwin, who in some eighteen months’ time was to give his life for the faith at Tyburn. In the same way he met his fellow martyr, Bd Edmund Campion, and talked with him.
   A little later in the same year St Charles met St Aloysius Gonzaga, then twelve years old, to whom he gave his first communion. At this time he was doing much travelling and the strain of work and worry was beginning to tell on him; moreover, he curtailed his sleep too much and Pope Gregory personally had to warn him not to overdo his Lenten fasting. At the end of 1583 he was sent as visitor apostolic to Switzerland, and in the Grisons he had to deal not only with Protestantism but also an outbreak of alleged witchcraft and sorcery. At Roveredo his flock as a wizard denounced the parish-priest himself, and St Charles judged it necessary to degrade him and hand him over to the secular arm.
   He did not disdain patiently to discuss points of theology with Protestant peasant-women, and on one occasion refused to leave an ignorant little herd-boy till he had taught him the Lord’s Prayer and Hail Mary.
   Hearing that Duke Charles of Savoy was fallen sick at Vercelli, he went thither and found him, as was thought, at the last gasp. But the duke, seeing him come into his room, cried out, “I am cured”. The saint gave him Holy Communion the next day, and Charles of Savoy was restored to health, as he was persuaded, by the prayers of St Charles, and after the saint’s death sent a silver lamp to be hung up at his tomb.
During 1584 his own health got worse and, after arranging for the establishment of a convalescent home in Milan, St Charles went in October to Monte Varallo to make his annual retreat, having with him Father Adorno, S.J. He had clearly foretold to several persons that he should not remain long with them, and on the 24th he was taken ill. On the 29th he started off for Milan, where he arrived on All Souls’, having celebrated Mass for the last time on the previous day at his birth-place, Arona. He went straight to bed and asked for the last sacraments, “At once”. He received them from the archpriest of his cathedral; and with the words Ecce venio, “Behold I come”, St Charles quietly died in the first part of the night between the 3rd and 4th of November. He was only forty-six years old. Devotion to the dead cardinal spread rapidly, and in 1601 Cardinal Baronius, who called him “a second Ambrose”, sent to the clergy of Milan an order of Clement VIII to change the anniversary mass de requiem into a solemn mass of the day; and St Charles was formally canonized by Paul V in 1610.

The Bollandists have up to the present published no biography of St Charles Borromeo. When in 1894 they issued the second volume of the Acta Sanctorum for November, which should have included all the saints honoured on the fourth day of that month, it was seen that the sources for the history of the great archbishop, especially those still unprinted, could not be adequately investigated and utilized without a delay which would have held up indefinitely the further progress of the main work. It was accordingly decided to send to press vol. ii, part 1, reserving part 2 for an exhaustive treatment of St Charles’s life which had been undertaken by Fr F. Van Ortroy. Unfortunately that very able scholar, though he had collected an immense mass of materials, procrastinated, and eventually died before he had done anything to reduce his notes to order. See on this the Analecta Bollandiana, vol. xxxix (1921), p. 55. To this same periodical, however, Fr Van Ortroy had contributed many valuable reviews of books bearing on the saint’s activities, he had pointed out, for example (vol. xiv, p. 346), how mistaken was the idea that the young cardinal got himself ordained priest by stealth and he had called attention to the fact that the holy archbishop, in his zeal to secure the most apostolic labourers for his own diocese, came from time to time to write rather intemperate letters to the superiors general of religious orders (ibid., vol. xxix, p. 373). Still more important, perhaps, is the long review of Borromean literature contributed by Fr Van Ortroy to the same periodical, vol. xxxix (1921), pp. 338—345. It must be said in truth that no quite adequate life of St Charles, based as it needs to be upon the vast materials available in private, diplomatic and ecclesiastical archives, has yet appeared. The saint is known to modern readers principally through the life by Giussano (1610), annotated in the Latin edition of 1751 by Oltrocchi, and that by the Abbé Sylvain, Histoire de St Charles Borromeo (3 vols., 1884). An English translation of Giussano appeared also in 1884. Perhaps the most valuable source of all, as being the work of a friend who knew the saint intimately, was the essay of the Barnabite, Father Bascapè, De vita et rebus gestis Caroli cardinalis, first printed in 1592. But for the last half-century or more a constant succession of historical studies has been appearing, which, while dealing with different phases of the ecclesiastical changes which resulted from the Council of Trent, all throw some measure of light upon, the activities and interests of St Charles. It would be possible to draw up an immensely long list but only a few can be mentioned here. Apart from such general works as Pastor’s History pf the Popes and the vast collection of documents begun by Merkle and Ehses to illustrate the proceedings of the Tridentine assembly, may be named Aristide Sala, Documenti circa la vita e le gesta di San Carlo (3 vols., 1857—1861) the Acta ecclesiae Mediolanenses, 4 vols. in folio, edited by Achille Ratti (later Pope Pius XI), 1890 seq. S. Steinherz, Nuntiaturberichte aus Deutschland, vol. i (1897) Steffens und Reinhardt, Nuntiaturberichte aus der Schweiz, vol. i (1906) D. Tamilia, Monte di Pietà di Roma (1900) the series of essays and documents published in quasi-periodical form from 1908 to 1910 under the title San Carlo Borromeo nel terzo centenario della canonizazione G. Boffito, Scrittori Barnabiti…3 vols. (1933—1935) Levati e Clerici, Menologia dei Barnabiti, 8 vols. (1932—1935) A. Bernareggi, Le origini della Congregazione degli Oblati di S. Ambrogio (1931); A. Sara, Federico Borromeo e i mistici del suo tempo (1933). There is a convenient and on the whole reliable sketch, St Charles Borromée, by L. Celier in the series “Les Saints”, and a rather fuller Italian life in two volumes by R. Orsenigo this is perhaps the most satisfactory work now available and was translated into English (1943). There are also biographies by E. H. Thompson and by M. Yeo (A Prince of Pastors, 1938), and an exceptionally full account in French in DHG. J. A. Sassi edited the writings of St Charles in 1747 in five volumes, but much of his vast correspondence was then unknown or inaccessible. On an accusation of ruthless heresy-hunting levelled against St Charles see The Tablet, July 29, 1905 and on certain criticisms upon the lack of proper sanitary precautions during the great plague consult the very important study by Fr A. Gemelli in the Scuola Cattolica for 1910.  

Charles was the son of Count Gilbert Borromeo and Margaret Medici, sister of Pope Pius IV. He was born at the family castle of Arona on Lake Maggiore, Italy on October 2. He received the clerical tonsure when he was twelve and was sent to the Benedictine abbey of SS. Gratian and Felinus at Arona for his education. In 1559 his uncle was elected Pope Pius IV and the following year, named him his Secretary of State and created him a cardinal and administrator of the see of Milan. He served as Pius' legate on numerous diplomatic missions and in 1562, was instrumental in having Pius reconvene the Council of Trent, which had been suspended in 1552. Charles played a leading role in guiding and in fashioning the decrees of the third and last group of sessions. He refused the headship of the Borromeo family on the death of Count Frederick Borromeo, was ordained a priest in 1563, and was consecrated bishop of Milan the same year. Before being allowed to take possession of his see, he oversaw the catechism, missal, and breviary called for by the Council of Trent. When he finally did arrive at Trent (which had been without a resident bishop for eighty years) in 1556, he instituted radical reforms despite great opposition, with such effectiveness that it became a model see.
He put into effect, measures to improve the morals and manners of the clergy and laity, raised the effectiveness of the diocesan operation, established seminaries for the education of the clergy, founded a Confraternity of Christian Doctrine for the religious instruction of children and encouraged the Jesuits in his see.
He increased the systems to the poor and the needy, was most generous in his help to the English college at Douai, and during his bishopric held eleven diocesan synods and six provincial councils. He founded a society of secular priests, Oblates of St. Ambrose (now Oblates of St. Charles) in 1578, and was active in preaching, resisting the inroads of protestantism, and bringing back lapsed Catholics to the Church. He encountered opposition from many sources in his efforts to reform people and institutions.

He died at Milan on the night of November 3-4, and was canonized in 1610. He was one of the towering figures of the Catholic Reformation, a patron of learning and the arts, and though he achieved a position of great power, he used it with humility, personal sanctity, and unselfishness to reform the Church, of the evils and abuses so prevalent among the clergy and the nobles of the times.

Charles Borromeo B Cardinal (RM) Born Arona, Italy, October 2, 1538; died night of November 3-4, 1584; canonized in 1610; feast day formerly on November 5.

More than saints working great miracles, it is harder to believe that a man born with a silver spoon in his mouth during an age of decadence that defined nepotism should become a saint. Nevertheless, Charles Borromeo was a man of great humility though he had received many worldly benefits very early in life. The patrician with fairy godmothers galore had the spirit of a hardened ascetic. He gives us hope that we, who also live in a corrupt age, can successfully run the race like Saint Paul and reach for the crown of glory God has waiting for each of us.

Charles (Carlo), the second son of Count Gilbert Borromeo, a talented and pious man, and Margaret de Medici, was born in the family castle of Arona on Lake Maggiore. As a boy he was sent to Milan, for his father was determined the his son should receive the education fitting his station in life even though everyone believed that Charles was retarded because he had a speech impediment.

Charles showed signs of a vocation early. He received the tonsure of minor orders at age 12 and was allowed to wear the cassock. He had an unusual gravity of manner and loved to study. One of his masters said of him: "You do not know the young man; one day he will be a reformer of the Church and do wonderful things." This prediction was fulfilled to the letter.

His uncle, Julius Caesar Borromeo, had the young cleric assigned the rich Benedictine Abbey of Saints Gratian and Felinus, at Arona, which had long been enjoyed by his family in commendam. Here he studied for three years. The abbey provided him with some income and his father made him subsist on this limited allowance. Charles, it appears, was always short of money to pay his household expenses for he set a fine table and liked to entertain.

After studying Latin at Milan, at the age of 15, Charles was sent to the University of Pavia to study civil and canon law under Francis Alciati, who was later made a cardinal. By age 22 Charles had earned his doctorate and both his parents were dead.

In 1559 his mother's younger brother, the Cardinal de Medici, was elected pope and took the name Pius IV. In 1560, Pius IV called his nephew Charles to Rome, where the hat of cardinal-deacon awaited him. In his enthusiasm His Holiness appointed Charles in 1561 to administer the vacant see of Milan, but refused to allow him to go there. In his avuncular zeal his also appointed his beloved nephew as the papal legate of Bologna, Romagna, March of Ancona, and Protector of Portugal, the Low Countries, the Catholic cantons of Switzerland, and the Orders of Saint Francis, the Carmelites, Knights of Malta, and others.

Only two years after his arrival in Rome at the age of 22 and still in minor orders, Charles had among his other responsibilities, duties similar to those of the present-day Secretary of State of the Vatican. The pope clearly found it easy to make appointments and had a strong sense of family. Anyone else in this position would have felt that he was one of Saint Peter's seven gold keys. But Borromeo was made of stronger stuff. Perhaps he bowed his head under the weight of so many honors, but he certainly didn't bend his knee. More importantly, he rolled up his sleeves and went to work.

Nevertheless, he led a balanced life. Charles still managed to find the time to play music and engage in sports; to attend to family responsibilities, such as finding husbands for his four sisters.

To the consternation of many, Charles soon was attacking the Roman court. It his eyes it was worthless, with its display of luxury, its low morals, and its stink of treacherous scheming. Loudly he declared his contempt for the practices that defiled it, condemning lechery, praising charity and humility, denouncing abuses and extolling the virtues of a good example. His daring action earned the hostility of many clerics and the reputation as a kill-joy.

As a patron of learning, Charles promoted it among the clergy and laity by instituting a literary academy at the Vatican. The record of its many conferences and studies can be found in Borromeo's Noctes Vaticanae.

In 1562, Pope Pius IV reconvened the Council of Trent, which had opened in 1545 but had been suspended between 1552 and 1562. Charles is credited with keeping the council going for the next two years and hastening it to the completion of its work by reconciling opponents.

During the council Charles's older brother, Count Frederick Borromeo, died, leaving Charles as head of the family. Everyone assumed he would resign his clerical state and marry. But Charles opted to name his uncle Julius as successor, and instead was ordained a priest in 1563 and consecrated archbishop of Milan the following year.

Charles was anxious to travel to Milan and begin implementing the reforms of Trent in his see, but was forced by the growing frailty of his uncle to remain in Rome. He supervised writing of the new catechism, missal, and breviary, and the reform of the liturgy and church music called for by the council. He even commissioned Palestrina's Mass Papae Marcelli.

At last he received permission to travel to Milan and convene a provincial synod (the first of six during his administration) because his see was in great disorder. But in 1565 he was called to the pope's deathbed, where Saint Philip Neri was also present. The new pope Saint Pius V asked him to continue his duties in Rome for a time, but Charles resisted because he wanted to attend to his diocese.

Finally taking over his see in 1566, the 28-year-old Charles modified the luxurious life style he had in Rome, and set himself to apply the principles of the Council of Trent in the reformation of a large, disordered diocese that had been without a resident archbishop for 80 years. At this time the archdiocese of Milan stretched from Venice to Geneva. It comprised 3,000 clergy and 600,000 lay men and women in over 2,000 churches, 100 communities of men, and 70 of women--about the size of the Roman Church in England today.

Born an aristocrat, Charles Borromeo decided he ought to identify himself with the poor of his diocese. He regulated his household and sold household plate and other treasures to raise 30,000 crowns. The whole sum was used to relief the distress of the poor. His almoner was ordered to give poor families 200 crowns monthly. He confessed himself each morning before celebrating Mass (generally to Griffith (Gruffydd) Roberts, author of the well-known Welsh grammar). Borromeo set his clergy an example of virtuous and selfless living, of caring for the needy and sick, of making Christ a reality to society.

Charles is described as having a robust and dignified carriage. His nose was large and aquiline, his color pale, his hair brown, and his eyes blue. He sported a short, unkempt reddish-brown beard until 1574 when he ordered his clergy to shave and, as in everything, set the example himself.

He travelled the length and breadth of his huge diocese. Eventually, Charles overcame his early speech impediment, but his was never able to preach with ease. Nevertheless, he always spoke convincingly, and constantly preached and catechized on his visitations.

To help remedy the people's religious ignorance he established the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD) and instituted 'Sunday schools'; seminaries were opened for the training of clergy (he was a great benefactor of the English College at Douai that Cardinal Allen called him its founder); the dignity of public worship was insisted upon. It is said he had 3,000 catechists and 40,000 pupils enrolled in the CCD programs of Milan. He arranged retreats for the clergy and encouraged the Jesuits in their educational work. His influence was felt even outside his own diocese and time.

Charles Borromeo was an outstanding figure among Catholic reformers after the Council of Trent, and has been called a second Saint Ambrose. His rigorism in some directions and his imperiousness have not escaped criticism, but such work of his as the religious education of children has been very widely appreciated.

Charles's uncompromising reforms were not carried out without opposition, not least from highly-placed laity whose disorderly lives he curbed with stringent measures. Efforts were made to get him removed from office. In 1567, he aroused the enmity of the Milan Senate over episcopal jurisdiction when he imprisoned several laypersons for their evil lives; when the episcopal sheriff was driven from the city by civil officials, he excommunicated them and was eventually upheld by King Philip II and the pope.

Again his episcopal rights were challenged. Backed by governor Arburquerque, the canons of Santa Maria della Scala in Milan one day refused to allow Borromeo to enter their church. You might imagine the scene: the clergy all gathered together like commandos opposing a rampart of pot-bellied prebendaries against their sworn enemy, fulminating and raising their hands against this godly man. Borromeo pardoned the offense but the pope and king upheld his rights again.

On October 26, 1569, Archbishop Charles Borromeo of Milan, was at evening prayer. He had been attempting to bring order to a corrupt religious group known as the Humiliati, which had no more than 70 members but which possessed the wealth of 90 monasteries. One of the Humiliati, a priest named Jerome Donati Farina, was hired by three friars with the proceeds from selling church decorations to assassinate Borromeo.
St. Charles
He shot at the archbishop as he knelt before the altar during evening prayer. Farina escaped. Charles, thinking himself mortally wounded, commended himself to God. The bullet, however, only struck his clothes in the back, bruising him. He calmly ordered the service to continue. Not long afterwards he obtained a papal bull which dissolved the congregation permanently. After thanksgiving, Charles retired for a few days to a Carthusian monastery to consecrate his life anew to God. When it turned out that the wound was not mortal, Charles Borromeo rededicated himself to the reform of the Church.
He then travelled to the next three valleys of the diocese in the Alps, visiting each of the Catholic cantons, removing ignorant and unworthy clergy, and converting a number of Zwinglians. It is said the Charles possessed the extraordinary gift of being able to instantaneously recognize the gifts and capabilities of those around him. He wished to have an efficient body of priests as auxiliaries to help him in his many works, so gathered together men of exemplary lives known for the sanctity and learning. Anyone showing ambition for place or office would not be tolerated by him.
During the famine of 1570 he managed to find food for 3,000 people a day for three months.
Lombardy was under the civil authority of Philip II of Spain at this time. Tired of the jurisdictional struggles and the political games being played, in 1573 Charles excommunicated the governor Luis de Requesens, who was then removed by Philip. The last two governors learned from this not to mess with the cardinal- archbishop.

In 1575 he went to Rome to gain a jubilee indulgence, and the following year it was published in Milan. Huge crowds of penitents came to Milan. Unfortunately, they brought the plague with them. The governor and other officials fled the city; Charles Borromeo refused, remaining to care for the stricken.

He assembled the superiors of the religious communities and begged them for their help. Many religious lodged in his house. The hospital of Saint Gregory was inadequate and overflowed with the sick and dead, with too few to care for them. He sent for help from priests and lay helpers in the Alpine valleys, because the Milanese clergy would not go near the sick.

As plague choked off commerce, want began. Daily food had to be found for 60,000 to 70,000 people. Borromeo first sold off his large estate at Oria, Naples, to raise money to relieve suffering. Having exhausted his own resources and he began piling up debt to get supplies. Clothes were made from the flags that had been hung from his house to the cathedral during processions. Empty houses were used, and shelters were built for the sick. Altars were set up in the streets so that the sick could attend public worship from their windows. He himself ministered to the sick, in addition to supervising care in the city. The plague lasted from 1576-78.

Even during this period, resentful magistrates tried to make trouble between Charles and the pope. When the plague was over, Charles wanted to establish anew his cathedral chapter on the basis of a common life, but the canons refused. This led him to originate his Oblates of Ambrose (who was also bishop of Milan) (now the Oblates of Saint Charles).

In addition to his connection to the English College at Douai and his Welsh confessor Fr. Roberts, Borromeo appointed another Welshman , Dr. Owen Lewis (later bishop of Calabria), to be his vicar general, and he always had with him a little picture of Saint John Fisher. In 1580, he met, aided, and entertained for a week twelve young priests going on a mission to England. Two preached before him--Saint Ralph Sherwin and Saint Edmund Campion, English martyrs.
A little later the same year, Charles met the 12-year-old Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, to whom he gave his first Communion.
Charles was a martyr in his own way. He travelled under much strain and without enough sleep. In 1584, his health declined. After arranging for the establishment of a convalescents' home in Milan, he went to Monte Varallo to make his annual retreat, accompanied by the Jesuit Father Adorno. He told several people that he was not long for this world, took ill on October 24, and arrived back in Milan on All Souls' Day (November 2), having celebrated Mass for the last time the day before in his hometowm of Arona.

He went to bed, requested the last rites, received them, and died quietly during the early hours of November 4 in the arms of his Welsh confessor, Fr. Roberts, in 1584, aged only 46, with the words, "Behold, I come. Your will be done."  He was buried in Milan Cathedral. A spontaneous cultus arose immediately. Soon after his death the people agreed to build a monument to him--a 28-meter statue set upon a 14-meter pedestal. The statue was called "Carlone" or "Big Charles."

Among Walter Savage Landor's poems is one addressed to Saint Charles, invoking his pity on Milan at the time of the troubles in 1848.
Another of Charles's confessors, Saint Alexander Sauli, a Barnabite clerk regular, followed Charles's example and carried out similar necessary, but unwelcome, religious reforms in Corsica (Attwater, Bentley, Delaney, Encyclopedia, Guissiano, Murray, Orsenigo, Walsh, White, Yeo).

In art his emblem is a cardinal's hat and crozier. Normally he is shown as a cardinal praying before a crucifix, generally barefoot and often with a rope around his neck. Sometimes he is shown (1) kissing the hand of the Blessed Virgin and blessed by the Christ Child; (2) weeping over a book with untouched bread and water nearby; or (3) bringing the Blessed Sacrament to plague victims (Roeder, White).

He is the patron of Roman clergy, seminaries, spiritual directors, catechists, catechumens, and starch makers. Invoked against the plague (Roeder, White).

(1538-1584)
     In the 16th century there were many abuses in the way the Catholic Church was run. The Protestant Reformation did not correct them. (You can never correct an institution by leaving it.) But credit must still be given to the Protestant reformers for arousing Catholic leaders out of their lethargy. The result was the great ecumenical council of Trent, which brought about true reform.St. Charles Borromeo is an ideal representative of the Catholic-Church-unreformed and the Catholic Church-reformed.   One of the pre-reformation abuses in papal practice, for instance, was that of a pope's naming his own relatives to high positions. As late as 1559, when Cardinal John Medici was elected pope (Paul IV), he named Charles Borromeo, his nephew, a Cardinal, although Charles was only 22 years old and still not ordained a priest! The pope brought him to Rome and gave him all sorts of important jobs. Time proved, however, that Paul IV had selected the right man. Charles was embarrassed by his position, but a holy archbishop assured him that he should take advantage of it so as to help the Church to correct bad habits.
    Cardinal Charles forged ahead on that basis. He became the leader in reconvening the reformist Council of Trent and guiding it on to its splendid conclusion. Among his special contributions was the great handbook of Catholic teaching, the Catechism of the Council of Trent.  Once the council's work was done, of course, it had to be put into effect. (Our own experience since 1965 reminds us how difficult it can be to put a lot of new Church laws into effect - even very good laws.) Charles had been officially archbishop of Milan since 1560. Now he left Rome and went to his diocese, intent on enforcing the reform laws that he had played so great a part in framing.
  Prayerfully and with great diligence, he worked to make better Catholics out of his own archdiocesans and the rest of the Catholics under his jurisdiction in northern Italy and Switzerland. He enacted laws in local councils. He established the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, which instructed 40,000 children at
Sunday schools. He encouraged new religious orders. He established seminars for training better priests. (Once he said, “Ah, you do not realize the worth of the life of one good priest!”) From 1575 to 1578 the bubonic plague hit Milan and its vicinity. Most of the city fathers fled, but the Cardinal Archbishop stayed in the city and took care of the plague-ridden with his own hands. Reforming people is more difficult, it seems, than bringing them to first conversion. St. Charles had to face not only stubborn non-cooperation, but violent rejection on the part of those who needed to be reformed.

Thus the “chapter of canons” of the Church of Santa Maria della Scala declared that they would not allow the archbishop to make an official visitation of inquiry there, as he was supposed to do in all his churches. When he came to call, these priests slammed the door in his face. They appealed to the governor, who at first sided with the rebels and threatened to banish the Cardinal.
Then there was the religious order of the Humiliati. In its earlier years, these had done much good work. Now, however, the members were so unwilling to accept the new regulations that one of their priests named Farina shot the Cardinal point-blank as he knelt in prayer. Oddly, indeed miraculously, the bullet, though it penetrated his clothing, only raised a bruise on the victim's skin.
     In the 1920s, the then archbishop of Milan gave to the Church of St. Borromeo in Rochester, New York a part of a vestment that St. Charles was wearing when he was “assassinated”. It is a precious reminder of the great work that St. Charles did to infuse new life into Christianity.
     It is also a reminder of the problems that any pope and any bishop will have, even today, when they do their duty to renew those of us who object because we think more of what we want than of what God wants! Father Robert F. McNamara.

 November 4, 2009 St. Charles Borromeo (1538-1584) 
The name of St. Charles Borromeo is associated with reform. He lived during the time of the Protestant Reformation, and had a hand in the reform of the whole Church during the final years of the Council of Trent.
Although he belonged to a noble Milanese family and was related to the powerful Medici family, he desired to devote himself to the Church. When his uncle, Cardinal de Medici, was elected pope in 1559 as Pius IV, he made Charles cardinal-deacon and administrator of the Archdiocese of Milan while he was still a layman and a young student. Because of his intellectual qualities he was entrusted with several important offices connected with the Vatican and later appointed secretary of state with full charge of the administration of the papal states. The untimely death of his elder brother brought Charles to a definite decision to be ordained a priest, despite relatives’ insistence that he marry. He was ordained a priest at the age of 25, and soon afterward h e was consecrated bishop of Milan.
Because of his work at the Council of Trent he was not allowed to take up residence in Milan until the Council was over. Charles had encouraged the pope to renew the Council in 1562 after it had been suspended 10 years before. Working behind the scenes, St. Charles deserves the credit for keeping the Council in session when at several points it was on the verge of breaking up. He took upon himself the task of the entire correspondence during the final phase.
Eventually Charles was allowed to devote his time to the Archdiocese of Milan, where the religious and moral picture was far from bright. The reform needed in every phase of Catholic life among both clergy and laity was initiated at the provincial council of all his suffragan bishops. Specific regulations were drawn up for bishops and other clergy: If the people were to be converted to a better life, these had to be the first to give a good example and renew their apostolic spirit.
Charles took the initiative in giving good example. He allotted most of his income to charity, forbade himself all luxury and imposed severe penances upon himself. He sacrificed wealth, high honors, esteem and influence to become poor. During the plague and famine of 1576 he tried to feed 60,000 to 70,000 people daily. To do this he borrowed large sums of money that required years to repay. When the civil authorities fled at the height of the plague, he stayed in the city, where he ministered to the sick and the dying, helping those in want. Work and heavy burdens of high office began to affect his health. He died at 46.

Comment:  St. Charles made his own the words of Christ: “...I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me (Matthew 25:35-36). Charles saw Christ in his neighbor and knew that charity done for the least of his flock was charity done for Christ.
Quote:  “Christ summons the Church, as she goes her pilgrim way, to that continual reformation of which she always has need, insofar as she is an institution of men here on earth. Consequently, if, in various times and circumstances, there have been deficiencies in moral conduct or in Church discipline, or even in the way that Church teaching has been formulated—to be carefully distinguished from the deposit of faith itself—these should be set right at the opportune moment and in the proper way”. (Decree on Ecumenism, 6, Austin Flannery translation).
1698  Claude Brousson; Unter Ludwig XIV. mußten die Hugenotten vor allen nach der Aufhebung des Edikts von Nantes neue Verfolgungen erleiden. Der Prediger Claude Brousson (geboren 1647) feierte am 27. Juni 1683 mit Gleichgesinnten in Toulouse und Umgebung öffentliche reformierte Gottesdienste. Er löste damit eine neue Verfolgung aus und mußte in die Schweiz fliehen. kehrte dann wieder nach Frankreich zurück und zog monatelang durch die reformierten Gemeinden in Südfrankreich.
Evangelische Kirche: 4. November
Unter Ludwig XIV. mußten die Hugenotten vor allen nach der Aufhebung des Edikts von Nantes neue Verfolgungen erleiden. Der Prediger Claude Brousson (geboren 1647) feierte am 27. Juni 1683 mit Gleichgesinnten in Toulouse und Umgebung öffentliche reformierte Gottesdienste. Er löste damit eine neue Verfolgung aus und mußte in die Schweiz fliehen. Dort setzte er sich zunächst für die Flüchtlinge ein, kehrte dann wieder nach Frankreich zurück und zog monatelang durch die reformierten Gemeinden in Südfrankreich.
Nach einem weiteren Aufenthalt in der Schweiz ging er 1695 in die Normandie und wirkte dort im Verborgenen. Die Verfolgungen nahmen zu und Brousson entkam nach Holland. Hier versuchte er sich bei den Ryswijker Friedensverhandlungen für eine Duldung der reformierten Kirche in Frankreich einzusetzen. Als er scheiterte, ging er im Sommer 1697 zurück nach Frankreich und zog weiter durch die reformierten Gemeinden. Er wurde im Herbst 1698 verraten und in Montpellier hingerichtet.



THE PSALTER OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY PSALM 115

O Lady, who shall dwell in the tabernacle of God ? or who shall rest with the leaders of the people?

The poor in spirit, and the pure of heart, the meek, the peaceful, and the mourners.

Be mindful, O Lady, that thou speak for us good things:
and that thou mayest turn away the indignation of thy Son from us.

O sinners, let us embrace the footprints of Mary, and cast ourselves at her blessed feet.

Let us hold her fast, nor let her go: until we deserve to be blessed by her.

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

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


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

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

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

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

Widowed Saints  html
Doctors_of_the_Church   Acts_Of_The_Apostles  Roman Catholic Popes  Purgatory  UniateChalcedon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Father Corapi's Biography

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

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

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

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


God Bless you on your journey Father John Corapi


Records on life of Father Flanagan, founder of Boys Town, presented at Vatican
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).
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