Saint Katharine Drexel
Several decades before the world's spotlights were focused on African Americans, Saint Katharine Drexel (1858-1955) was a missionary among them and the American Indians, fostering their education and bringing them the proclamation of Christ.
Saint Agnes of Bohemia
Saint Agnes of Bohemia (1211-1282), inflamed as she was by love of God, had no doubt when choosing between the emperor, who had asked her to be his bride, and the King of the universe.
Saint Albinus of Angers
Very popular during the Middle Ages, Saint Albinus of Angers (c. 468-550) was born into a noble family near Vannes in Brittany. Attracted to the life of the monks, he entered the monastery of a small Breton village and became its abbot in 504.
Saint Auguste Chapdelaine
Among the 120 who were martyred on Chinese soil and canonised by John Paul II on October 1st, 2000, there is also the French priest Auguste Chapdelaine (1814-1856), who belonged to the Institute of Foreign Missions, Paris.
Saint Romanus of Condat
Saint Romanus of Condat (c. 390-463) was born at the end of the 4th century, when monasticism, already widespread in the East, had also taken hold in the West. His parents sent him to study at the monastery of Ainay, in Lyon, where he was a pupil of Abbot Sabinus, who gave him a Life of the Desert Fathers.
Saint Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows
He made a vow to spread the devotion to the Virgin of Sorrows, whom he often called in his letters "our Co-redemptrix"
Ash Wednesday
Ash Wednesday marks, in the Roman rite, the beginning of Lent, that is, of the "intense" liturgical period and of a special call to penance ending before the Holy Thursday Mass in Coena Domini.
Saints Aloysius Versiglia and Callistus Caravario, martyrs
When these two Salesians in love with Christ first met in 1921, Monsignor Aloysius Versiglia (1873-1930) was passing through Turin. He already had a 15-years' mission in China behind him, while Callistus Caravario (1903-1930) was an 18-year old burning with the desire to become a priest and devote himself to the missionary life.
Saint Æthelbert
The life of Saint Æthelbert (ca. 560-616) King of Kent, raised as a pagan and first English sovereign to convert to Christianity, came to a turning point when he married Bertha, a devout Christian woman, daughter of the Merovingian king Charibert.
Chair of Saint Peter
"'Who do you say I am?' Simon Peter replied: 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God'". Jesus' question to the disciples and the answer of his vicar on earth recall the reason for the liturgical feast of the Chair of Saint Peter, which is based precisely on the mission of shepherd of the universal Church entrusted by Our Lord to the Prince of the Apostles.
Saint Peter Damian
The life of this great monk, theologian and bishop, a protagonist of the 11th century who significantly contributed to the renewal of the Church, enjoying the trust of the various popes who employed him as a collaborator, did not have an easy beginning. Saint Peter Damian (1007-1072), the last of six children and a native of Ravenna, soon lost both parents and lived his childhood in hardship.
Saints Jacinta and Francisco Marto
"If I could only put into the hearts of all, the fire that is burning in my own breast, and that makes me love the Hearts of Jesus and Mary so very much!" So said Jacinta Marto, the little warrior who went up to Heaven on February 20th, 1920 at almost ten years old, thus joining her brother Francisco, who had died on April 4th, 1919, when he was not yet eleven.
