Author: Editor

(3rd century) St. Gregory of Tours tells us that this Denis was an Italian by birth and became a missionary bishop. With five companions he established a Christian center on an island in the Seine in the city of Paris. One of his companions was a priest called Rusticus, another a deacon called Eleutherius. They are said to […]

(4th century) Pelagia was a 15-year-old Christian virgin. Soldiers came in search of her, during the Diocletian persecution, in order to force her to offer publicly a heathen sacrifice. She was alone in the house. She came out to the soldiers and when she learned the order they had to execute, she requested permission to […]

(Died 303) St. Justina was born in Padua a city in the Veneto, northern Italy. Padua was a Roman province under the rule of the Roman Emperor Diocletian (r.284-305) who had mounted some of the fiercest persecutions of the early Church especially in the East of the Empire. The inhabitants of Padua were ordered to take […]

(c. 1030-1101) Bruno was born in Cologne, Germany, and became a famous teacher at Rheims. He was appointed chancellor of the archdiocese at the age of 45. He supported Pope Gregory VII in his fight against the decadence of the clergy and took part in the removal of his own scandalous archbishop, Manasses. A vendetta […]

(1905-1938) Faustina was born Aug. 25, 1905, in Poland, in the small village of Glogowiec. Her parents, Marianna and Stanislao Kowalski, were humble peasants. Baptized by the name of Helena, at the age of 7 she already felt the call to religious life, but without the consent of the parents, could not pursue it. The […]

(1182-1226) Francis was born in 1182 the son of a rich fabric merchant Pietro di Bernardone and a noblewoman from Provence, Pica. While his father was away on business (possibly to France), Pica had her newborn son baptized with the name Giovanni. It was Pietro who later began to call him Francesco (Francis in English), […]

(1798 -1856) Anne-Thérèse Guérin was born in Etables, France, but eventually became an American saint. Her life was shattered by her father’s murder when she was 15. For several years she cared for her mother and younger sister. She entered the Sisters of Providence in 1823, taking the name Sister St. Theodore. An illness during novitiate […]

Perhaps no aspect of Catholic piety is as comforting to parents as the belief that an angel protects their little ones from dangers real and imagined. Yet, guardian angels are not only for children. Their role is to represent individuals before God, to watch over them always, to aid their prayer and to present their […]

(1873-1897) Thérèse Françoise Marie Alençon once said her parents were “Worthy more of heaven than of Earth.” She was the last of eight children, three of whom died in childhood. Orphaned of her mother at the age of 4, she relived the drama of abandonment as each of her four sisters in turn entered Carmelite […]

(c. 340-420) St. Jerome is considered to be a “Father of the Church.” He is best known for his translation of the Bible into Latin, called the Vulgate (or “common language of the people”), historically the most important vernacular edition of the Holy Scriptures. After having been tutored by his father in religion and essential […]