6th v. BC Baruch The Holy Prophet an inseparable companion, disciple, friend and scribe of the great Prophet Jeremiah (May 1). He wrote an entire scroll of his prophetic sayings and read them to the people in the Temple of Jerusalem. Together with his teacher, St Baruch grievously lamented the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, and he taught and censured the Jews, and he suffered spite and vexation from them. He witnessed the stoning of the holy Prophet Jeremiah, and buried his body.

He clearly prophesied the coming into the world of the Son of God, Who would “dwell with mankind.”
His prophecy begins with the words, “He is our God, and no other can compare with Him” (Bar 3:36).

The passages in the third person point to an author other than the prophet. There is clear proof of this in the Book of Jeremiah. The prophet has dictated to Baruch, Jr 36:4, all the words that he has uttered in God's name over a period of twenty-three years, cf. Jr 25:3. When this collection was burned by King Jehoiakim, Jr 36:23, a fresh scroll was written by the same Baruch, Jr 36:32. The account of all this could have come only from Baruch himself; to him we must also attribute the biographical narratives that follow, Jr 37-44, though they close with a message of comfort for Baruch from Jeremiah, Jr 45:1-5. A remark is also made to the effect that Baruch's second scroll, Jr 36:32, contained 'many similar words in addition' (added by Baruch or by others).
After the martyr's death of the Prophet Jeremiah, St Baruch lived a short while and died in Egypt, in the sixth century before Christ. The holy Prophet Baruch prophesied the return of the Jews from the Babylonian Captivity, and the desolation of Babylon. He clearly prophesied the coming into the world of the Son of God, Who would "dwell with mankind." His prophecy begins with the words, "He is our God, and no other can compare with Him" (Bar 3:36).
The Book of Baruch is one of the deuterocanonical books not found in the Hebrew Bible. The Greek Bible puts it between Jeremiah and Lamentations; the Vulgate immediately after Lamentations. According to its introduction, 1:1-14, it was written in Babylon by Baruch after the deportation and sent to Jerusalem to be read at liturgical gatherings. It contains: a prayer acknowledging guilt but expressing hope, 1:15-3:8; a 'wisdom' poem, 3:9-4:4, in which wisdom is identified with the Law; a prophetic passage, 4:5-5:9, in which a personified Jerusalem speaks to the exiles and the prophet consoles her with a reminder of messianic hopes. The three sections, 1:15-3:8, 3:9-4:4, 4:5-5:9, probably had a Hebrew origin, now lost. Their date is hard to fix; they may be as late as the 2nd or 1st century B.C.
In the Greek Bible, Lamentations separates the Letter of Jeremiah from Baruch, but the Vulgate adds the Letter (with a separate title) to Baruch, ch, 6. The Letter is an apologetic argument against idolatry; its style undistinguished, it develops themes already used in Jr 10:1-16; Is 44:9-20. The idolatry here attacked is late Babylonian. The Letter, apparently written in Hebrew, is of the Greek period; more precise dating is not possible. It is alluded to, seemingly, in 2 M 2:1-3.
This collection, grouped under the name of Baruch, gives us valuable information about the Jewish communities in the Dispersion and the ways by which their religious life was sustained: contact with Jerusalem, prayer, devotion to the Law, thirst for retribution, messianic hope. Like Lamentations, it also testifies to the enduring reputation of Jeremiah, both short books being assigned to the prophet and his disciple.

The Book of the Prophet Baruch is regarded as uncanonical and is appended to the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah. On the eve of the Nativity of Christ it is read as one of the Old Testament readings, listed as a prophecy of Jeremiah.

150 St. Paternus Bishop of Auch France. He was born in Bilbao, Spain.

220s St. Privatus, martyr
Romæ sancti Priváti Mártyris, qui, ulcéribus plenus, a beáto Callísto Papa est sanátus; inde, sub Alexándro Imperatóre, ob Christi fidem plumbátis cæsus est usque ad mortem.
St. Privatus, martyr, who was cured of ulcers by blessed Pope Callistus At Rome. In the time of Emperor Alexander he was scourged to death with leaded whips for the faith of Christ.

Saint Privatus, Martyr, 3rd or 4th century
St. Privatus was the first bishop to serve in the Gévaudan region of southern France (now in Lozère Department). Gregory of Tours says that he was martyred in 260 by invading Alamanni, but that event may have taken place early in the 4th century. The only image of him I have found includes a label ("S PRIVATUS"), and he has a bishop's mitre; but no other attribute or emblem identifies him -- unless the three maltese crosses on his chasuble are significant. Feast day: July 22

St. Martial Martyr with Lawrence and companions 22 died in an African province in modern Algeria.
In Africa sanctórum Mártyrum Martiális, Lauréntii et aliórum vigínti.
In Africa, the Saints Martial, Lawrence, and twenty other martyrs.
St. Stacteus, martyr, In the same place. Item Romæ sancti Stáctei Mártyris.

251 St. Maximus A martyr of Ephesus
Eódem die pássio sancti Máximi, sub Décio Imperatóre.
On the same day, under Emperor Decius, the martyrdom of St. Maximus.

270s Saint Chariton the Confessor bravely denounced the pagan gods and staunchly confessed faith in the One True God, Christ the Savior. The holy Confessor underwent fierce tortures but, through the Providence of God, he remained alive. When the persecution abated, the saint was set free from prison and he dedicated all his life to the service of the Lord. He built a church, around which in time there formed a monastery, the renowned Pharan Lavra in Palestine.

He suffered at Iconium during one of the persecutions against Christians under the emperor Aurelian. The grace-bearing example of the holy Protomartyr Thekla (September 24) encouraged him in his confessor's deed. She being a native of his city, whose memory he in particular deeply venerated.

St Chariton bravely denounced the pagan gods and staunchly confessed faith in the One True God, Christ the Savior. The holy Confessor underwent fierce tortures but, through the Providence of God, he remained alive. When the persecution abated, the saint was set free from prison and he dedicated all his life to the service of the Lord.

Journeying to Jerusalem on pilgrimage to the holy places, he fell into the hands of robbers. They tied him up and threw him in a cave, intending to kill him later, and they hastened away on business. The saint prayed fervently in expectation of death. He gave thanks to God and entreated him to do with him according to His will.

At this time a snake crawled into the cave and began to drink wine from a vessel setting there, poisoning it with its deadly venom. Returning to the cave, the robbers drank the poisoned wine and they all perished. St Chariton gave thanks to God and began his ascetic struggles at the place of his miraculous rescue. He distributed the plundered gold of the robbers to the poor, and in the robbers cave he built a church, around which in time there formed a monastery, the renowned Pharan Lavra in Palestine.

St Chariton compiled a strict rule for his monastery. Yearning for solitude, the monk went farther into the desert, but there also he did not reject those who sought his spiritual guidance, and he founded two more monasteries: the Jericho and the Souka, named the "Old Lavra." At the end of his life, St Chariton struggled in a cave on a hill near the Souka monastery, but he did not cease to provide guidance for all three of the monasteries he founded.

According to Tradition, St Chariton compiled the office of taking monastic vows. St Chariton the Confessor died in extreme old age and was buried, in accord with his last wishes, in the Pharan monastery in the church, built on the site of the robbers' cave.

St. Mark Martyr of Antioch, in Pisidia with Alexander, Alphius, Zosimus, Nicon, Neon, Heliodorus, and thirty soldiers. Mark was a shepherd and his non-military companions were his brothers
Antiochíæ Pisídiæ sancti Marci Mártyris, pastóris óvium; itémque commemorátio sanctórum Alphíi, Alexándri et Zósimi fratrum, Nicónis, Neónis, Heliodóri et trigínta mílitum, qui, cum ad mirácula beáti Marci credidíssent in Christum, divérsis in locis ac diébus variísque modis martyrio coronáti sunt.
At Antioch in Pisidia, the holy martyrs Mark, a shepherd, Alphius, Alexander, and Zosimus, his brothers; also Nicon, Neon, Heliodorus, and thirty soldiers, who were converted to Christ upon seeing the miracles of blessed Mark, and were crowned with martyrdom in different places and in diverse manners.

The Holy Martyrs Alexander, Alpheius, Zosimus, Mark the Shepherd, Nikon, Neon, Heliodorus and others suffered for confessing the Christian Faith in various places of Asia Minor during the reign of Diocletian (284-305).

St Mark, a shepherd, was arrested for his open confession of the Christian Faith in Pisidian Antioch. The thirty soldiers guarding him were converted by St Mark, and they were beheaded at Nicea, but St Mark was sentenced to tortures.

The brothers Sts Alexander, Alpheius and Zosimus were blacksmiths from the settlement of Katalitea, or Kalitea. They were summoned to forge the instruments of torture which would be used on St Mark the Shepherd. The iron did not melt and fuse, however, and the hands of the blacksmiths grew numb. Hearing a voice summoning them to suffer with St Mark, the brothers believed in Christ.

After fierce torture they poured molten tin down their throats. After enduring many tortures, St Mark was beheaded at Claudiopolis. When they carried the head of the holy martyr into the pagan temple of Artemis, all the idols fell down and were smashed. The witnesses of this miracle, Nikon, Neon, Heliodorus and other young men and women, believed in Christ, confessed their faith and died martyrs at Maromilium.

404 Saint Eustochium addressee of one of Jerome's most famous letter (Ep. 22)--a lengthy treatise on virginity V (RM)
In Béthlehem Judæ sanctæ Eustóchii Vírginis, quæ cum beáta Paula, matre sua, ex urbe Roma in Palæstínam profécta est; ibíque, ad Præsépe Dómini cum áliis Virgínibus enutríta, præcláris méritis fulgens migrávit ad Dóminum.
At Bethlehem of Juda, the holy virgin Eustochium, daughter of blessed Paula, who was brought up at the manger of our Lord with other virgins, and being celebrated for her merits, went to our Lord.
419 ST EUSTOCHIUM, VIRGIN

EUSTOCHIUM JULIA, whose memory is rendered illustrious by the pen of St Jerome, was daughter of St Paula, whose life is related on January 26 its exterior events and circumstances conditioned those of Eustochium, who was the third of four daughters and the only one to share her mother’s life till its end.
St Paula, upon the death of her husband Toxotius, devoted herself wholly to God in a life of simplicity, poverty, mortification and prayer. Eustochium, who was about twelve years old when her father died, shared all the views of her mother and rejoiced to consecrate the hours which so many spend in vain amusements to works of charity and religion.
When St Jerome came to Rome from the East in the year 382 she, with St Paula, put herself under his spiritual direction, and its trend soon alarmed some of her friends and relatives. An uncle, Hymettius, and his wife Praetextata tried to dis8uade the young girl from a life of austerity and attempted to entice her into participation in the pleasures of ordinary life. Their efforts were wasted, for before very long Eustochium had taken the veil of perpetual virginity, the first noble Roman maiden so to do. To commend her resolution and to instruct her in the obligations of that state St Jerome addressed to her on this occasion his famous letter called Concerning the Keeping of Virginity, which he wrote about the year 384. The venerable author, however, does not confine his letter to ascetic teaching but writes passages of satire which suggest it was intended for a wider public than one young girl he is merciless in his criticism of the behaviour of certain virgins, widows and priests.
Much of the formation of Eustochium had been at the hands of St Marcella, that “glory of the Roman ladies “, but when St Paula decided to follow St Jerome to Palestine she elected to go with her mother. With other maidens who aspired to the religious life, they met St Jerome at Antioch, visited the Holy Places, Egypt, and the monks of the Nitrian desert, and finally settled down at Bethlehem. Three communities of women were established, in the direction of which Eustochium assisted St Paula, and St Jerome has left us an account of the simple devoted lives that were passed therein. When his sight began to fail, these two women, who had learnt Greek and Hebrew, helped in the work of the translation of the Bible, the Vulgate ; at their request he wrote commentaries on the epistles to Philemon, the Galatians, the Ephesians and Titus, and dedicated some of his works to them, for, as he said, “these women were more capable of forming a judgement on them than most men “. Other duties of St Eustochium were to sweep out the house, trim and fill the lamps, and cook.

In 403 St Paula was taken ill, and Eustochium spent long hours hetween waiting on her and praying for her in the cave of the Nativity. At her death on January 26, 404, Eustochiurn, “like a baby weaned from her nurse, could scarcely he drawn away from her mother. She kissed her eyes and clung to her face and caressed her whole body and would even have been buried with her.”
Paula was succeeded as directress by her daughter, who found the communities not only destitute but much in debt. With the encouragement of St Jerome and her own quiet intrepidity she faced the situation and retrieved it, with the assistance of funds brought by her niece, another Paula, who had joined the Bethlehem maidens. In 417 a band of roughs burnt down her monastery and committed many outrages of which St Jerome, St Eustochium, and the younger Paula informed Pope St Innocent I by letter, who wrote in strong terms to John, Bishop of Jerusalem. St Eustochium did not long survive this terrible shock. We have no account from St Jerome of her death as we have of that of her mother, but he wrote to St Augustine and St Alipius that “ such a sorrow caused him to disdain the outrageous writings of the Pelagian Anianus”.
She died peacefully about 419, and was buried in the same tomb as St Paula in a grotto adjoining the spot in which our Lord was born.
There their tomb may still be seen, but it has long been empty and the fate of their relics is not known.

St Jerome’s letters and other writings furnish almost all that we know concerning St Eustochium. The material has been gathered up in the Acta Sanctorum, September, vol. vii. All the lives of St Jerome tell us a good deal about Eustochium (see, e.g. F. Cavallera, St Jerome, 1922), and she also figures prominently in F. Lagrange’s delightful Histoire de Ste Paule (1868).

People clamour for stories about the irascible Saint Jerome, and Saint Eustochium's story converges with his. St. Jerome was obviously well-loved by the matrons of Rome, though he did have a biting tongue. His counsel to St. Eustochium: "Set before your eyes the blessed Virgin Mary, whose purity was such that she earned the reward of being the mother of the Lord."

Saint Paula's life was such a powerful witness that she inspired her own daughter Eustochium, who was born in Rome c. 368, to sainthood. Eustochium was single for the Lord-- she consecrated herself to a life of virginity, having learned austerity from her widowed mother and St. Marcella.
The home of the widow Saint Marcella became a sort of monastery/school for the ladies, who devoted themselves to intense, scientific study of the Scriptures on their own. These patrician women of the capital city--SS Paula, Eustochium, Blaesilla, Marcella and her ward Principia, Marcellina (sister of St. Ambrose), Fabiola, Asella, and Lea (all saints)--encouraged one another to strive for Christian perfection. Living just prior to the fall of Rome, they did not wait until disaster forced the ascetic life upon them; they saw that luxury is out of place in a Christian.

When young, sarcastic Jerome arrived in Rome in 382, Marcella prevailed upon him to teach their group Hebrew and exegesis. And he did. Eustochium was given spiritual guidance and scriptural instruction by St. Jerome between 382-385 during his stay in Rome. Eustochium's sister St. Blaesilla threw herself so vehemently into the ascetic life that she died in 384. Paula was almost crazy with grief, but Jerome rebuked her and promised to glorify Blaesilla by writing about her. The group was very close urging each other on to sanctity. In fact, St. Paulina (Eustochium's other sister) married one of Jerome's school friends. When Paulina's children were stillborn and she died young, her husband became a monk.

When Jerome left Rome, St. Paula and her daughter Eustochium followed and joined St. Jerome at Antioch, Egypt, and Bethlehem.
Paula's fortune was added to what money Jerome possessed to found a monastery near Bethlehem. Jerome lived in a cave nearby 'to make sure (said Paula) that if Mary and Joseph came again to Bethlehem, there would be somewhere for them to stay.'
Three communities of women were founded close by St. Jerome's monastery, and Paula took charge of one of them. Eustochium took care of every material need, including the cooking. But Jerome relied on her for much more. He was busy translating the Bible into Latin. When his eyes began to fail, he would have been obliged to abandon the work, had not Eustochium and her mother been there to help him. He reckoned that they were better able to judge the value of his work than most men, and dedicated some of his writings to them.
When Paula died in 404, Eustochium (said Jerome) wished she could have been buried with her. But instead she took over the community abbey. She died in 418 or 419.
Eustochium's life is also documented by the many surviving letters and scriptural commentaries of St. Jerome, which are directed to Paula and Eustochium. Eustochium in her youth was the addressee of one of Jerome's most famous letter (Ep. 22)--a lengthy treatise on virginity. (In his letters to the women St. Jerome demonstrated true humanity and fatherly care.)
(Note: Since the universal Church celebrates St. Wenceslas, the martyr-king of Bohemia, on September 28 (died 929), St. Eustochium's feast is only celebrated locally.) Northern Italy: Land of Saints and Popes / Katherine I. Rabenstein / Created August 1997.

400 Silvius bishop; started a new church, which today forms the crypt of the Romanesque masterpiece, the Church of St. Sernin. The original site is now occupied by the 14th century Church of Our Lady of the Bull.

Bríxiæ sancti Silvíni Epíscopi. At Brescia, St. Silvinus, bishop.

Born 360
According to legend, the Église du Taur is built on the spot where St. Sernin (Occitan for Saturnine, from the Latin Saturninus) was detached from the bull that had dragged him to his death. Sernin was one of the seven "apostles to the Gauls" sent out by Pope Fabian (236 – 250 CE) and is credited with the establishment of churches in Eauze, Auch, Pamplona, and Amiens. According to the fanciful Acts of Saturninus, he often passed the pagan altars on his way to his church and the priests blamed him for the silence of their oracles. One day, after refusing to sacrifice to their gods, he was condemned to be dragged by a bull about town until dead.
After his death two Christian women remembered as "les Puelles"buried his corpse in a "deep ditch." More than a hundred years later, Sernin’s successor Hilary (bishop 358 - 360) erected a simple wooden oratory over this place in order to accommodate the pilgrims who visited the site.
The increasing popularity of the pilgrimage encouraged bishop Silvius (360 - 400) to build a larger church, finished by his successor Exuperius (400 - ?) in 402. The body of St. Sernin, which was said to emanate sweet and gentle odors, was then transferred to the new church, which today forms the crypt of the Romanesque masterpiece, the Church of St. Sernin. The original site is now occupied by the 14th century Church of Our Lady of the Bull. Legend states the church is built where the execution bull stopped, but some believe it is in fact a place previously dedicated to a pre-Christian sacred bull.

It is, after all, “Our Lady of the Bull,” and the street on which it sits—the rue du Taur—is the “Street of the Bull.”

412 ST EXSUPERIUS, BISHOP OF TOULOUSE; earning the thanks and commendation of St Jerome, who dedicated to him his commentary on Zacharias and wrote of him
“To relieve the hunger of the poor he suffers it himself. The paleness of his face shows the rigour of his fasts, but he is grieved by the hunger of others. He gives his all to the poor of Christ but rich is he who carries the Body of the Lord in an osier-basket and His Blood in a glass vessel. His charity knew no bounds, it sought for objects in the most distant parts, and the solitaries of Egypt felt its beneficial effects.” At home as well as abroad there was ample scope for his benefactions, for in his time Gaul was overrun by the Vandals.
Tolósæ sancti Exsupérii, Epíscopi et Confessóris; qui beátus vir quantum sibi parcus exstíterit quantúmque áliis largus, sanctus Hierónymus relátu prosecútus est memorábili.
At Toulouse, St. Exuperius, bishop and confessor. St. Jerome gives a memorable testimony of this blessed man, relating how severe he was towards himself and how liberal towards others.

HE was probably born at Arreau in the High Pyrenees, where a chapel dedicated in his honour is a place of pilgrimage, and succeeded to the see of Toulouse on the death of St Silvius about the year 405. He completed the great church of St Saturninus (Sernin), begun by his predecessor. Generosity seems to have been the outstanding characteristic of this bishop. He sent gifts so far away as to the monks of Egypt and Palestine, thereby earning the thanks and commendation of St Jerome, who dedicated to him his commentary on Zacharias and wrote of him
“To relieve the hunger of the poor he suffers it himself. The paleness of his face shows the rigour of his fasts, but he is grieved by the hunger of others. He gives his all to the poor of Christ but rich is he who carries the Body of the Lord in an osier-basket and His Blood in a glass vessel. His charity knew no bounds, it sought for objects in the most distant parts, and the solitaries of Egypt felt its beneficial effects.” At home as well as abroad there was ample scope for his benefactions, for in his time Gaul was overrun by the Vandals.
St Exsuperius wrote to Pope St Innocent I for instruction on several matters of discipline and enquiring about the canon of Holy Scripture. In reply the pope sent him a list of the authentic books of the Bible as they were then received at Rome, and that list was the same as today, including the deuterocanonical books. The place and year of the death of Exsuperius are not known, but he seems to have suffered exile before the end. St Paulinus of Nola referred to him as one of the most illustrious bishops of the Church in Gaul, and by the middle of the sixth century he was held in equal honour with St Saturninus in the church of Toulouse.

It seems curious that St Exsuperius, whose fame had reached Rome and Palestine, finds no place in the Hieronymianum. What has been recorded concerning him is gathered up in the Acta Sanctorum, September, vol. vii and there is a very full notice in DTC., vol. v, cc. 2022—2037. See also Duchesne, Fastes Épiscopaux, vol. i, p. 307 .

490 St. Faustus Bishop of Riez, France from 459, a very influential opponent of the Arian and Pelagian heresies
References are often made to Faustus of Rica as a chief exponent and defender of what is now called Semi-Pelagianism but it is more often forgotten he was a holy man whose name appears in several martyrologies and that his feast is observed in several churches of southern France.
He was born in the early years of the fifth century, his contemporaries St Avitus and St Sidonius Apollinaris say in Britain, hut more likely in Brittany. He is said to have begun fife as a barrister, but can hardly have gone far in that profession because he became a monk of Lerins before the founder of that house, St Honoratus, had left it in 426. He was ordained to the priesthood, and after seven or eight uneventful years in the monastery he was elected abbot after St Maximus, who was promoted to the see of Riez. He was greatly respected by St Honoratus and St Sidonius, who says that his monastic observance and regularity were worthy of the fathers of the desert, and he had a great gift of extempore preaching Sidonius relates in a lettep how he shouted himself hoarse at the sermons of Faustus. Applause—and dissent—in church was not uncommon in those, and other, days.
As he had followed St Maximus as abbot, so Faustus followed him as bishop, going to Rica after he had governed Ldrins for about twenty-five years. In hispanegyric on his predecessor, Faustus exclaimed Lérins has sent two successive bishops to Riez. Ofthe first she is proud; for the second she blushes.” She had no need to blush. Faustus was as good a bishop as he had been an abbot, and encouraged the opening of new monasteries throughout his diocese. He continued his former mortified life, adding thereto the manifold duties of the episcopate and an apostolic concern for the purity of the faith, opposing himself vigorously to Arianism and the errors of him whom he called that pestiferous teacher Pelagius
A certain priest called Lucidus having been preaching the heretical doctrine which denies that God has a true will to save all men, asserting that salvation or damnation depends on His will alone, irrespective of the action of man’s free will and his consequent merits or demerits, two synods met at Aries and Lyons in 475 to deal with him. St Faustus induced Lucidus to retract his errors, and the bishops asked him to write a treatise against this predestinarian teaching, as erroneous, blasphemous, heathen, fatalistic and conducive to immorality “. Faustus complied with two treatises on free will and grace in which he refuted as well Pelagianism as Predestinarianism. In these he had occasion to deal with certain views of St Augustine, and in so doing himself propounded the semi-Pelagian error that, though grace is necessary for the accomplishment of good works, it is not necessary for their initiation.

St Faustus erred in good faith and in the holy company of St John Cassian, but, though he was vehemently attacked directly his books appeared, their errors were not finally condemned until the Council of Orange in 529. But his theological activity raised up for him an enemy of a cruder sort, in another quarter. Euric, King of the Arian Visigoths, who seems to have received a certain political support from Faustus, was in occupation of a large part of southern Gaul and was offended by the attacks of Faustus on Arianism. He was therefore driven from his see about 478 and had perforce to live in exile until the death of Euric some years later. He then returned and continued to direct his flock until his death at about the age of ninety. His memory was greatly revered by his people, who built a basilica in his honour. St Faustus was among the principal of the writers for whom the abbey of Lehrins was famous, and some of his letters, discourses and other works are yet extant.

The life and activities of Faustus of Riez occupy sixty pages of the Acta Sanctorum, September, vol. vii. There is also a monograph by A. Koch, Der hl Faustus von Riez (1895). The edition of the works of Faustus prepared for the Vienna Corpus Scriptorum by A. Engelbrecht has met with somewhat damaging criticism from Dom G. Morin in the Revue Bénedictine, vol. ix (1899), pp. 49—61, and vol. X (1893), pp. 62—78. See further F. Wörter, Zur Dogmengeschichte des Semipelagianismus (1899), pp. 47 seq., and DTC., vol. v, cc. 2101—2105.

He was born in Brittany, France, and was possibly a lawyer by training. He served as abbot of Lerins and then was made bishop in 452. Faustus was revered as a Christian writer.
He was driven into exile by the Visigoth King Euric, returning to Riez when Euric died.

630 St. Conwall disciple of St. Kentigern in Scotland also called Conval. He was a priest who preached and worked in Scotland.

658 St. Annemund martyred Bishop friend of St. Wilfrid of York

638 ST ANNEMUND, BJSHOP OF LYONS

ANNEMUND gives the name Saint-Chamond to a town near Vienne and is principally remembered as the friend and patron of St Wilfrid of York when he was a young man. He belonged to a Gallo-Roman family, his father being prefect at Lyons. Annemund was trained in the court of Dagobert I and was an adviser of Clovis II. A few years after he was appointed to the see of Lyons there came to his episcopal city St Benedict Biscop, on his way to Rome for the first time, accompanied by St Wilfrid of York, who was then about twenty years old. Benedict hastened on towards Rome but Wilfrid lingered at Lyons, whose prelate, says St Bede, "was pleased with the youth's wise conversation, the grace of his appearance, his eager manner, and the maturity of his,thoughts. He therefore supplied Wilfrid and his friends with all they required so long as they stayed with him." Annemund even offered to adopt the young Englishman, to give him his niece to wife, and a post of honour for his maintenance. Wilfrid thanked him for his great kindness to a stranger, and explained that he was determined to serve God in the clerical state and was for that very reason travelling to Rome. Whereupon St Annemund made provision for the rest of his journey, and pressed him to come back through Lyons when he returned to England. This Wilfrid did and stayed three years with the archbishop, by whom he was tonsured. He might have stayed on indefinitely and with very important results, for Annemund is said to have had thoughts of Wilfrid as his successor, but for the untimely and tragic death of the archbishop. On September 28, 658, in the disturbances that followed the death of Clovis II, he was slain by soldiers at Macon. Wilfrid was present and offered to die with him, but when the executioners heard that he was a foreigner and an Englishman they let him go. Eddius, the biographer of St Wilfrid, lays the assassination of St Annemund (and of nine other French bishops) at the door of the queen-regent, St Bathildis, and his statement has been copied by St Bede. But it is improbable that she was guilty of this crime (cf her notice under January 30). St Wilfrid helped to bury the body of St Annemund at Lyons, where he was at once venerated as a martyr, and departed to his own country. Eddius calls St Annemund Dalfinus, which was perhaps a surname, or a confusion with his brother, and St Bede refers to him by this name.

A brief passio of St Annemund is printed in the Acta Sanctorum, September, vol. vii, with the usual prolegomena; but the principal authorities are Eddius and Bede. See Plummer's edition of the latter and his notes; and MGH., Scriptores Merov., vol. vi, pp. 197 Seq.

Called Delphinus by Bede and Chamond or Annemundus. The son of a prefect in Lyons, Gaul, Annemund was raised in the count of King Dagobert I. When Clovis II succeeded to the throne, Annemund served as his councilor. Named the bishop of Lyons, Annemund befriended St. Wufrid of York. When Clovis died, Annemund was slain in the political upheaval of his time. He died on September 28, 658.

7th century 690 St. Willigod & Martin Benedictine founding abbots
They established the monastery of Romont, France, and served as abbot in succession to each other. They were both dedicated to the monastic ideals of scholarship and spiritual perfection.

772 St. Tetta Benedictine abbess supporter of the missionary effort of St. Boniface in Germany, dispatching nuns to assist in the evangelization
She governed the convent of Wimborne in Dorsetshire, England, and she was a supporter of the missionary effort of St. Boniface in Germany, dispatching nuns to assist in the evangelization.

782 saint Lioba an Anglo-Saxon nun who was part of Boniface's mission to the Germans; credited with quelling a storm with her command; Several miracles were attributed to her gravesite
Schorneshémii, prope Mogúntiam, sanctæ Líobæ Vírginis, miráculis claræ.
At Fulda near Mayence, St. Lioba, virgin, renowned for miracle
Also Leoba and Leofgyth born .

780 ST LIOBA, VIRGIN
THE active participation of nuns and religious sisters in the work of the foreign missions has so greatly developed and extended in our own time that we have come to regard it as a modern innovation altogether. It is, of course, nothing of the sort and, allowing for a certain difference of method consequent on the development of “unenclosed active congregations”, we find just the same sort of thing happening during the evangelization of barbarians in Europe during the dark ages. An outstanding example is the request of St Boniface that took SS. Lioba, Thecla, Walburga and others from their quiet abbey at Wimborne to the wilds of heathen Germany. Lioba was of a good Wessex family, and Ebba, her mother, was related to St Boniface. Lioba was placed while young in the monastery of Wimborne in Dorsetshire, under the care of the abbess St Tetta. The girl had been baptized Truthgeba but came to be called Liobgetha (Leofgyth), abbreviated to Lioba, “the dear one”, a name which was fitting to one so precious in the eyes of God and man and which has been used of her ever since. When she came to the requisite age Lioba elected to remain in the monastery, wherein she was duly professed and made progress in virtue and knowledge. Her innocence and single-mindedness were an example even to her seniors, and reading and books were her delight.
In the year 722 St Boniface was consecrated bishop by Pope St Gregory II and sent to preach the gospel in Saxony, Thuringia and Hesse. He was a native of Crediton, not very far from Wimborne, and when accounts of his labours and successes reached the nuns there his young relative Lioba made bold to write to him, in the following terms;

To the most reverend Boniface, bearer of the highest dignity and well beloved in Christ, Liobgetha, to whom he is related by blood, the least of Christ's handmaids, sends greetings for eternal salvation. I beg you of your kindness to remember your early friendship in the west country with my father, Dynne, who died eight years ago and from whose soul, therefore, I ask you not to withhold your prayers. I also commend to your memory my mother Ebba, who still lives, but painfully; she is, as you know, related to you. I am the only child of my parents and, unworthy though I be, I should like to look on you as my brother, for I can trust you more than anyone else of my kinsfolk. I send you this little gift [the letter itself?] not because it is worth your consideration but simply so that you may have something to remind you of my humble self, and so not forget me when you are so far away; may it draw tighter the bond of true love between us for ever. I beseech you, dear brother, help me with your prayers against the attacks of the hidden enemy. I would ask you, too, if you would be so good as to correct this unlearned letter and not to refuse to send me a few kind words, which I eagerly look forward to as a token of your good will. I have tried to compose the subscribed lines according to the rules of verse, as an exercise for my poor skill in poetry, wherein also I have need of your guidance. I have learned this art from my mistress Edburga, who is ever in mind of God's holy law.

Farewell! May you live long and happily, and pray for me always.

Arbiter omnipotens, solus qui cuncta creavit
in regno Patris semper qui lumine fulget
qua iugiter flagrans, sic regnat gloria Christi,
illaesum servet semper te iure perenni.
(May the almighty Maker of the world,
Shining for ever in the heavenly realm

Where Christ in glory reigns for endless days,

Keep you in safety with sustained care.)

St Boniface was not unmoved by so touching an appeal, and entered into a correspondence of which the upshot was that in 748 he asked St Tetta that St Lioba might be sent to him with certain companions, in order to settle some monasteries as centres of religion for women in the infant church of Germany. Tetta accordingly sent out some thirty nuns, including SS. Lioba, Thecla and Walburga, who joined St Boniface at Mainz. He settled St Lioba and her little colony in a monastery which he gave her, and which was called Bischofsheim, that is, Bishop's House, which suggests that he may have given up his own residence to the nuns. Under Lioba's care this nunnery became in a short time very numerous, and out of it she peopled other houses which she founded in Germany.
Rudolf, a monk of Fulda, who within sixty years of St Lioba's death wrote an account of her from the testimonies of four of her nuns, says that nearly all the convents of that part of Germany asked for a nun trained at Bischofsheim to guide them. The saint herself was so wrapped up in her work that she seemed to have forgotten Wessex and her own folk. Her beauty was remarkable; she had a face “like an angel”, always pleasant and smiling, but rarely laughing outright. No one ever saw her in a bad temper or heard her speak an uncharitable word, and her patience and intelligence were as large as her kindness. We are told that her cup was a “little one”, and its small size witnessed to her own abstemiousness in a community which kept to St Benedict's provision of two meals a day. All the nuns engaged in manual work, whether in bakehouse, brewhouse, household duties or otherwise, and at the same time had what today would be called “higher education”; all had to know Latin, and their scriptorium was kept busy. St Lioba would allow no imprudent austerities, such as deprivation of sleep, and insisted on the observance of the midday rest prescribed by the rule. She herself spent this hour lying down, while one of the novices read to her from the Bible, and if it appeared that Mother Abbess had gone to sleep and the reader became careless, she would soon find herself corrected for a mispronunciation or a false quantity. Afterwards Lioba would devote two hours to private talk with any of the sisters who wished to see her. All this activity subserved the main business of public prayer and worship of Almighty God, and the spiritual support of the missionary monks who worked in the land around them. A letter is extant from St Boniface to the “reverend and most dear sisters Lioba, Thecla, Cynehild, and those who dwell with them”, asking for the continuance of their prayers. St Lioba's fame was widespread; her neighbours came to her in peril of fire and tempest and sickness, and men of affairs in church and state asked her counsel.

St Boniface, before his mission into Friesland in 754, took a moving farewell of Lioba and recommended her to St Lull, a monk of Malmesbury and his episcopal successor, and to his monks at Fulda, entreating them to care for her with respect and honour, and declaring it his desire that after her death she should be buried with him, that their bodies might wait the resurrection and be raised together in glory to meet the Lord and be for ever united in the kingdom of His love. After St Boniface's martyrdom she made frequent visits to his tomb at the abbey of Fulda, and she was allowed by a special privilege to enter the abbey and assist at divine service and conferences, after which she went back to her own nunnery. When she was grown very old, and had been abbess at Bischofsheim for twenty-eight years; she settled all the nunneries under her care and, resigning their government, came to reside at the convent of Schönersheirn, four miles from Mainz. Her friend Bd Hildegard, Charlemagne's queen, invited her so earnestly to the court at Aachen that she could not refuse to go, but had to insist on being allowed to return to her solitude. Taking leave of the queen, embracing and kissing her, she said, “Farewell, precious part of my soul! May Christ our Creator and Redeemer grant that we may see each other without confusion of face in the day of judgement, for in this life we shall never more see each other.” And so it was. For St Lioba died a very short while after and was buried in the abbey-church of Fulda, not in the tomb of St Boniface, for the monks feared to disturb his relics, but on the north side of the high altar. She is named in the Roman Martyrology, and her feast is kept at several places in Germany, but, rather surprisingly, nowhere in England.

There is a biography, said to have been compiled by Rudolf, a monk of Fulda, before 838, which has been printed by Mabillon and the Bollandists (September, vol. vii); and, as pointed out above, a good deal of reliable information comes to us through the correspondence of St Boniface and of St Lull. This has been edited in modern times by Jaffe, and still more recently in MGH., first by Dümmler and again by Tangl. See also H. Timerding, Die christliche Friihzeit Deutschlands, vol. ii, Die angelsächsische Mission (1929); L. Eckenstein, Woman under Monasticism, ch. iv ; and W. Levison, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (1946). Rudolf's' Life of Lioba is translated in C. H. Talbot's Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany (1954).

Born 710 Leofgyth in Wessex to a noble family. Her mother was related to Boniface, and Boniface a friend of her father's. She entered Wimborne Minster as an oblate and corresponded with Boniface. Four lines of Latin verse in imitation of Aldhelm survive from a letter she wrote to Boniface, where she reminds him of her connection to him. Apparently, she was seeking even then to be part of Boniface's upcoming missionary work, because he invited her, along with other Anglo-Saxon nuns, to come to Germany. Her acta derives largely from Rudolf of Fulda, who indicates that she arrived in Germany around 748 (likely some time before).
Boniface established a convent in the Franconian town Tauberbischofsheim, where she became abbess. Boniface, whose relationship to her could be as near as that of uncle, entrusted Leoba with a great deal of authority, and Rudolf of Fulda indicates that she was not merely in charge of her own house, but all of the nuns who worked for Boniface. In 754, when Boniface was preparing a missionary trip to Frisia, where he would suffer martyrdom, he gave his monastic cowl to Leoba to indicate that, when he was away, she was his delegate.

She was a learned woman, and in the following years she was involved in the foundation of nunneries in Kitzingen and Ochsenfurt. She had a leading role in evangelizing her area, and, during her life, she was credited with quelling a storm with her command. Additionally, bishops in Fulda consulted with her, and she was the only woman allowed to enter into monasteries in Fulda to consult with the ecclesiastical leaders on issues of monastic rule. She was also favored in the court of Pippin III, and Hildegard, wife of Charlemagne, was her friend.

In her later years, she retired with a few other Anglo-Saxon nuns to an estate near Mainz in Schornsheim. The estate was given by Charlemagne for her exclusive use. She died on September 28 in 782. Boniface's will had originally designated that Leoba was to be buried in his own tomb. However, when Leoba died, she was, instead, placed near him, but not in the same grave. Several miracles were attributed to her gravesite, and she was canonized. Her relics were translated twice and are now behind an altar in a church dedicated to Mary and the virgins of Christ in Petersburg in Fulda. Rudolf of Fulda was commissioned to write the acta of her life in connection with this second translation of relics.

919 Solomon III (Bishop of Constance) Emperor Charles III made him archchancellor of the Empire, (Konstanz then greatest Swabia diocese Charles' original kingdom and still home). As well as bishop, he was also abbot of Reichenau and Saint Gall, immensely powerful abbeys in Swabia and the Rhineland. Solomon founded a church in honour of Saint Magnus at Saint Gall. Solomon was a warlike prelate, originally ally of both King Louis the Child and Count Palatine Erchanger in wars for Swabian dukeship against Burchards.

Génuæ sancti Salomónis, Epíscopi et Confessóris. At Genoa, St. Solomon, bishop and confessor.

Solomon III was Bishop of Constance from 890 to his death. In 885, the Emperor Charles III made him archchancellor of the Empire, for Konstanz was then the greatest diocese in Swabia, which had been Charles' original kingdom and was still his home most of the time. As well as bishop, he was also abbot of Reichenau and Saint Gall, immensely powerful abbeys in Swabia and the Rhineland. Solomon founded a church in honour of Saint Magnus at Saint Gall.
Solomon was a warlike prelate, originally an ally of both King Louis the Child and Count Palatine Erchanger in the wars for the Swabian dukeship against the Burchards. He was influential in the execution of Burchard I in 911, but he left his alliance with Erchanger when the latter allied with King Conrad I. Erchanger even imprisoned Solomon in 914. Conrad, however, supported the bishop and freed him.

929 St. Wenceslaus martyred patron saint of Bohemia Miracles reported at his tomb
Apud Bolesláviam véterem, in Bohémia, sancti Wenceslái, Ducis Bohemórum et Mártyris, sanctitáte et miráculis gloriósi, qui, dolo fratris sui necátus, victor pervénit ad palmam.
In Bohemia, St. Wenceslas, duke of Bohemia and martyr, renowned for holiness and miracles. Being murdered by the deceit of his brother, he went triumphantly to heaven.

After repenting of his sin, the murderer transferred the relics of St Wenceslaus to Prague, where they were placed in the church of St Vitus, which the martyr himself had constructed (the transfer of the relics of St Wenceslaus is celebrated on March 4). The memory of Prince Wenceslaus has been honored from of old in the Russian Orthodox Church.

ST WENCESLAUS of BOHEMIA, MARTYR

THE baptism of the ruler of Bohemia, Borivoy, and his wife St Ludmila was not by any means followed by the conversion of all their subjects, and many of the powerful Czech families were strongly opposed to the new religion. From the year 915 Duke Borivoy’s son Ratislav governed the whole country. He married a nominally Christian woman, Drahomira, daughter of the chief of the Veletians, a Slav tribe from the north, and they had two sons, Wenceslaus (Vaclav), born in 907 near Prague, and Boleslaus. St Ludmila, who was still living, arranged that the upbringing of the elder might be entrusted to her, and she undertook with the utmost care to form his heart to the love of God.
Ludmila joined with herself in this task a priest, her chaplain Paul, who had been a personal disciple of St Methodius and had baptized Wenceslaus; under his tuition the boy, by the time he was ready to go to the “ college “ at Budech, “understood Latin as if he were a bishop and read Slavonic with ease “, while the example of both the priest and his good grandmother had grounded him equally well in virtue. He was still young when his father was killed fighting against the Magyars, and his mother Drahomira assumed the government, pursuing an anti-Christian or "secularist" policy. In so doing she was probably acting chiefly at the instigation of the semi-pagan elements in the nobility, and these encouraged her jealousy of St Ludmila’s influence over her son, and represented him as being more suitable for a cloister than for a throne.
St Ludmila, afflicted at the public disorders and full of concern for the interest of religion, which she and her consort had established with so much difficulty, showed Wenceslaus the necessity of taking the reins of government into his own hands. Fearing what might happen, two nobles went to Ludmila’s castle at Tetin and there strangled her, so that, deprived of her support, Wenceslaus should not undertake the government of his people. But it turned out otherwise other interests drove Drahomira out, and proclaimed Wenceslaus. He straightway announced that he would support God’s law and His Church, punish murder severely, and endeavour to rule with justice and mercy. His mother had been banished to Budech, so he recalled her to the court, and there is no evidence that for the future she ever opposed Wenceslaus.

At a meeting of rulers presided over by the German king, Henry I the Fowler, St Wenceslaus arrived late and kept everybody waiting. Some of the princes took offence and the king, saying he was probably at his prayers, suggested that no one should greet him when he did arrive. Nevertheless, Henry himself, who really respected his devotion, received him with honour, and at the end bade him ask whatever he pleased, and it should be granted him. The saint asked an arm of the body of St Vitus, and to shelter it he began the building of a church at Prague, where now stands the cathedral.

The political policy of St Wenceslaus was to cultivate frieadly relations with Germany, and he preserved the unity of his country by acknowledging King Henry I as his over-lord, ahout the year 926, seeing in him the legitimate successor of Charlemagne. This policy, and the severity with which he checked oppression and other disorders in the nobility, raised a party against him, especially among those who resented the influence of the clergy in the counsels of Wenceslaus. Then, when the young duke married and had a son, his jealous brother Boleslaus lost his chance of the succession, and he threw in his lot with the malcontents.

In September 929 Wenceslaus was invited by Boleslaus to go to Start Boleslav to celebrate the feast of its patron saints Cosmas and Damian. On the evening of the festival, after the celebrations were over, Wenceslaus was warned he was in danger. He refused to take any notice. He proposed to the assembly in the hall a toast in honour of ”St Michael, whom we pray to guide us to peace and eternal joy”, said his prayers, and went to bed. Early the next morning, as Wenceslaus made his way to Mass, he met Boleslaus and stopped to thank him for his hospitality. “Yesterday”, was the reply, “I did my best to serve you fittingly, but this must be my service to-day”, and he struck him. The brothers closed and struggled whereupon friends of Boleslaus ran up and killed Wenceslaus, who murmured as he fell at the chapel door, “Brother, may God forgive you”.

At once the young prince was acclaimed by the people as a martyr (though it seems that his murder was only very indirectly on account of religion), and at least by the year 984 his feast was being observed. Boleslaus, frightened at the reputation of many miracles wrought at his brother’s tomb, caused the body to he translated to the church of St Vitus at Prague three years after his death. The shrine became a place of pilgrimage, and at the beginning of the eleventh century St Wenceslaus, Svaty Vaclav, was already regarded as the patron saint of the Bohemian people and as the patron of modern Czechoslovakia devotion to him has sometimes been very highly charged with nationalist feeling. It must not be inferred from the existence of a vernacular Christmas carol that there was formerly a widespread popular devotion to this saint in England the words of “Good King Wenceslaus” were written by the nineteenth-century hymn-writer J. M. Neale to fit a thirteenth-century air (“Tempus adest floridum”).

<>In a contribution to the Analecta Bollandiana, vol. xlviii (1930), pp. 218—221, Fr Paul Peeters reviews the more outstanding features of the literature produced in Czechoslovakia, and mostly written in the Czech language, to do honour to the millenary of St Wenceslaus, celebrated in 1929. It is unfortunate, as he points out, that a good deal of this literature was coloured by racial and political prepossessions. The slight, but judicious, life of St Wenceslaus, by F. Dvornik (1929), appeared both in French and in English as well as in Czech. The German biography by A. Naegle, Der hl. Wenzel, der Landespatron Bohmens (1928), is representative of a point of view which is somewhat adverse to that of Dvornik, with whose estimate of the authenticity of the Life of Wenceslaus by the monk Christian not all scholars are in agreement. Wenceslaus has a specially long notice in the Bollandist commentary on the Mart. Rom. (1940), pp. 421—422. See also Acta Sanctorum, September, vol. vii J. Pekar, Die Wenzels und Ludmila Legenden und die Echtheit Christians (1906); DHG., t. ix, cc. 426—427 and F. Dvornik, The Making of Central and Eastern, Europe (1949), pp. 25—30 and passim. Benedict XIV’s commission recommended the removal of this feast from the general calendar. Cf. St Ludmila, Sept. ,6.

September 28, 2009 St. Wenceslaus (907?-929)

If saints have been falsely characterized as “otherworldly,” the life of Wenceslaus stands as an example to the contrary: He stood for Christian values in the midst of the political intrigues which characterized 10th-century Bohemia.

He was born in 907 near Prague, son of the Duke of Bohemia. His saintly grandmother, Ludmilla, raised him and sought to promote him as ruler of Bohemia in place of his mother, who favored the anti-Christian factions. Ludmilla was eventually murdered, but rival Christian forces were victorious, and Wenceslaus was able to assume leadership of the government.

His rule was marked by efforts toward unification within Bohemia, support of the Church and peace-making negotiations with Germany, a policy which caused him trouble with the anti-Christian opposition. His brother Boleslav joined in the plotting, and in September of 929 invited Wenceslaus to Alt Bunglou for the celebration of the feast of Sts. Cosmas and Damian. On the way to Mass, B oleslav attacked his brother, and in the struggle, Wenceslaus was killed by supporters of Boleslav.

Although his death resulted primarily from political upheaval, Wenceslaus was hailed as a martyr for the faith, and his tomb became a pilgrimage shrine. He is hailed as the patron of the Bohemian people and of former Czechoslovakia.

Comment: “Good King Wenceslaus” was able to incarnate his Christianity in a world filled with political unrest. While we are often victims of violence of a different sort, we can easily identify with his struggle to bring harmony to society. The call to become involved in social change and in political activity is addressed to Christians; the values of the gospel are sorely needed today.

Quote: “While recognizing the autonomy of the reality of politics, Christians who are invited to take up political activity should try to make their choices consistent with the gospel and, in the framework of a legitimate plurality, to give both personal and collective witness to the seriousness of their faith by effective and disinterested service of men” (Pope Paul VI, A Call to Action, 46).

Benedict XVI's Homily on Feast of St. Wenceslaus “In Our Day, Is Holiness Still Relevant?”

STARA BOLESLAV, Czech Republic, SEPT. 28, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Here is the text of the homily Benedict XVI gave today, memorial of St. Wenceslaus, on the final day of his visit to the Czech Republic.
Dear Cardinals,
My Brother Bishops and Priests,
Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Dear Young People,

It gives me great joy to be with you this morning, as my apostolic visit to the beloved Czech Republic draws to a close, and I offer all of you my heartfelt greeting, especially the Cardinal Archbishop, to whom I am grateful for the words that he addressed to me in your name at the start of Mass. My greeting goes also to the other Cardinals, the Bishops, the priests and consecrated persons, the representatives of lay movements and associations, and especially the young people. I respectfully greet the President of the Republic, to whom I offer cordial good wishes on the occasion of his name-day; and I gladly extend these wishes to all who bear the name of Wenceslaus and to the entire Czech people on the day of this national feast.

This morning, we are gathered around the altar for the glorious commemoration of the martyr Saint Wenceslaus, whose relics I was able to venerate before Mass in the Basilica dedicated to him. He shed his blood in your land, and his eagle, which - as the Cardinal Archbishop has just mentioned - you chose as a symbol for this visit, constitutes the historical emblem of the noble Czech nation. This great saint, whom you are pleased to call the "eternal" Prince of the Czechs, invites us always to follow Christ faithfully, he invites us to be holy. He himself is a model of holiness for all people, especially the leaders of communities and peoples. Yet we ask ourselves: in our day, is holiness still relevant? Or is it now considered unattractive and unimportant? Do we not place more value today on worldly success and glory? Yet how long does earthly success last, and what value does it have?

The last century - as this land of yours can bear witness - saw the fall of a number of powerful figures who had apparently risen to almost unattainable heights. Suddenly they found themselves stripped of their power. Those who denied and continue to deny God, and in consequence have no respect for man, appear to have a comfortable life and to be materially successful. Yet one need only scratch the surface to realize how sad and unfulfilled these people are. Only those who maintain in their hearts a holy "fear of God" can also put their trust in man and spend their lives building a more just and fraternal world. Today there is a need for believers with credibility, who are ready to spread in every area of society the Christian principles and ideals by which their action is inspired. This is holiness, the universal vocation of all the baptized, which motivates people to carry out their duty with fidelity and courage, looking not to their own selfish interests but to the common good, seeking God's will at every moment.

In the Gospel we heard Jesus speaking clearly on this subject: "What will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life?" (Mt 16:26). In this way we are led to consider that the true value of human life is measured not merely in terms of material goods and transient interests, because it is not material goods that quench the profound thirst for meaning and happiness in the heart of every person. This is why Jesus does not hesitate to propose to his disciples the "narrow" path of holiness: "whoever loses his life for my sake will find it" (16:25). And he resolutely repeats to us this morning: "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (16:24). Without doubt, this is hard language, difficult to accept and put into practice, but the testimony of the saints assures us that it is possible for all who trust and entrust themselves to Christ. Their example encourages those who call themselves Christian to be credible, that is, consistent with the principles and the faith that they profess. It is not enough to appear good and honest: one must truly be so. And the good and honest person is one who does not obscure God's light with his own ego, does not put himself forward, but allows God to shine through.

This is the lesson we can learn from Saint Wenceslaus, who had the courage to prefer the kingdom of heaven to the enticement of worldly power. His gaze never moved away from Jesus Christ, who suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should follow in his steps, as Saint Peter writes in the second reading that we just heard. As an obedient disciple of the Lord, the young prince Wenceslaus remained faithful to the Gospel teachings he had learned from his saintly grandmother, the martyr Ludmila. In observing these, even before committing himself to build peaceful relations within his lands and with neighbouring countries, he took steps to spread the Christian faith, summoning priests and building churches. In the first Old Slavonic "narration", we read that "he assisted God's ministers and he also adorned many churches" and that "he was benevolent to the poor, clothed the naked, gave food to the hungry, welcomed pilgrims, just as the Gospel enjoins. He did not allow injustice to be done to widows, he loved all people, whether poor or rich". He learned from the Lord to be "merciful and gracious" (Responsorial Psalm), and animated by the Gospel spirit he was even able to pardon his brother who tried to kill him. Rightly, then, you invoke him as the "heir" of your nation, and in a well-known song, you ask him not to let it perish.

Wenceslaus died as a martyr for Christ. It is interesting to note that, by killing him, his brother Boleslaus succeeded in taking possession of the throne of Prague, but the crown placed on the heads of his successors did not bear his name. Rather, it bears the name of Wenceslaus, as a testimony that "the throne of the king who judges the poor in truth will remain firm for ever" (cf. today's Office of Readings). This fact is judged as a miraculous intervention by God, who does not abandon his faithful: "the conquered innocent defeated the cruel conqueror just as Christ did on the cross" (cf. The Legend of Saint Wenceslaus), and the blood of the martyr did not cry out for hatred or revenge, but rather for pardon and peace.

Dear brothers and sisters, together let us give thanks to the Lord in this Eucharist for giving this saintly ruler to your country and to the Church. Let us also pray that, like him, we too may walk along the path of holiness. It is certainly difficult, since faith is always exposed to multiple challenges, but when we allow ourselves to be drawn towards God who is Truth, the path becomes decisive, because we experience the power of his love. May the intercession of Saint Wenceslaus and of the other patron saints of the Czech Lands obtain this grace for us. May we always be protected and assisted by Mary, Queen of Peace and Mother of Love. Amen!
St. Wenceslaus (903-29), also known by Vaclav, was born near Prague, and was the son of Duke Wratislaw. He was taught Christianity by his grandmother, St. Ludmila. The Magyars, along with Drahomira, an anti-Christian faction murdered the Duke and St. Lumila, and took over the government. Wenceslaus was declared the new ruler after a coup in 922. He encouraged Christianity. Boleslaus, his brother, no longer successor to the throne, after Wenceslaus' son was born, joined a group of noble Czech dissenters. They invited Wenceslaus to a religious festival, trapped and killed him on the way to Mass. On September 28, 919, a group of knights under the leadership of Wenceslaus' brother Boreslav assassinated the saint on the doorstep of a church. Virtually from the moment of his death, Wenceslaus was considered a martyr and venerated as a saint. Miracles were reported at his tomb, and his remains were translated to the church of St. Vitus in Prague which became a major pilgrimage site. The feast has been celebrated at least since 985 in Bohemia, and he is best known from the Christmas carol "Good King Wenceslaus." He is the patron saint of Bohemia
"While recognizing the autonomy of the reality of politics, Christians who are invited to take up political activity should try to make their choices consistent with the gospel and, in the framework of a legitimate plurality, to give both personal and collective witness to the seriousness of their faith by effective and disinterested service of men" (Pope Paul VI, A Call to Action, 46).

935 St. Wenceslaus (Also Vaclav, Vaceslav.) Duke, martyr, and patron of Bohemia, born probably 903; died at Alt-Bunzlau, 28 September, 935.
His parents were Duke Wratislaw, a Christian, and Dragomir, a heathen. He received a good Christian education from his grandmother (St. Ludmilla) and at Budweis. After the death of Wratislaw, Dragomir, acting as regent, opposed Christianity, and Wenceslaus, being urged by the people, took the reins of government. He placed his duchy under the protection of Germany, introduced German priests, and favoured the Latin rite instead of the old Slavic, which had gone into disuse in many places for want of priests. Wenceslaus had taken the vow of virginity and was known for his virtues. The Emperor Otto I conferred on him the regal dignity and title. For religious and national motives, and at the instigation of Dragomir, Wenceslaus was murdered by his brother Boleslaw. The body, hacked to pieces, was buried at the place of murder, but three years later Boleslaw, having repented of his deed, ordered its translation to the Church of St. Vitus in Prague. The gathering of his relics is noted in the calendars on 27 June, their translation on 4 March; his feast is celebrated on 28 September.

St. Machan Scottish bishop; saint educated in Ireland. Machan was ordained as a bishop in Rome.
Details of his labors are not available.

1102 St. Thiemo Benedictine bishop; martyr at Ascalon (modern Israel); Journeying to Palestine to aid crusading movement, he was captured by Muslims and murdered for refusing to abjure the faith.
also cal led Theodinarus. A member of the family of the counts of Meglin, Bavaria, Germany, he entered the Benedictines at Niederltaich and soon acquired fame for his skill as a painter, metalworker, and sculptor. He was elected abbot of St. Peter's, Salzburg, in 1077 and appointed archbishop of Salzburg, Austria, in 1090. His office brought him into conflict with the German King Henry IV (r. 1056-1106) during the Investiture Controversy and, as Thiemo sided with Pope St. Gregory VII (r.1073-1085) in the struggle, Henry exiled him. Journeying to Palestine to aid the crusading movement, he was captured by the Muslims and imprisoned at Ascalon (modern Israel). Tortured for a long time, he was finally killed for refusing to abjure the faith.

1337 Saint Cyril and his wife Maria parents of St Sergius of Radonezh (September 25). They belonged to nobility, more importantly, they were pious and faithful Christians who were adorned with every virtue. St Cyril moved his family from Rostov to Radonezh when Bartholomew was a boy. Sts Cyril and Maria asked him to wait and take care of them until they passed away. The young Bartholomew obeyed his parents, and did everything he could to please them. They later decided to retire to separate monasteries, and departed to the Lord after a few years. It is believed both Sts Cyril and Maria reposed in 1337.

When the child in Maria's womb cried out three times in church during Liturgy, people were astonished. Although frightened at first, Maria came to see this event as a sign from God that her child would become a chosen vessel of divine grace. She and her husband agreed that if the child was a boy, they would bring him to church and dedicate him to God. This child, the second of their three sons, was born around 1314. He was named Bartholomew at his baptism.

Because of civil strife, St Cyril moved his family from Rostov to Radonezh when Bartholomew was still a boy. Later, when their son expressed a desire to enter the monastic life, Sts Cyril and Maria asked him to wait and take care of them until they passed away, because his brothers Stephen and Peter were both married and had their own family responsibilities. The young Bartholomew obeyed his parents, and did everything he could to please them. They later decided to retire to separate monasteries, and departed to the Lord after a few years. It is believed that Sts Cyril and Maria both reposed in 1337.

Forty days after burying his parents, Bartholomew settled their estate, giving his share to his brother Peter. He then went to the monastery when he was twenty-three years old, and was tonsured on October 7 with the name Sergius (in honor of the martyr St Sergius who is commemorated on that day). As everyone knows, St Sergius of Radonezh became one of Russia's greatest and most revered saints.

St Cyril was glorified by the Orthodox Church of Russia in 1992. He is also commemorated on January 18, and on July 6 (Synaxis of the Saints of Radonezh).

1484 BD JOHN OF DUKLA by his preaching and example brought back many to the Church from among the Ruthenians and from the Hussite and other sects;
Among the many Poles in the Franciscan Order who adopted the stricter constitutions of the Observant friars in consequence of the preaching of St John of Capistrano was this John, who was born at Dukla in the year 1414. For long he lived the life almost of a recluse, but after being appointed guardian of the friary at Lwow he gave himself to apostolic activity, and by his preaching and example brought back many to the Church from among the Ruthenians and from the Hussite and other sects; neither old age nor blindness could curb his zeal. He died on September 29, 1484, and the devotion of his people was answered with miracles; in 1739 Pope Clement XII approved his cultus as a principal patron of Poland and Lithuania.

A tolerably full account of Bd John is given by Dr Kamil Kantak in the Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, vol. xxii (1929), pp. 434—437. Writing with a thorough knowledge of Polish sources, he complains of the scantiness of historical material. The facts he cites are drawn from the chronicle of John Komorowski, which was edited by Liske and Lorkiewicz in vol. v of their Monumenta Polomiae Historica (1888), see especially pp. 246-249. See also Leon, Auréole Séraphique (Eng. trans.), vol. ii, pp. 507—509 .

1494 Blessed Bernardine of Feltre; Franciscan priest missionary labors throughout the larger cities of Italy; “Prayer”, he said, “is a better preparation than study: it is both more efficacious and quicker.”
Born Feltre, Italy, 1439; died Pavia, Italy, 1494. Joining the Franciscans in 1456, he was ordained a priest, 1463, taught in Franciscan schools, and began his missionary labors throughout the larger cities of Italy. He was superior of the province of Venice, 1483-1484. He is best known as the reorganizer of the charitable lending-houses, called montes pietatis. Emblem: a green hill of three mounds, with a cross on each. Relics at Pavia. Feast, Order of Friars Minor, 28 September.

1494 BD BERNARDINO OF FELTRE

THE fifteenth century in Italy was a period of incessant warfare and internal disorder; not the defence of a united nation against aggression, but the outcome of commercial rivalry and political disputes between neighbouring states, the quarrels of princes carried on to a great extent by hired mercenaries, who cared nothing for the goodness or badness of their cause and who would always rather plunder than fight, and fight than work honestly. The people of the peninsula were at the mercy of tyrants and demagogues, demoralized by fighting and political uncertainty, weakened by the refinement of the Renaissance, divided by factions and parties whose differences penetrated into the Church and enfeebled her influence; faith tended to degenerate into superstition, and morality became more and more corrupt. Of the saints whom this state of things did not fail to bring forth to cope with it, many were members of the Franciscan order in one or other of its branches, and foremost among them Bd Bernardino Tomitani, called “of Feltre”<>, preacher and practical economist. His coming had been foretold by another Bernardino, of Siena, who, preaching at Perugia, had said “After me will come another Bernardino, dressed in this same habit, who will do great things. Many, I know, will not listen to him, but do you believe his words and conform to his teaching.”

He was born in 1439, at Feltre in Venezia of the noble family of Tomitani (though some have claimed for him a more humble origin at Tome), the eldest of ten children, and received at baptism the name of Martin. Martin was the studious one of the family. When he was twelve he could write Latin verse, and his mother had to force him to play games for the good of his health; and he cut off his luxuriant hair, saying he would rather use a pen than a comb. In 1454 his father got him admitted into the local college of notaries, and after two years sent him to the University of Padua where he plunged ardently into the study of philosophy and law, and began that acquaintance with the fashionable thought of his time which was afterwards valuable to him as a preacher. The sudden death of two of his professors at Padua had a profound effect on the young student, and soon after he came under the influence of the Franciscan St James of the March, who preached the Lent at Padua in 1456. In May of the same year Martin was clothed as a novice among the Friars Minor of the Observance, and took the name of Bernardino, after him of Siena who had just been canonized. “We have to-day”, said St James, “enrolled in the militia of Jesus Christ a soldier who will shed a lustre over our order and contribute mightily to the glory of God and the confusion of Satan.” Among the delights and interests which he cut himself off from was music. “Above all”, he wrote, “music is not suitable for those consecrated to God. Those chants which please the hearers by the harmony of the voices are not pleasing to the Lord. I should not wish to listen to a Kyrie in {figured} music, but I gladly hear it sung in plain chant. In all our monasteries of the Observance [figured] music is forbidden we regard it as scandalous to do anything like a concerted piece.” Friar Bernardino was ordained priest in 1463, and for six more years continued quietly in study and prayer.

Hitherto Friar Bernardino had done no public preaching, and when in 1469 a chapter at Venice appointed him a preacher he was much troubled. He was nervous, lacked confidence in himself, and seemed physically ill-equipped, for he was very short in stature. This was sufficiently noticeable to earn him the nickname of Parvulus from Pope Innocent VIII, and he used to sign himself “piccolino e poverello.”
He therefore consulted his director, Sixtus of Milan, pointing out his lack of experience, his ignorance, his disabilities. Sixtus bade him kneel down, and signing him on the lips with the cross said, “God will take away all hindrance from your tongue to show you that the gift of preaching is from Him alone. Do not fear, my son you will learn more from your crucifix than from books.”
Bernardino felt no more doubt or hesitation; God had spoken through the holy friar Sixtus. Nevertheless when he first went into the pulpit before a large congregation at Mantua on the feast of his patron, he was seized with panic; he forgot everything, what he wanted to say, how he wanted to say it, all his carefully prepared points and periods. But he remembered his love and admiration for the virtues of St Bernardino of Siena, and he spoke of those, spontaneously, easily and compellingly. He never again tried to preach a sermon prepared in detail, but trusted to his heart made virtuous by prayer. “Prayer”, he said, “is a better preparation than study: it is both more efficacious and quicker.”

Bd Bernardino preached up and down Italy for twenty-five years. Crowds acclaimed him; the wise and holy, popes, bishops, other great preachers praised him; the wicked raged against him all proclaimed his power. Churches were too small to hold the crowds who wanted to hear him. At Florence and Pavia his congregations covered the main square, and all could hear; at Padua and Feltre people from afar booked up all the lodgings throughout his stay; three thousand people followed him through the night from Crema that they might hear him again the next day at Lodi. It has been estimated that Bd Bernardino preached over three thousand six hundred times, but only some 120 of his sermons are extant.*{* Bd Bernardino has often been credited with the authorship of Anima Christi, but this prayer was written at least ninety years before he was born.}

From these it can be judged that he spoke simply, with liveliness, and without any oratorical flourishes. He even eschewed quotations in Latin, because, as he said,

“Ostentation never does any good. A sermon of which the thread is often broken by quotations does not ‘get across‘, it moves nobody.”

Bernardino was sent to minister to a society that was in great part selfish, proud and depraved; he opposed to its vices charity, humility and austerity. He never forgot he was a Friar Minor: he washed the feet of visitors when he was at home, refused the hospitality of the rich, and lodged in lowly places when abroad. But a good example alone is not always enough; he had to inveigh plainly and often against the evils he saw around him. “When he attacks vice”, wrote Jerome of Ravenna, “he does not speak—he thunders and lightens.” Twice this slightly-built little man broke a blood-vessel in fury of his denunciation of public scandals. “He has a heavy hand and he does not know how to flatter”, said Cardinal d’Agria.

Naturally he made enemies for himself, and several attempts were made on his life, but he pursued his way unperturbed. He got the disorders of carnival time controlled and public gambling establishments suppressed in several cities the races at Brescia on the feast of the Assumption were abolished because of their abuses; in many places vicious images and books were destroyed by the public authorities; and, of course, he had continually to attack the extravagances of female dress.
Like St Bernardino of Siena before him and Savonarola contemporaneously he finished each mission by having a public bonfire of cards, dice, obscene books and pictures, useless finery, false hair, superstitious philtres, badges of factions, and other vanities. This he called the “burning of the Devil’s stronghold”, and it was designed not so much to be a practical removal of occasions of sin as to be a gesture forcibly to strike the imagination of the public. At his appeal civil authorities enacted or repealed laws. Men and women were separated in the public goals the Married Women’s Property Act was anticipated and husbands were prevented from wasting the goods of their wives; the senates of Venice and Vicenza ceased to grant immunity to transgressors who should bring the heads of outlawed relatives.

Bd Bernardino was no respecter of persons when it was a question of the moral law.
He reproved the prince of Mantua, a liberal patron of the Friars Minor, for not restraining the rapacity and oppression of his courtiers. He preached at Milan in defiance of the duke, Galeazzo Visconti; he denounced the Oddi and the Baglioni, heads of the factions in Perugia and when Ferdinand I of Naples ordered him to come from Aquila to answer before the courts, Bernardino refused to give an account of his words unless commanded by his own superiors.

The wiser princes trusted and admired him, and when it served their purpose made use of his services as a peacemaker.
At Brescia, at Narni, at Faenza and other places he healed public strife and brought tranquility for a time, and Pope Innocent VIII sent him on a mission of pacification into Umbria. But the feuds of one town defied all his efforts. Three times, in 1484, in 1488, and again in 1493, the year before he died, he went to Perugia to try and compose its dissensions; and each time he failed. As a contribution towards making peace lasting he encouraged the formation of associations of tertiaries, who were under obligation not to take up arms.

Unlike many lesser preachers and moralists in his time Bd Bernardino did not allow his personal successes and consciousness of ecclesiastical abuses to lead him into an independent attitude towards the church authorities. When the Holy See offered him faculties to absolve from sins reserved to the bishops, he replied “The bishops are the ordinary shepherds of the clergy and the people, and I would rather depend on them in all those circumstances where the law of the Church requires it.”

From time to time we hear much of the hardships which the Jews suffered at the hands of Christians in the middle ages, and it cannot be denied that monstrous injustices were perpetrated against them. On the other hand the problem of how to deal with the “anti-social” activities of some Jews was a real one, and most inadequately met by the device of so far as possible isolating them from the life of their Christian surroundings. Bd Bernardino of Feltre was, throughout his career, in conflict with Jews, not as Jews but as the cause and occasion of some of the worst of the abuses which it was his business to combat. He spoke of them at Crema thus “Jews must not be harmed either in their persons or their property or in any way whatever. Justice and charity must be extended to them, for they are of the same nature as ourselves. I say this everywhere and I repeat it here at Crema in order that it may be acted upon, because good order, the sovereign pontiffs, and Christian charity alike require it. But it is not less true that canon law expressly forbids too frequent dealings, too great familiarity with them.” “To-day no one has any scruples in this matter, and I cannot be silent about it. Jewish usurers exceed all bounds; they ruin the poor and get fat at their expense. I, who live on alms and myself eat the bread of poverty, cannot be a dumb dog before such outrageous injustice. The poor feed me and I cannot hold my tongue when I see them robbed. Dogs bark to protect their masters, and I must bark in the cause of Christ.” The lending of money at usury, with huge rates of interest, to which Bernardino refers above, was the chief (but not the only) complaint against Jews, who had thus succeeded in making themselves hated by the poor and necessary to the rich.*[* Jews were not the only offenders. There were, for example, also the Lombard bankers and the Caorcini (from Cahors in France?). Bd Bernardino was a child of his age and believed the charges brought against the Jews of Trent in 1475 in respect of Little St Simon. See an account of him herein under March 24.]

A century earlier a bishop of London, Michael of Northborough, had left a thousand silver marks to he lent to the needy without interest, on the security of deposited articles, and among several experiments of the sort this was the first true mons pietatis.+ [+ Monte di pieta, mont-de-piete. Literally a “heap of money of piety”, mons signifying an accumulation of wealth, capital, and pietatis that it was not a commercial concern; but the meaning “pity, compassion” is also involved.]
- In 1462 the Franciscan Barnabas of Terni founded at Perugia a “pawnshop” which should make small loans to the poor upon pledged objects at a low rate of interest. It was immediately successful, and in the following year another was established, at Orvieto, and the institution soon spread to the Marches, the Papal States, Tuscany and elsewhere. The scheme was taken up, organized, and perfected by Bd Bernardino. In 1484 he opened a mons pietatis at Mantua (it soon succumbed to the hostility of usurers), and was responsible for twenty more during the following eight years. The details of the organization varied, but they were generally administered by mixed committees of friars and laymen representative of different trades, and some were municipally controlled. The initial capital fund was obtained in part from voluntary subscriptions and in part by loans from the Jews themselves; all profits were added to capital and applied to the reduction of rates of interest. It was natural that Bernardino should be fiercely attacked by the Jews and Lombards, who succeeded in getting some of his montes pietatis closed; but a more serious and no less inevitable opposition came from some canonists and moral theologians who insisted that the interest charged was usurious within the meaning of Canon law and therefore sinful. They wished the loans to be free. This would have meant that the montes could not be self-supporting, and Bd Bernardino stood firmly for the charging of small interest. The controversy was fierce and was never settled in his time. But the fifth General Council of the Lateran decreed in 1515 that montes pietatis were lawful and worthy of all encouragement, and thereafter they became common throughout western Europe, except in the British Islel. His struggle for these institutions is the work for which Bd Bernardino of Feltre is best remembered, and he is often represented in art with a little green hilt of three mounds, each surmounted by a cross, with the legend Curam illius babe: a more pleasing and good-omened device than the three bezants borrowed by English pawnbrokers from the arms of Lonibardy—though this was the badge of Savonarola’s inonspietatis at Florence.

Bd Bernardino worked up to the last.
Early in 1494 he told the Florentines he would never see them again, and when he arrived in Siena he heard a report of his own death. “I’m always dying, if one can believe all one hears”, he observed. “But the day will come, and come soon, when it will be true.”
He welcomed Cardinal Francis Piccolomini (afterwards Pope Pius III), who wished to be his penitent: “We are both of us little men (‘piccolomini)”, was his remark to his Eminence. At the end of August he dragged himself to Pavia to preach and warned the city that he could hear the French shoeing their horses for the invasion of Italy”—which within a few months King Charles VIII did. Bernardino did not live to see it; he died at Pavia September 28 following. His cultus was approved in 1728.

Materials for the life of this holy. Franciscan arc fairly abundant, as Father Suyskens pointed out nearly two centuries ago in the long notice of one hundred folio pages accorded to him in the Acta Sanctorum, September, vol. vii. The most complete modern biography seemato be that of L. Besse, Le bx Bernardin de Feltre et son oeuvre, in 2 volumes (1902). But even here an important manuscript source seems to have been but little used, to wit, the journal of Father Francis of Feltre, who for twelve years acted as the great preacher’s secretary (see the Analecta Bollandiana, vol. xxii, 1903, pp. 118-119). Other documents have since been brought to light, for example, a number of letters concerning Fra Bernardino’s preaching in Reggio (Emilia), which are now printed in the Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, vol. xix (1926), pp. 226—246. A conveniently brief account of Bd Bernardino is that of E. Elornoy in the series “Les Saints” (1897). See also Leon, Auréole Séraphique (Eng. trans.), vol. iii, pp. 243—266; and Italian lives by A. Pellin (1938) and F. Casolini (1939).

1457 BD LAURENCE OF RIPAFRATTA “The most persuasive tongue becomes silent in death, but your heavenly pictures will go on speaking of religion and virtue throughout the ages.” “How many souls have been snatched from Hell by his words and example and led from depravity to a high perfection; how many enemies he reconciled and what disagreements he adjusted; to how many scandals did he put an end. I weep also for my own loss, for never again shall I receive those tender letters wherewith he used to stir up my fervour in the duties of this pastoral office.” His tomb was the scene of many miracles, and in 1851 Pope Pius IX confirmed his cultus.
THE so-called Great Schism of the West, during which the papacy underwent a “Babylonian captivity” at Avignon, was inevitably a time of great trial and difficulty for all Catholic institutions, and among them the Order of Preachers went through a period of relaxation of its earlier fervour. In Italy and other places this was aggravated by outbreaks of plague which depopulated the houses of the order, but there also God raised up Bd Raymund of Capua to lead a movement of reform. Among those who supported him was Bd John Dominici, Archbishop of Ragusa, who discovered the abilities and virtues of Friar Laurence of Ripafratta. He had entered the order at Pisa when he was already a deacon, and after studying and preaching tor some years he was appointed master of novices in the priory of Cortona. It was an office for which Bd Laurence was peculiarly well qualified. He was a champion of rigorous observance but understood how properly to make use of the adaptability of the constitutions of his order; and he knew that if once the hearts of his novices were fired with the love of God respect for and obedience to the least provisions of their rule would follow. Among those who made their novitiate under his direction were St Antoninus, Fra Angelico, and his supposed brother, Benedict of Mugello. Laurence encouraged these last two to paint, seeing that preaching may be done as well by pictures as by word of mouth, and in one respect more advantageously: “The most persuasive tongue becomes silent in death, but your heavenly pictures will go on speaking of religion and virtue throughout the ages.”
For his biblical knowledge Bd Laurence was, like St Antony of Padua, called the “Ark of the Testament”, and he used his learning in preaching up and down Etruria with much effect. When he was made vicar general of the priories that had taken up the reform he went to live at Pistoia, where almost at once there was a sharp outbreak of plague. Laurence immediately turned from his administrative duties to give himself to the service of the sufferers, and, as always, many who were deaf to the appeals of the preacher were moved to penitence by the example of priests moving fearlessly among the infected to minister to their souls and bodies. After the death of Bd Laurence at an advanced age St Antoninus wrote to the Dominicans of Pistoia, condoling them on their loss and eulogizing the memory of their leader. “How many souls have been snatched from Hell by his words and example and led from depravity to a high perfection; how many enemies he reconciled and what disagreements he adjusted; to how many scandals did he put an end. I weep also for my own loss, for never again shall I receive those tender letters wherewith he used to stir up my fervour in the duties of this pastoral office.” His tomb was the scene of many miracles, and in 1851 Pope Pius IX confirmed his cultus.

See V. Marchese. Cenni storici del b. Lorenzo di Ripafratta (1851); a short life by M. de Waresquiel (1907); and Procter, Dominican Saints, pp. 38-41.

1465 Saint Euthymius; settled on the eastern shore of Lake Kuben near the mouth of the River Kushta. The saint built a small cell in the impenetrable swamps and dense woods, where he struggled in total solitude; St Euthymius did not refuse the local people his spiritual counsel and guidance
Euthymius and his disciple St Chariton lived at the River Syanzhema during the close of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries. St Euthymius came to the Spasokamensk monastery from the outskirts of Volokolamsk. For a long time he continued as a novice at the monastery, but later he settled on the eastern shore of Lake Kuben near the mouth of the River Kushta.

The saint built a small cell in the impenetrable swamps and dense woods, where he struggled in total solitude. After a while, St Alexander of Kushta (June 9) came to him. He also had set out from the Spasokamensk monastery and at first settled at the River Syanzhema. St Alexander entreated St Euthymius to switch cells with him, since he was seeking a place of complete quiet.

Moving over to the River Syanzhema, St Euthymius did not refuse the local people his spiritual counsel and guidance. And there St Chariton also came to him.

St Euthymius built a church in honor of the Ascension of Christ and founded a monastery next to it. At Rostov, under the holy Archbishop Dionysius (1418-1425), he received the permission to build. Evidently, he was also ordained to the holy priesthood, and was made igumen of the monastery he established.

Both monks were an example to the brethren in prayer, and in the works of construction and supervision. They made do with food and clothing that even the brethren regarded as worthless. In church, St Euthymius stood in fear and trembling, and the brethren often saw tears of tenderness upon his face. While working at handicrafts, the saint always sang Psalms. St Euthymius died around the year 1465, though the actual day of his death is unknown.

His successor as igumen was his beloved disciple St Chariton. For more than forty years he continued the work at the monastery, and he died in old age on April 11, 1509. Both monks were buried at the Ascension church.

The memory of St Euthymius is celebrated also on January 20, and that of St Chariton on September 28, when their patron saints are commemorated.

1507 BD FRANCIS OF CALDEROLA a great missioner, with an unwearying zeal for the reform of sinners

THE feast of this beato is kept by the Friars Minor and the Capuchins. He was born at Calderola in the Italian diocese of Camerino and became a Friar Minor of the Observance of the province of the Marches. Bd Francis was a great missioner, with an unwearying zeal for the reform of sinners and he was known for the long hours he spent hearing confessions. He had an especial gift, both natural and supernatural, for the reconciling of enemies and the settlement of disputes. He was active with Bd Bernardino of Feltre in the establishment of charitable pawnshops. Francis died at the friary of Colfano on September 12, 1507, and the cultus that at once manifested itself was confirmed by Pope Gregory XVI.

There is a short account of Rd Francis of Calderola in the Acta Sanctorum, October, vol. xi, though no contemporary life was available. Such chroniclers as Mark of Lisbon, Chroniche, lib. viii, cap. z6, and Mazzara, Leggendario Francescano, Pt 2, Vol. (1679) p. 440, devote a paragraph or two to this beato. See also Leon, Auréole Séraphique (Eng. trans.), vol. iii, pp. 421—422; H. Holzapfel, Die Anfange Der Montes Pietatis (1903); and a popular account in Italian by G. Stacchiotti (1937).

1541 Saint Herodion of Elias Lake and Novgorod; miracle worked from the relics; disciple of St Cornelius of Komel (May 19, 1537). After the death of his mentor, he settled at Elias Lake, 20 kilometers from White Lake, and there on a peninsula he built himself a cell and established a church in honor of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos, marking the beginning of the Elias Lake Ozadsk monastery. The monk was strict at fasting, he spent the nights at prayer and he received the Holy Mysteries every Saturday. An angel told the monk of his approaching end. He died as a schemamonk on September 28, 1541 and was buried in the chapel he had built.

The first icon of St Herodion was painted after his appearance to a certain Sophonios. Sophonios impiously thrust his staff into the grave of St Herodion and was struck blind, but after praying to the saint, he recovered his sight.

A short Life of St Herodion was written by Archimandrite Metrophanes of White Lake monastery, who in 1653, with the blessing of Metropolitan (afterwards Patriarch) Nikon, witnessed a miracle worked from the relics of St Herodion. Then an annual commemoration of the saint was established. At the place of the chapel of St Herodion a church was built in honor of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos together with a chapel dedicated to St Herodion of Elias Lake.

1624 BD SIMON DE ROJAS: Rojas exercised a strong influence in the royal entourage and contributed much to the high standard of religion and morality maintained therein

FROM being an exemplary friar of the Trinitarian order, BD Simon was called to the court of Philip III, King of Spain. Here he was chosen to be confessor to kings' wife, Isabella of Bourbon. When an epidemic of plague broke out at Madrid BD Simon prepared to go to the help of the sufferers, but the king forbade him, fearing that infection might be brought to the court. “Sick-beds are more fitting places for me than royal palaces”, replied the friar, “and if I must give up one I will give up the court.” Like BD Alphonsus de Orozco, another chaplain, Simon de Rojas exercised a strong influence in the royal entourage and contributed much to the high standard of religion and morality maintained therein. He was a great missionary, founded a confraternity of the Ave Maria, and wrote an office for the feast of the Holy Name of Mary, to which his order had a special devotion. Bd Simon died ten days after the then date of this feast in 1624, and was beatified in 1766.

Several references to the beatification process of this friar occur in the great work of Benedict XIV, De...beatificatione, bk ii. When Bd Simon was beatified there was published in Rome a Compendio della Vita del B. Simone de Roxas (1767). See also P. Deslandres, L’Ordre des Trinitaires (i9o3), vol. i, p. 658, etc.

1630 Bl. Thomas Kufioji Japanese martyr
An Augustinian tertiary, he was beheaded at Nagasaki. Thomas was beatified in 1867.

1630 Bl. Michael Kinoshi Martyr of Japan; for sheltering Catholic missionaries.
beheaded at Nagasaki for sheltering Catholic missionaries. Michael, who was beatified in 1867, was an Augustinian tertiary.

1630 St. John Kokumbuko Martyr of Japan Augustinian tertiary
A catechist, he was arrested and beheaded at Nagasaki, receiving beatification in 1867.

1630 St. Lawrence Ruiz Martyr in Japan Philipino
with Michael Aozaraza, Anthony Gonzales, William Cowtet, Vincent Shiwozuka, and Lazarus. Lawrence was born in Manila, the Philippines. He and his companions were tortured and slain on Okinawa. They were beatified by John Paul II in 1981 and canonized in 1987.

1630 Bl. Lawrence Shizu Martyr of Japan native Augustinian tertiary; for sheltering priests
he was arrested for sheltering priests and was beheaded at Nagasaki, Japan. Lawrence was beatified in 1867.

1630 Bl. Peter Kufioji Martyr in Japan native Japanese; for giving aid and shelter to Augustinian missionaries.
he joined the Augustinians as a tertiary. At the time of the persecution of Christians by the Japanese government, he was arrested and beheaded at Nagasaki for giving aid and shelter to Augustinian missionaries.

1637 St. Lorenzo Ruiz first Filipino saint & martyred in Japan; Layman; he told his executioner that he was "ready to die for God and give himself for many thousands of lives if he had them!"
Lorenzo Ruiz is the first Filipino saint. He is also the first Filipino martyred for the Christian Faith. Lorenzo Ruiz was a layman, married, and had two sons and a daughter. Born in Binondo, Manila, about 1600's, he was educated in the school of the Dominicans there. He served as an altar boy and later was a helper and clerk-sacristan in the church of Binondo. He was a member of the Confraternity of the Rosary. He made his living probably as a calligrapher, one who renders documents in beautiful penmanship for private or official use. To be sure, that work denoted an accomplished and educated person, especially at a time when many an illustrious personage were far from excelling in this art. An adverse event made him leave the Philippines in 1636. When he was in his late twenties or early thirties, he became involved or was accused of being involved in a criminal case, the circumstances of which are far from clear. Whether he was involved or not, one thing was clear, he was afraid that, as a consequence of a trial or mistrial, he might be given a death sentence. Upon landing in Japan where Christians were being persecuted, he was arrested and imprisoned together with his companions. He underwent inhuman tortures and valiantly confessed his Christian Faith. Refusing to renounce his Faith, he told his executioner that he was ready to die for God and give himself for many thousands of lives if he had them. On September 27, 1637, he was hung from a gallows by his feet, his body falling into a pit. After two days of agony, he died of bleeding and suffocation. His body was cremated and the ashes thrown into the sea. He and fifteen companions, martyred in the same persecution, were beatified by Pope John Paul II in Manila on February 18, 1981 and elevated to full honors of the altar by canonization on October 18, 1987 in Rome.

1670 The Synaxis of Monastic Fathers who are venerated in the Near Caves of St Anthony, is now celebrated on September 28. This general commemoration was originally on the first Saturday after the Leave-taking of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross (i.e. after September 21). The general commemoration of the monastic Fathers of the Near Caves of St Anthony on the Saturday after the Leave-taking of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Venerable Cross dates to the year 1670. During the restoration of the Caves, which had been damaged by an earthquake, some of the relics of the ancient ascetics were uncovered and a church was built in honor of the Exaltation of the Venerable Cross.

In 1760 a stone church in honor of the Exaltation of the Venerable Cross was built over the Caves. In 1886, under Metropolitan Platon of Kiev, the Synaxis of the Fathers of the Near Caves was moved to September 28 because of the celebration of the Synaxis of the Saints of the Far Caves on August 28 .

There are two Canons to the Monastic Fathers of the Near Caves. The first was compiled by the hieromonk Meletius the Orphan (inscribed in the Kiev Akathistnik of 1764). The second, found in the services in honor of the Fathers of the Kiev Caves, was compiled by St Demetrius of Rostov.

Among the Monastic Fathers of the Near Caves are:

Monk Anthony the First-Founder (July 10) Monk Abramius the Lover of Labor (August 21) Monk Abramius the Recluse (October 29) Monk Agapitus, Unmercenary Physician (June 1) Monk Alexis the Recluse (April 24) Monk Alypius the Iconographer (August 17) Martyr Anastasius the Deacon (January 22) Monk Anatolius the Recluse (July 3) Monk Arethas the Recluse (October 24) Monk Athanasius the Recluse (December 2) Igumen Barlaam (November 19) Hosiomartyrs Basil and Theodore (August 11) Hieromonk Damian the Healer (October 5) Monk Elias of Murom (December 19) Bishop Ephraim of Pereyaslavl (January 28) Monk Erasmus the Black-Robed (February 24) Martyr Eustratius (March 28) Monk Gregory the Iconographer (August 8) Martyr Gregory the Wonderworker (January 8) Monk Helladius the Recluse (October 4) Monk Isaac the Recluse (February 14) Monk Isaiah the Wonderworker (May 15) Monk Jeremiah the Clairvoyant (October 5) Monk John the Faster (December 7) John the God-pleasing (December 29) Martyr John the Infant (December 29) (commemorated with the 14,000 Infants killed at Bethlehem by Herod) Monk John the Long-Suffering (July 18) Nun Juliana, Princess of Olshansk (July 6) Hieromartyr Kuksha, Enlightener of the Vyati (August 27) Bishop Laurence the Recluse of Turov (January 29) Monk Luke the Steward (November 6) Monk Macarius (January 19) Monk Mark the Grave-digger (December 29) Monk Matthew the Clairvoyant (October 5) Bishop Mercurius of Smolensk (August 7) Martyr Moses the Hungarian (July 26) Monk Nectarius the Obedient (November 29) Monk Nestor the Chronicler (October 27) Monk Nicholas Svyatosha, Prince of Chernigov (October 14) Monk Nicodemus the Prosphora-baker (October 31) Igumen Nikon (March 23) Monk Nikon the Shriveled (December 11) Bishop Niphon of Novgorod (April 8) Monk Onesimus the Recluse (October 4 and July 21) Monk Onesiphorus the Confessor (November 9) Monk Onuphrius the Silent (July 21) Monk Pimen the Faster (August 27) Monk Pimen the Much-Ailing (August 7) Archmandrite Polycarp (July 24) Monk Prochorus the Orach-eater (February 10) Monk Sava the God-pleasing (April 24) Monk Sergius the Obedient (October 7) Monk Simon, Bishop of Suzdal (May 10) Monk Sisoes the Recluse (October 24) Monk Spyridon the Prosphora-baker (October 31) Monk Sylvester the Wonderworker (January 2) Monk Theophanes the Faster (October 11) Monks Theophilus the Mourner (December 29) Monk Theophilus the Recluse (October 24) Hieromonk Titus (February 27) Twelve Master Architects of Constantinople who painted the monastery church of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos (February 14)

Besides these Saints, there are thirty other Saints among the monks of the Kiev Caves, whose myrrh-producing heads were preserved. In the Service to the Monastic Fathers of the Near Caves on September 28 St Ephraim the Priest is mentioned (Ode 9). The hieromonk Athanasius Kalpophyisky wrote in 1638, that his incorrupt body, clothed in priestly vestments, lay opposite the relics of St Elias of Murom. Hieromonk Athanasius also mentions St Eustathius, (Ode 8), who was a goldsmith before he came to the monastery.

In the Canon of Meletius the Orphan, St Dionysius, Archbishop of Suzdal (June 26 and also October 15) is also mentioned. The holy hierarch was detained by the Lithuanian prince at Kiev after his consecration as Metropolitan of Moscow by the Patriarch of Constantinople. He died on October 15, 1384 and was buried in the Antoniev Cave.

Besides the monks mentioned in the Services, the hieromonk Athanasius Kalpophyisky in his Manuscript of 1638 indicated even more Saints, whose uncovered relics they venerated: St Hieronymos, Recluse and Wonderworker; St Meladius, holy Elder and Wonderworker; St Pergius, holy Elder; St Paul, a monk of remarkable obedience.

The names of the priests St Meletius, St Serapion, St Philaretos, St Peter are preserved in the old manuscript Calendars.

On May 24,1853, in one of the branches of the Near Caves, an inscription was discovered on an eleventh century crypt: "Lord, preserve Thy servants Theodosius and Theophilus. Many Years." "The Grave of the Cave-Dweller John. Here John the sinner lived and is now." On an oak board: "John the Cave-Dweller." Thus the names of the new Kiev Caves Fathers: Theophilus, Theodosius and John were revealed.

There is also a general commemoration of the Monks of the Near Caves together with the Monks of the Far Caves on the second Sunday of Great Lent, when the Synaxis of all the Monastic Fathers of Kiev Caves is celebrated. The Canon of the Hieromonk Meletius the Orphan enters into the Service of that feastday (the Service to the Kiev Caves Monastic Fathers, and to all the Saints who shone forth in Little Russia, inscribed from Akathists with a Canon). The service was printed by the Kiev Caves Dormition Lavra in 1866.

Without doubt, not all the names of the Fathers of the Kiev Caves are known. In the Synaxis, all the Fathers illumined by ascetic deeds in the Caves are glorified. In the Oikos of the Service of September 28 we sing: "Who can praise Your Saints, O Good One? I try to count their number, but they are multiplied more than the sands of the sea. O Master Christ, Who have numbered the stars and named them all, grant their petitions for us..."

To Save A Life is Earthly; To Save A Soul is Eternal

THE PSALTER OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY PSALM 78

My enemies have often troubled me from my youth up: deliver me, O Lady, and vindicate my cause from them.

Give them not power over my soul: keep my interior and my exterior.

Obtain for us pardon for our sins: let it be given to us by the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Make us do penance worthily and praiseworthily: that we may come to God by a blessed end.

Show us then with a gracious and serene countenance: the glorious fruit of thy womb.

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

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

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

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

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

There are over 10,000 named saints beati from history
and Roman Martyology Orthodox sources
Patron_Saints.html Widowed_Saints html Indulgences The Catholic Church in China
LINKS: Marian Shrines India Marian Shrine Lourdes of the East Lourdes 1858 China Marian shrines 1995
Kenya national Marian shrine Loreto, Italy Marian Apparitions (over 2000) Quang Tri Vietnam La Vang 1798
Links to Related MarianWebsites Angels and Archangels Saints Visions of Heaven and Hell
Widowed Saints html
Doctors_of_the_Church Acts_Of_The_Apostles Roman Catholic Popes Purgatory Uniates Chalcedon

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

The great psalm of the Passion, Chapter 22, whose first verse “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
Jesus pronounced on the cross, ended with the vision: “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord;
and all the families of the nations shall worship before him” For kingship belongs to the LORD, the ruler over the nations. All who sleep in the earth will bow low before God; All who have gone down into the dust will kneel in homage. And I will live for the LORD; my descendants will serve you. The generation to come will be told of the Lord, that they may proclaim to a people yet unborn the deliverance you have brought.

Pope Benedict XVI to The Catholic Church In China {whole article here} 2000 years of the Catholic Church in China
The saints “a cloud of witnesses over our head”, showing us life of Christian perfection is possible.

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Saint Frances Xavier Seelos Practical Guide to Holiness

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

My God, I believe, I adore, I trust and I love Thee. I beg pardon for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not

O most Holy trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly. I offer Thee the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the Tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifference by which He is offended, and by the infite merits of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I beg the conversion of poor sinners, Fatima Prayer, Angel of Peace

The voice of the Father is heard, the Son enters the water, and the Holy Spirit appears in the form of a dove.

THE spirit and example of the world imperceptibly instil the error into the minds of many that there is a kind of middle way of going to Heaven; and so, because the world does not live up to the gospel, they bring the gospel down to the level of the world. It is not by this example that we are to measure the Christian rule, but words and life of Christ. All His followers are commanded to labour to become perfect even as our heavenly Father is perfect, and to bear His image in our hearts that we may be His children. We are obliged by the gospel to die to ourselves by fighting self-love in our hearts, by the mastery of our passions, by taking on the spirit of our Lord.

These are the conditions under which Christ makes His promises and numbers us among His children, as is manifest from His words which the apostles have left us in their inspired writings. Here is no distinction made or foreseen between the apostles or clergy or religious and secular persons. The former, indeed, take upon themselves certain stricter obligations, as a means of accomplishing these ends more perfectly; but the law of holiness and of disengagement of the heart from the world is general and binds all the followers of Christ.

God loves variety. He doesn't mass-produce his saints. Every saint is unique each the result of a new idea.

As the liturgy says: Non est inventus similis illis--there are no two exactly alike.
It is we with our lack of imagination, who paint the same haloes on all the saints.
Dear Lord, grant us a spirit not bound by our own ideas and preferences.
Grant that we may be able to appreciate in others what we lack in ourselves.
O Lord, grant that we may understand that every saint must be a unique praise of Your glory.
Catholic saints are holy people and human people who lived extraordinary lives.

Each saint the Church honors responded to God's invitation to use his or her unique gifts.

The 15 Promises of the Virgin Mary to those who recite the Rosary ) Revealed to St. Dominic and Blessed Alan)

1. Whoever shall faithfully serve me by the recitation of the Rosary, shall receive signal graces. 2. I promise my special protection and the greatest graces to all those who shall recite the Rosary. 3. The Rosary shall be a powerful armor against hell, it will destroy vice, decrease sin, and defeat heresies. 4. It will cause virtue and good works to flourish; it will obtain for souls the abundant mercy of God; it will withdraw the hearts of people from the love of the world and its vanities, and will lift them to the desire of eternal things. Oh, that soul would sanctify them by this means. 5. The soul that recommends itself to me by the recitation of the Rosary shall not perish. 6. Whoever shall recite the Rosary devoutly, applying themselves to the consideration of its Sacred Mysteries shall never be conquered by misfortune. God will not chastise them in His justice, they shall not perish by an unprovided death; if they be just, they shall remain in the grace of God, and become worthy of eternal life. 7. Whoever shall have a true devotion for the Rosary shall not die without the Sacraments of the Church. 8. Those who are faithful to recite the Rosary shall have during their life and at their death the light of God and the plentitude of His graces; at the moment of death they shall participate in the merits of the Saints in Paradise. 9. I shall deliver from purgatory those who have been devoted to the Rosary. 10. The faithful children of the Rosary shall merit a high degree of glory in Heaven. 11. You shall obtain all you ask of me by the recitation of the Rosary. 12. I shall aid all those who propagate the Holy Rosary in their necessities. 13. I have obtained from my Divine Son that all the advocates of the Rosary shall have for intercessors the entire celestial court during their life and at the hour of death. 14. All who recite the Rosary are my children, and brothers and sisters of my only Son, Jesus Christ. 15. Devotion to my Rosary is a great sign of predestination.

His Holiness Aram I, current (2013) Catholicos of Cilicia of Armenians, whose See is located in Lebanese town of Antelias. The Catholicosate was founded in Sis, capital of Cilicia, in the year 1441 following the move of the Catholicosate of All Armenians back to its original See of Etchmiadzin in Armenia. The Catholicosate of Cilicia enjoyed local jurisdiction, though spiritually subject to the authority of Etchmiadzin. In 1921 the See was transferred to Aleppo in Syria, and in 1930 to Antelias.

Its jurisdiction currently extends to Syria, Cyprus, Iran and Greece.

Aramaic dialect of Edessa, now known as Syriac

The exact date of the introduction of Christianity into Edessa {Armenian Ourhaï in Arabic Er Roha, commonly Orfa or Urfa, its present name} is not known. It is certain, however, that the Christian community was at first made up from the Jewish population of the city. According to an ancient legend, King Abgar V, Ushana, was converted by Addai, who was one of the seventy-two disciples. In fact, however, the first King of Edessa to embrace the Christian Faith was Abgar IX (c. 206) becoming official kingdom religion.

Christian council held at Edessa early as 197 (Eusebius, Hist. Ecc7V,xxiii).

In 201 the city was devastated by a great flood, and the Christian church was destroyed (“Chronicon Edessenum”, ad. an. 201).

In 232 the relics of the Apostle St. Thomas were brought from India, on which occasion his Syriac Acts were written.

Under Roman domination martyrs suffered at Edessa: Sts. Scharbîl and Barsamya, under Decius; Sts. Gûrja, Schâmôna, Habib, and others under Diocletian.

In the meanwhile Christian priests from Edessa evangelized Eastern Mesopotamia and Persia, established the first Churches in the kingdom of the Sassanides. Atillâtiâ, Bishop of Edessa, assisted at the Council of Nicæa (325). The “Peregrinatio Silviæ” (or Etheriæ) (ed. Gamurrini, Rome, 1887, 62 sqq.) gives an account of the many sanctuaries at Edessa about 388.

Although Hebrew had been the language of the ancient Israelite kingdom, after their return from Exile the Jews turned more and more to Aramaic, using it for parts of the books of Ezra and Daniel in the Bible. By the time of Jesus, Aramaic was the main language of Palestine, and quite a number of texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls are also written in Aramaic.

Aramaic continued to be an important language for Jews, alongside Hebrew, and parts of the Talmud are written in it.

After Arab conquests of the seventh century, Arabic quickly replaced Aramaic as the main language of those who converted to Islam, although in out of the way places, Aramaic continued as a vernacular language of Muslims.

Aramaic, however, enjoyed its greatest success in Christianity. Although the New Testament wins written in Greek, Christianity had come into existence in an Aramaic-speaking milieu, and it was the Aramaic dialect of Edessa, now known as Syriac, that became the literary language of a large number of Christians living in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire and in the Persian Empire, further east. Over the course of the centuries the influence of the Syriac Churches spread eastwards to China (in Xian, in western China, a Chinese-Syriac inscription dated 781 is still to be seen); to southern India where the state of Kerala can boast more Christians of Syriac liturgical tradition than anywhere else in the world.

680 Shiite saint Imam Hussein, grandson of Islam's Prophet Muhammad Known as Ashoura and observed by Shiites across the world, the 10th day of the lunar Muslim month of Muharram: the anniversary of the 7th century death in battle of one of Shiite Islam's most beloved saints. Imam Hussein died in the 680 A.D. battle fought on the plains outside Karbala, a city in modern Iraq that's home to the saint's shrine. The battle over a dispute about the leadership of the Muslim faith following Muhammad's death in 632 A.D. It is the defining event in Islam's split into Sunni and Shiite branches. The occasion is the source of an enduring moral lesson. "He sacrificed his blood to teach us not to give in to corruption, coercion, or use of force and to seek honor and justice." According to Shiite beliefs, Hussein and companions were denied water by enemies who controlled the nearby Euphrates. Streets get partially covered with blood from slaughter of hundreds of cows and sheep. Volunteers cook the meat and feed it to the poor. Hussein's martyrdom recounted through a rich body of prose, poetry and song remains an inspirational example of sacrifice to many Shiites, 10 percent of the world's estimated 1.3 billion Muslims.

Meeting of the Saints walis (saints of Allah)

Great men covet to embrace martyrdom for a cause and principle.

So was the case with Hazrat Ali. He could have made a compromise with the evil forces of his time and, as a result, could have led a very comfortable, easy and luxurious life. But he was not a person who would succumb to such temptations. His upbringing, his education and his training in the lap of the holy Prophet made him refuse such an offer.
Rabia Al-Basri (717–801 C.E.) She was first to set forth the doctrine of mystical love and who is widely considered to be the most important of the early Sufi poets. An elderly Shia pointed out that during his pre-Partition childhood it was quite common to find pictures and portraits of Shia icons in Imambaras across the country.
Shah Abdul Latif: The Exalted Sufi Master born 1690 in a Syed family; died 1754. In ancient times, Sindh housed the exemplary Indus Valley Civilisation with Moenjo Daro as its capital, and now, it is the land of a culture which evolved from the teachings of eminent Sufi saints. Pakistan is home to the mortal remains of many Sufi saints, the exalted among them being Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai, a practitioner of the real Islam, philosopher, poet, musicologist and preacher. He presented his teaching through poetry and music - both instruments sublime - and commands a very large following, not only among Muslims but also among Hindus and Christians. Sindh culture: The Shah is synonymous with Sindh. He is the very fountainhead of Sindh's culture. His message remains as fresh as that of any present day poet, and the people of Sindh find solace from his writings. He did indeed think for Sindh. One of his prayers, in exquisite Sindhi, translates thus: “Oh God, may ever You on Sindh bestow abundance rare! Beloved! All the world let share Thy grace, and fruitful be.”
Shia Ali al-Hadi, died 868 and son Hassan al-Askari 874. These saints are the 10th and 11th of Shia's 12 most revered Imams. Baba Farid Sufi 1398 miracle, Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki renowned Muslim Sufi saint scholar miracles 569 A.H. [1173 C.E.] hermit gave to poor, Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti greatest mystic of his time born 533 Hijri (1138-39 A.D.), Hazrat Ghuas-e Azam, Hazrat Bu Ali Sharif, and Hazrat Nizamuddi n 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

Index to Part I and Part II 1932

James M. Reardon Publication History of the Basilica of Saint Mary 1955 {update}

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

James Michael Reardon Born in Nova Scotia, 1872; Priest, ordained by Bishop Ireland;

Member -- St. Paul Seminary faculty.

Affiliations and Indulgences Litany of Loretto in Stained glass windows here. Nave Sacristy and Residence Here
Sanctuary spaces between them filled with grilles of hand-forged wrought iron the life of our Blessed Lady After the crucifixon

Apostle statues Replicas of those in St John Lateran--Christendom's earliest Basilica.
Ordered by Rome's first Christian Emperor, Constantine the Great, Popes' cathedral and official residence first millennium of Christian history.

The only replicas ever made: in order from west to east {1932}.

Saints Simon (saw), Bartholomew (knife), James the Lesser (book), John (eagle), Andrew (transverse cross), Peter keys), Paul (sword), James the Greater (staff), Thomas (carpenter's square), Philip (serpent), Matthew (book), and Jude sword

Every Christian must be a living book wherein one can read the teaching of the gospel
It Makes No Sense Not To Believe In GOD

THE BLESSED MOTHER AND ISLAM By Father John Corapi.

June 19, Trinity Sunday, 1991: Ordained Catholic Priest under Pope John Paul II;
then 2,000,000 miles delivering the Gospel to millions, and continues to do so.

By Father John Corapi
THE BLESSED MOTHER AND ISLAM By Father John Corapi.

June 19, Trinity Sunday, 1991: Ordained Catholic Priest under Pope John Paul II;
then 2,000,000 miles delivering the Gospel to millions, and continues to do so.

By Father John Corapi

Among the most important titles we have in the Catholic Church for the Blessed Virgin Mary are Our Lady of Victory and Our Lady of the Rosary. These titles can be traced back to one of the most decisive times in the history of the world and Christendom. The Battle of Lepanto took place on October 7 (date of feast of Our Lady of Rosary), 1571. This proved to be the most crucial battle for the Christian forces against the radical Muslim navy of Turkey. Pope Pius V led a procession around St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City praying the Rosary. He showed true pastoral leadership in recognizing the danger posed to Christendom by the radical Muslim forces, and in using the means necessary to defeat it. Spiritual battles require spiritual weapons, and this more than anything was a battle that had its origins in the spiritual order—a true battle between good and evil.

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

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

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

Talk is weak. Prayer is strong. Pray! God bless you, Father John Corapi

Father Corapi's Biography

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

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

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

About Father John Corapi.

Father Corapi is a Catholic priest .

The pillars of father's preaching are basically:

Love for and a relationship with the Blessed Virgin Mary
Leading a vibrant and loving relationship with Jesus Christ
Great love and reverence for the Most Holy Eucharist from Holy Mass to adoration of the Blessed Sacrament
An uncompromising love for and obedience to the Holy Father and the teaching of the Magisterium of the Church

God Bless you on your journey Father John Corapi

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

Archbishop Fulton Sheen to be beatified
Jul 6, 2019 - 04:00 am .- Pope Francis approved the miracle attributed to Archbishop Fulton Sheen Friday, making possible the American television catechist's beatification.

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

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

Pope Francis will beatify these martyred Greek-Catholic bishops in Romania
May 30, 2019 - 03:01 pm .- On Sunday in Blaj, Pope Francis will beatify seven Greek-Catholic bishops of Romania who were killed by the communist regime between 1950 and 1970.

Woman who served Brazil’s poorest to be canonized
May 14, 2019 - 06:53 am .- Pope Francis Tuesday gave his approval for eight sainthood causes to proceed, including that of Bl. Dulce Lopes Pontes, a 20th-century religious sister who served Brazil’s poor.

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

Pope advances sainthood causes of 17 women
Jan 15, 2019 - 11:12 am .- Pope Francis approved Tuesday the next step in the canonization causes of 17 women from four countries, including the martyrdom of 14 religious sisters killed in Spain at the start of the Spanish Civil War.

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

The Algerian martyrs shed their blood for Christ, pope says
Dec 7, 2018 - 10:02 am .- Ahead of the beatification Saturday of Bishop Pierre Claverie and his 18 companions, who were martyred in Algeria between 1994 and 1996, Pope Francis said martyrs have a special place in the Church.
Algerian martyrs are models for the Church, archbishop says
Nov 16, 2018 - 03:01 am .- Archbishop Paul Desfarges of Algiers has said that Bishop Pierre Claverie and his 18 companions, who were martyred in Algeria between 1994 and 1996, are “models for our lives as disciples today and tomorrow.”

Francesco Spinelli to be canonized after healing of a newborn in DR Congo
Oct 9, 2018 - 05:01 pm .- Among those being canonized on Sunday are Fr. Franceso Spinelli, a diocesan priest through whose intercession a newborn was saved from death in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Algerian martyrs to be beatified in December
Sep 14, 2018 - 06:01 pm .- The Algerian bishops' conference has announced that the beatification of Bishop Pierre Claverie and his 18 companions, who were martyred in the country between 1994 and 1996, will be held Dec. 8.

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

Pope Francis creates new path to beatification under ‘offering of life’
Jul 11, 2017 - 06:22 am .- On Tuesday Pope Francis declared a new category of Christian life suitable for consideration of beatification called “offering of life” – in which a person has died prematurely through an offering of their life for love of God and neighbor.

Twentieth century Polish nurse among causes advancing toward sainthood
Jul 7, 2017 - 06:14 am .- Pope Francis on Friday approved a miracle attributed to the intercession of the Venerable Hanna Chrzanowska, a Polish nurse and nursing instructor who died from cancer in 1973, paving the way for her beatification.

Sainthood causes advance, including layman who resisted fascism
Jun 17, 2017 - 09:22 am .- Pope Francis on Friday recognized the heroic virtue of six persons on the path to canonization, as well as the martyrdom of an Italian man who died from injuries of a beating he received while imprisoned in a concentration camp for resisting fascism.

Solanus Casey, Cardinal Van Thuan among those advanced toward sainthood
May 4, 2017 - 10:47 am .- Pope Francis on Thursday approved decrees of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints advancing the causes for canonization of 12 individuals, including the American-born Capuchin Solanus Casey and the Vietnamese cardinal Francis Xavier Nguen Van Thuan.

Pope clears way for canonization of Fatima visionaries
Mar 23, 2017 - 06:44 am .- On Thursday Pope Francis approved the second and final miracle needed to canonize Blessed Francisco and Jacinta Marto, two of the shepherd children who witnessed the Fatima Marian apparitions.
Surgeon and father among sainthood causes moving forward
Feb 27, 2017 - 11:03 am .- Pope Francis recognized on Monday the heroic virtue of eight persons on the path to canonization, including an Italian surgeon and father of eight who suffered from several painful diseases throughout his life.

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

Archbishop Fulton Sheen to be beatified
Jul 6, 2019 - 04:00 am .- Pope Francis approved the miracle attributed to Archbishop Fulton Sheen Friday, making possible the American television catechist's beatification.

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

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

Pope Francis will beatify these martyred Greek-Catholic bishops in Romania
May 30, 2019 - 03:01 pm .- On Sunday in Blaj, Pope Francis will beatify seven Greek-Catholic bishops of Romania who were killed by the communist regime between 1950 and 1970.

Woman who served Brazil’s poorest to be canonized
May 14, 2019 - 06:53 am .- Pope Francis Tuesday gave his approval for eight sainthood causes to proceed, including that of Bl. Dulce Lopes Pontes, a 20th-century religious sister who served Brazil’s poor.

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

Pope advances sainthood causes of 17 women
Jan 15, 2019 - 11:12 am .- Pope Francis approved Tuesday the next step in the canonization causes of 17 women from four countries, including the martyrdom of 14 religious sisters killed in Spain at the start of the Spanish Civil War.

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

The Algerian martyrs shed their blood for Christ, pope says
Dec 7, 2018 - 10:02 am .- Ahead of the beatification Saturday of Bishop Pierre Claverie and his 18 companions, who were martyred in Algeria between 1994 and 1996, Pope Francis said martyrs have a special place in the Church.
Algerian martyrs are models for the Church, archbishop says
Nov 16, 2018 - 03:01 am .- Archbishop Paul Desfarges of Algiers has said that Bishop Pierre Claverie and his 18 companions, who were martyred in Algeria between 1994 and 1996, are “models for our lives as disciples today and tomorrow.”

Francesco Spinelli to be canonized after healing of a newborn in DR Congo
Oct 9, 2018 - 05:01 pm .- Among those being canonized on Sunday are Fr. Franceso Spinelli, a diocesan priest through whose intercession a newborn was saved from death in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Algerian martyrs to be beatified in December
Sep 14, 2018 - 06:01 pm .- The Algerian bishops' conference has announced that the beatification of Bishop Pierre Claverie and his 18 companions, who were martyred in the country between 1994 and 1996, will be held Dec. 8.

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

Pope Francis creates new path to beatification under ‘offering of life’
Jul 11, 2017 - 06:22 am .- On Tuesday Pope Francis declared a new category of Christian life suitable for consideration of beatification called “offering of life” – in which a person has died prematurely through an offering of their life for love of God and neighbor.

Twentieth century Polish nurse among causes advancing toward sainthood
Jul 7, 2017 - 06:14 am .- Pope Francis on Friday approved a miracle attributed to the intercession of the Venerable Hanna Chrzanowska, a Polish nurse and nursing instructor who died from cancer in 1973, paving the way for her beatification.

Sainthood causes advance, including layman who resisted fascism
Jun 17, 2017 - 09:22 am .- Pope Francis on Friday recognized the heroic virtue of six persons on the path to canonization, as well as the martyrdom of an Italian man who died from injuries of a beating he received while imprisoned in a concentration camp for resisting fascism.

Solanus Casey, Cardinal Van Thuan among those advanced toward sainthood
May 4, 2017 - 10:47 am .- Pope Francis on Thursday approved decrees of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints advancing the causes for canonization of 12 individuals, including the American-born Capuchin Solanus Casey and the Vietnamese cardinal Francis Xavier Nguen Van Thuan.

Pope clears way for canonization of Fatima visionaries
Mar 23, 2017 - 06:44 am .- On Thursday Pope Francis approved the second and final miracle needed to canonize Blessed Francisco and Jacinta Marto, two of the shepherd children who witnessed the Fatima Marian apparitions.
Surgeon and father among sainthood causes moving forward
Feb 27, 2017 - 11:03 am .- Pope Francis recognized on Monday the heroic virtue of eight persons on the path to canonization, including an Italian surgeon and father of eight who suffered from several painful diseases throughout his life.

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

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

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

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

Sunday, November 23 2014 Six to Be Canonized on Feast of Christ the King.

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

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

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

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

October 01, 2015 Vatican City, Pope Authorizes following Decrees
(ZENIT.org) By Staff Reporter
Polish Layperson Recognized as Servant of God
Pope Authorizes Decrees
Pope Francis on Wednesday authorised the Congregation for Saints' Causes to promulgate the following decrees:

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

HEROIC VIRTUES
- Servant of God Giovanni Folci, Italian diocesan priest and founder of the Opera Divin Prigioniero (1890-1963);
- Servant of God Franciszek Blachnicki, Polish diocesan priest (1921-1987);
- Servant of God Jose Rivera Ramirez, Spanish diocesan priest (1925-1991);
- Servant of God Juan Manuel Martín del Campo, Mexican diocesan priest (1917-1996);
- Servant of God Antonio Filomeno Maria Losito, Italian professed priest of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (1838-1917);
- Servant of God Maria Benedetta Giuseppa Frey (nee Ersilia Penelope), Italian professed nun of the Cistercian Order (1836-1913);
- Servant of God Hanna Chrzanowska, Polish layperson, Oblate of the Ursulines of St. Benedict (1902-1973).

March 06 2016 MIRACLES authorised the Congregation to promulgate the following decrees:
Pope Francis received in a private audience Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, during which he authorised the Congregation to promulgate the following decrees:
MIRACLES

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

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

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

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

LINKS:
Marian Apparitions (over 2000) India Marian Shrine Lourdes of the East   Lourdes Feb 11- July 16, Loreto, Italy 1858
China Marian shrines May 23, 1995 Zarvintisya Ukraine Lourdes Kenya national Marian shrine    Quang Tri Vietnam La Vang 1798
Links to Related Marian Websites Angels and Archangels
Doctors_of_the_Church   Acts_Apostles Roman Catholic Popes Purgatory Uniates, 78 2022