Author: Editor

(1769-1852) St. Rose was born in Grenoble, France. She learned political skills from her father and a love of the poor from her mother. Rose entered the Visitation of Mary convent at 19 and remained despite family opposition. As the French Revolution broke, the convent was closed, and she began taking care of the poor […]

(1240-1298) Matilda Von Hackeborn-Wippra belonged to one of the noblest and most powerful Thuringian families. Her sister was the saintly and illustrious Abbess Gertrude von Hackeborn. Matilda was so fragile at birth, that the attendants, fearing she might die unbaptized, hurried her off to the priest who was just then preparing to say Mass. After […]

(880–942) St. Odo was born in about 880, on the boundary between the Maine and the Touraine regions of France. His father consecrated him to the holy Bishop Martin of Tours, in whose beneficent shadow and memory he was to spend his entire life, which he ended close to St Martin’s tomb. Odo was still […]

(1207 -1231) Today’s saint, Elizabeth, has been honored in our community through the name of one of our local hospitals. Elizabeth’s father was Andrew II, the rich and powerful King of Hungary. To reinforce political ties, he had married the German Countess Gertrude of Andechs-Meran, sister of St Hedwig who was wife to the Duke […]

(1045-1093) Margaret of Scotland, or Margaret of Wessex, was an English princess born in Hungary to Princess Agatha of Hungary and English Prince Edward the Exile around 1045. Her siblings, Cristina and Edgar the Atheling were also born in Hungary around this time. The family returned to England when she was 10 years old and […]

(1206-1280) Albert was made the Prior of a Dominican Province in Germany, was a personal theologian and canonist to the pope, preached a Crusade in Germany and was appointed the Bishop of Regensburg for fewer than two years before resigning. Neither ruthless nor politically minded, the complex web of elites who had interests in his […]

(1178-1240) Serapion Scott was born at the turn of the year 1178 in the British Isles and was a relative of the Scottish monarch. Still a child, he was at the side of King Richard the Lionhearted on the Third Crusade, fighting for the faith and for the liberation of the Holy Land. Even then, […]

(1850-1917) Maria Cabrini was born in Sant’Angelo Lodigiano, in northern Italy, the youngest of 13 children, only four of whom survived to adulthood. She was determined from her childhood to make religious work her life’s vocation. When Frances was 18, she applied for admission to the religious congregation of the Daughters of the Sacred Heart […]

(1580-1623) In 1964, the embrace of Pope Paul VI and Athenagoras I, Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople made all the papers and was hailed as a step toward healing the 900-year-old rift between Rome and the Eastern Church. Today’s saint strove for similar goals 369 years before that momentous embrace. The Orthodox bishop of Brest-Litovsk (in […]

(316-397) St. Martin was born in what is now Hungary, the son of a military tribune and grew up in Pavia, Italy. Although his parents were pagan, Martin was interested in Christianity. When an imperial edict arrived, he was commanded to take up the sword and putting an end, so it seemed, to his desire […]