Meet the Saints of Saint Bede

Stephen lived during the lifetime of Jesus Christ and was martyred shortly after Jesus’s death.   He is a Protomartyr, or among the first of the Christian martyrs.
The Acts of the Apostles, chapters 6 and 7, describe Stephen’s ordination to the diaconate and his martyrdom by stoning.   Stephen was one of seven men ordained as deacons by the Apostles to care for the early Christian community, and their widows, and to organize the distribution of alms.   Acts describes Stephen as “filled with grace and power, a man who worked miracles and great signs among the people.” 
Stephen’s popularity created enemies among some of the Jewish leaders who accused him of blasphemy, and of speaking against God and Moses.   At his trial, Stephen defended himself by quoting the Jewish scriptures and defending the life and teachings of Jesus.  When Stephen concluded his defense, he saw a vision of Jesus standing at the right hand of God.  He said to the crowd of Jews, "Look, I can see heaven thrown open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God." That vision was taken as the final proof of blasphemy to the Jews who did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah or Son of God. For them, Jesus could not possibly be beside the Father in Heaven.  The crowd rushed upon Stephen and carried him outside of the city where they stoned him to death.   Saint Stephen’s last words were: "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.  Lord, do not hold this sin against them."   
In Acts, chapters 8 and 9, Saul of Tarsus, a persecutor of the early Christians, is recorded as present at Stephen’s trial and death.   Shortly after Stephen’s martyrdom, Saul himself will encounter Jesus on the road to Damascus, convert, and become the great apostle Paul.
Symbol: Stephen is shown with the stones of his martyrdom and a martyr’s palm.
Patron Saint of Altar Servers, Bricklayers, Casket makers and Deacons
Feast Day: December 26

Lucy lived in Syracuse in Sicily and was martyred in 304 A.D. during the persecution of Christians under the Roman Emperor Diocletian. 
Lucy’s martyrdom is recorded in the fifth-century Acts of the Martyrs, in the Sacramentary of Pope Gregory I (Pope from 590 until his death in 604), and by the Venerable Bede (672-735) whose writing attests that devotion to Saint Lucy had spread to England by the seventh century.  Lucy’s martyrdom is described in the Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine written c. 1260.  
Lucy was born to a noble family in Syracuse Sicily.   Like Cecilia, who also appears in this panel, Lucy chose to remain a virgin and dedicate her life to Christ.  Their choice stood in stark opposition to the patriarchal systems of the ancient world in which women lived under the guardianship of male relations and were passed, like property, from father to husband to son.  
The early death of Lucy’s father left Lucy and her mother without a protective male guardian.  Lucy’s mother also suffered from an incurable illness.  To protect her daughter, she arranged for Lucy to marry a wealthy Roman pagan.  Lucy prayed to Saint Agatha for deliverance from this marriage.  Agatha had also chosen to remain a virgin and to dedicate her life to Christ.  Agatha had been martyred a few years earlier in nearby Catania and many miracles were attributed to her intercession.  In a dream, Agatha promised Lucy that her mother would be cured of her illness if her mother gave Lucy’s dowry to the poor and allowed Lucy to remain a virgin and commit her life to Jesus.  
Lucy’s rejection angered the bridegroom who informed the Roman governor that Lucy was a Christian.  The governor, to punish Lucy, ordered his soldiers to take her from her home and deliver her to a brothel.  According to tradition, Lucy proved immovable -- even after the guards bound her and attached her to a team of oxen.   The guards then heaped bundles of wood around her, but the wood did not burn.  Finally, they pierced her with their swords, cutting out her eyes, and killing Lucy.  When Lucy’s body was prepared for burial her eyes had been miraculously restored.
 
Symbol:  Lucy is shown holding her eyes on a golden platter.  The name “Lucy” means light; in this picture, she also holds a flaming candle.
 Patron Saint of the blind and of anyone who suffers problems of sight or illnesses of the eyes
Feast Day: December 13
 

Dominic was born on August 8, 1170, in Castile in Spain, and died on August 6, 1221, at the age of 51 while establishing a Dominican monastery in Bologna, Italy. 
Dominic studied theology and the arts at a university in Palencia, Spain.  He is known for his charismatic preaching and for his charity to the poor.  In 1204 Pope Innocent III sent Dominic to southern France, in Languedoc, to preach to the Cathars who believed in the Albigensian heresy.  This heresy taught that all material things, including the human body, were inherently evil. 
To assist his work, Dominic gathered a group of companions and formed the Order of Preachers in 1206.  This monastery dedicated to Our Lady continues to exist in Prouille, France. 
According to Dominican tradition, in 1208 in this monastery, Dominic had a vision that the Virgin Mary handed him the Rosary.  During his prayers, Dominic had complained to the Virgin about his lack of success in converting heretics to the True Faith.  Our Lady responded that his labors were spent on barren soil, not watered by the dew of Divine grace.  She suggested that if Dominic preached the “Psalter of Mary” composed of 150 Angelic Salutations and 15 Our Fathers he would obtain an abundant harvest.
Dominic established a strict routine of prayer and discipline for monks in the Dominican Order.  The Rule was approved by Pope Innocent III at the Fourth Lateran Council and received formal written authority from his successor, Pope Honorius III, in January 1217.  A year later, the Pope established the ancient Basilica of Santa Sabina as the home in Rome of the Dominican Order of Preachers which it remains to this day.    
In 1218 Dominic established the Confraternity of the Rosary whose members pray the 15 decades of the Rosary each week.  Pope Clement VIII declared that St. Dominic established the Confraternity of the Rosary in the Church of St. Sixtus in Rome.  Pope Alexander VI in 1495, addressed St. Dominic as "the renowned preacher long ago of the Confraternity of the Rosary, and through his merits, the whole world was preserved from universal ruin."
Symbol:  Dominic holds lilies and a book; he wears a Dominican habit and his hair is cut with a tonsure; frequently Dominic is also shown receiving the rosary from the Blessed Virgin Mary
Patron Saint: of astronomers and of the innocent who are falsely accused of a crime
Feast Day: August 8
 

Sebastian died in Rome in 288 at the beginning of the persecution of Christians by the Roman emperor Diocletian.   Sebastian’s tomb, venerated since ancient times, lies beneath the Basilica of Saint Sebastian on the Via Appia, one of the seven pilgrim churches of Rome.  
The details of Sebastian's martyrdom are recorded by the bishop of Milan, Saint Ambrose (337-397), in his sermon on Psalm 118.   Ambrose stated that Sebastian was Milanese by birth and traveled to Rome where “the persecutions were raging fiercely on account of the faith.”  Sebastian’s life and martyrdom are also described in the Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine written c. 1260 A.D.  which places his birth in Narbonne in France.
In 283 Sebastian joined the Roman Army.  He distinguished himself for his excellent service and was promoted to serve in the Praetorian Guard of Emperor Diocletian. 
At this time twin brothers, Marcus and Marcellian, were imprisoned for refusing to sacrifice to the Roman gods. The brothers were deacons of the Christian Church.  Their parents visited them in prison and begged them to renounce Christianity.  Instead, Sebastian convinced both parents to convert.  Sebastian also converted various other prominent Romans, including a local prefect, and another sixteen men in the same prison, to the Christian faith. 
In 286, Sebastian was denounced as a Christian to the Emperor Diocletian who ordered him killed by tying him to a stake on a training field and used as target practice for archers.   His body was riddled with arrows, and Sebastian was left for dead.  His body was recovered by a woman named Irene whose husband, a Christian, had been a servant of Diocletian.  Irene discovered that Sebastian still lived and nursed him back to health.   Sebastian then returned to Diocletian’s palace.  When he saw the Emperor, Sebastian publicly rebuked Diocletian for his cruel persecution of Christians.  The Emperor immediately ordered Sebastian beaten to death and thrown into the sewers.   Christians retrieved his body and buried him in the catacombs.    
Sebastian is invoked as a protector against the plague and is credited with having defended Rome against the plague in 680.

Symbol:  Sebastian is tied to a tree and pierced with the arrows of his martyrdom
Patron Saint: of victims of the plague, of soldiers, of athletes, and of those who desire a saintly death
Feast Day: January 20

Saint Cecelia was born in Rome in 200 A.D. and died on November 22, 230 A.D.  She is buried in the Basilica of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere in Rome which is located on the site of the house where Cecilia lived and was martyred.
The fourth-century text, Passion of Saint Cecilia, details her life and martyrdom.  Her name entered the Sacramentary of Pope Gelasius in 496.  In the year 500, Pope Symmachus (Pope from 22 November 498 to his death on 19 July 514) held a papal council at the Basilica of Saint Cecilia.
Cecilia was born to a rich noble family in Rome.  Like Lucy who also appears in this panel, Cecilia chose to remain a virgin and dedicate her life to Christ.  When her father informed her of the marriage he had arranged to a youth named Valerian, Cecilia donned sackcloth, fasted, and prayed to the saints, angels, and virgin martyrs to guard her virginity.     
During the wedding ceremony, as the musicians played, Cecilia "sang in her heart to the Lord".  Before her marriage was consummated, Cecilia told Valerian that she had taken a vow of virginity and that an angel was protecting her and would punish him if he forced her to break her vow.  When Valerian asked to see the angel, Cecilia replied that he must first be baptized by Pope Urban I at the third milestone on the via Appia.
Following his baptism, Valerian returned to his wife and found the angel at her side holding a chaplet of roses and lilies.  Valerian’s brother also converted and together they dedicated themselves to burying the saints who were murdered by Turcius Almachius, then prefect of Rome.   The brothers were eventually arrested as Christians and martyred.
Cecilia continued to preach Christianity to the Romans and converted over four hundred people to Christianity most of whom were baptized by Pope Urban I.
Cecilia was also arrested and condemned to death in the baths.  She was shut in for one night and one day and the fires were stoked to an enormous heat, but Cecilia was not affected.  The Prefect then ordered his executioner to cut off her head.   The executioner struck her three times but did not decapitate her.  She survived, bleeding, and lived for three days.  Crowds collected her blood while she continued to preach and pray. During this time, Cecilia asked the Pope to convert her home to a church.    

Symbol: Cecilia is shown with an organ or organ pipes and a crown of roses
Patron Saint: of music and of musicians
Feast Day: November 22
 

Saints Jean de Lalande, Isaac Jogues, and Réne Goupil are among eight men venerated as the first martyr-saints of North America.   Among the sites dedicated to their memory in North America is the Martyr’s Court at Fordham University’s Rose Hill Campus in the Bronx, New York and the National Shrine of the North American Martyrs located in Auriesville, New York, 9 miles from the site of their martyrdom. 

SAINT ISAAC JOGUES was born on January 10, 1607, in Orléans, France, entered the Jesuit order in 1624 and was sent as a missionary to Canada in 1636.  Traveling to the Mohawk to secure a peace treaty, he was taken captive and martyred with Saint Jean de Lalande in Ossernenon (New York State) on October 18, 1646. 

SAINT JEAN DE LALANDE was born in Normandy, France.  He arrived in Canada as a lay missionary brother with the Jesuit Order.  He accompanied Fr. Isaac Jogues on his mission to the Mohawk and was martyred in Ossernenon on October 19, 1646.

SAINT RéNE GOUPIL was born in France on May 15, 1608, and worked as a surgeon.  Unable to join the Jesuits as a novitiate because of his deafness, Goupil volunteered as a lay missionary to assist the Jesuit fathers.  He arrived at the Saint-Joseph de Sillery Mission near Quebec in 1640 where he cared for the sick and wounded at the hospital. 

In 1641 Réne Goupil accompanied Fr. Isaac Jogues on a mission to the Ojibwa tribe in Sault-Ste-Marie.  On their return travel to Quebec, the two men were captured by the Iroquois tribe on August 3, 1642, and brought as prisoners to their village at Ossernenon.  They were tortured and on September 29, 1642, Goupil was murdered by several blows of a tomahawk to his head.  Before being martyred he had professed religious vows as a Jesuit lay brother to Fr. Jogues.  

After Goupil’s death, Fr. Jogues endured 13 months of captivity by the Iroquois during which time his hands were mutilated and he lost several fingers.  Dutch Calvinists at Fort Orange in Albany arranged for his release and he fled down the Hudson River to New Amsterdam (Manhattan Island).  Fr. Jogues was the first Catholic priest to visit Manhattan Island.  His written description of the colony is part of the documentary history of New York City.  With Dutch aid, Fr. Jogues returned to France, landing on the coast of Brittany on Christmas morning in 1643.  

In 1644, Fr. Jogues returned to Canada and was sent to negotiate a peace treaty with his captors, the Iroquois tribe, in 1646.  On September 27 he began is third and last journey to the Mohawk.  Among the forty members of his mission was the lay Jesuit brother, Jean de Lalande.  The Indians considered the Jesuits sorcerers and blamed them for a blight on their crops and a sickness that broke out in their lands. 
Lalande remained with Fr. Jogues after the others in their party had fled.  The two men were captured and taken prisoner to the Mohawk village of Ossernenon.  

On October 18, 1646, Jean de Lalande was struck with a tomahawk and afterward decapitated.  The following day, October 19, Jean de Lalande was also murdered. 
 
Réne Goupil is venerated as the first Jesuit martyr of Canada and one of three martyrs of the present United States territory. 

Eight North American Martyrs were canonized by Pope Pius XI on June 29, 1930

Symbols: the saints are shown with the tomahawk of their martyrdom; Fr. Isaac Jogues wears a Jesuit habit

Patron Saint:  Réne Goupil is the patron saint of anesthetists and anesthesiologists

Feast Day of the collective eight North American Martyrs celebrated on October 19
 

Mother Théodore Guérin was born Anne-Thérèse Guèrin on October 2, 1798, in a small village in Brittany, France.  She died on May 14, 1856, in Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana, a village northwest of Terre Haute at the convent of the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, the order which she founded upon her arrival in Indiana.  

From the age of ten, Anne-Thérèse knew that she would join a religious order and devote her life to serving God. At fifteen, her father died in an accident and she cared for her widowed mother and sister until August 18, 1823, when she entered the convent of the Sisters of Providence of Ruillé-sur-Loir, taking the name Sister Théodore. She professed her perpetual vows at the age of thirty-three on September 5, 1831, devoting herself to education in the parish school in Rennes and to ministering to the area’s poor and sick. 

Immigrants from France, Ireland, and Germany rapidly expanded the numbers of Catholics in the New World and the Church required assistance to serve their growing numbers.  Among the first acts of Bishop Hailandiére after his consecration was to ask the Sisters of Providence of Ruillé-sur-Loir to send a group of sisters to establish a ministry in Vincennes.   The Mother Superior assigned Sister Théodore to this task. She left France with five companions on July 15, 1840, traveling for two months by sea, steamboat, and stagecoach to arrive at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana, on October 22, 1840. 

Guérin was a beloved mother superior and spiritual leader of the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods.  Within a year of her arrival, Mother Théodore had opened Saint Mary’s Academy for young women. The school later became Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College, the oldest Catholic woman’s liberal arts college in the United States.   She worked with local priests to establish numerous schools in parishes throughout the diocese, including in Terre Haute, Fort Wayne, Madison, and Vincennes, two orphanages, and two free pharmacies at Vincennes and at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods.  Guèrin also wrote prolifically and her journals describe in detail the extent of her and her sisters’ work on the frontier of rural America. 

Mother Théodore purchased land and built a convent which was dedicated on August 7, 1854.  She began construction of the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, which was not completed until 1886, thirty years after her death at the age of 58.  

At her death, the original six sisters of the Sisters of Providence congregation in Indiana had grown to sixty-seven members, nine novices, and seven postulants.  Since its founding in 1940, more than 5,200 women have entered the Order of the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, devoting themselves to educational and charitable work in Indiana and worldwide.
      
In 1907, the bishop of Indiana introduced a petition to declare Mother Théodore Guérin a saint based on her selfless service to the people of Indiana.  During the Vatican’s investigation, two people attributed miraculous cures to her intercession.  On October 15, 2006, Pope Benedict XVI canonized Saint Theodora Guérin at a ceremony in St. Peter’s Square. 

Symbol: she wears the habit of her order with a crucifix around her neck
Feast Day: May 14

Saint Kateri Tekakwitha is the first Native American to be recognized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.  She was born in 1656 in the Mohawk village of Ossernenon, which was the site of the martyrdom of the first North American martyrs (panels 2 and 33) a decade earlier.   She died at the age of 24 in a Jesuit mission near Montreal, Canada on April 17, 1680.  

Tekakwitha, or “the girl who bumps into things” is her given name at birth.  She took the name Kateri, after Saint Catherine of Siena, at her baptism.  She is known as the Lily of the Mohawks.  The first account of her life was published in 1715.  Pope John Paul II beatified her as Catherine Tekakwitha on June 22, 1980; Pope Benedict XVI canonized her as Kateri Tekakwitha on October 21, 2012.    

Kateri’s mother, Tagaskouita, an Algonquin woman, was baptized as a Roman Catholic and educated by French missionaries in Trouis-Rivières, east of Montreal.   After her tribe’s defeat by the Mohawks, Tagaskouita was taken to Ossernon and became the wife of the Mohawk chief.   When Kateri was four years old, an outbreak of smallpox in Ossernon killed her mother.  Kateri survived, but the pox left her face scarred and eyesight impaired.  She covered her face to hide the scars.  As an orphan, she was raised by an uncle who was also then the Chief of the Mohawk tribe.   She became skilled at women’s arts, including preparing food from games and growing crops.  Despite pressure from the Chief, Tekawitha refused all proposals of marriage. 

When the French conquered the Mohawk tribe, the Jesuits established a mission in Auriesville, New York.  Kateri met the Jesuit missionaries and studied the catechism with the Fr. Jacques de Frémin who baptized her when she was 19 years old, on Easter Sunday, April 18, 1676.  Her village shunned her for her Catholic beliefs.  After six months, to avoid further persecution, Kateri moved to a Christian native community run by Jesuit missionaries, Kahnawake, located south of Montreal in present-day Canada.   

Kateri is said to have put thorns on her sleeping mat to repent for her sins while praying for the conversion and forgiveness of her kinsmen.  In 1679 on the Feast of the Annunciation, Kateri took a vow of chastity, becoming the first virgin among the Mohawk, stating:
For a long time, … I have consecrated myself entirely to Jesus, son of Mary, I have chosen Him for my husband and He alone will take me for his wife. 
After two years in Kahnawake, in 1680 Kateri’s health began to fail and she died in the arms of her friend, Marie-Thérèse Tegaiaguenta on Holy Wednesday, April 17, 1680.  Her last words were, “Jesus, Mary, I love you.”   After her death, the pox scars that marked her skin disappeared, and her face became clear and white.  Marie-Thérèse said that Kateri appeared to her in a dream, after her death, holding a wooden cross that shone like the sun.  In the dream, Kateri said, “I’ve come to say goodbye; I’m on my way to heaven,” and her face lifted toward heaven as if in ecstasy.

She has long been considered the honorary, if unofficial, patroness of Montreal, and the Indigenous peoples of North America.   She is considered as an ecumenical bridge between the Mohawk and European cultures.

Symbol: Native American dress, holding a cross
Feast Day: July 14
Patron Saint: of the environment and ecology, people in exile, and Native Americans
 

Saint Katharine Drexel was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on November 26, 1858, and died on March 3, 1955, at the age of 96 in Bensalem, Pennsylvania.  After preparing as a novitiate with the Sisters of Mercy, on February 12, 1891, Katharine Drexel, with thirteen women, founded the Congregation of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament to promote human rights for Native and Black Americans through education.   She was canonized by Pope John Paul II on October 1, 2000.

Mother Katharine was the second daughter of Francis Anthony Drexel, a rich banker and philanthropist, and Hannah Langstroth Drexel.  Her mother died five weeks after Katharine’s birth.  Katharine was raised by her father’s second wife, Emma Bouvier, with whom Francis Drexel had a third child, a daughter named Luisa.  The deeply religious Catholic family involved their daughters in their charitable acts towards the poorest and most abandoned people to whom they distributed food, clothing, and rent assistance twice weekly from their home in Philadelphia. 

In 1884, Katharine traveled to the west of the United States where she noted the abject poverty of the Native population.  She also visited the South and saw with sympathy the plight of blacks who, though recently freed from slavery, remained poor, illiterate, and subject to great humiliation. 

In 1885, after the deaths of her stepmother and her father, their three daughters inherited the income of their substantial estate.  They traveled to Europe and, in January of 1887, arrived in Rome where Katharine obtained an audience with Pope Leo XIII.  She asked the Pope to send a mission to help the Native American people.  To her request, the pope responded, “Perhaps you should lead that Mission?”  Mother Katharine Drexel took this papal suggestion to heart and devoted her life and her share of her family’s wealth to sustain missions in the United States to Native and Black Americans and to fund schools for their education.  

Mother Drexel and the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament established one-hundred forty-five Catholic missions, fifty schools for African Americans, and twelve schools for Native Americans throughout the Southern and Western United States.  In 1910 she financed the printing of A Navaho-English Catechism of Catholic Doctrine for the Use of Navaho Children.  In 1925 Katharine Drexel founded Xavier University, in New Orleans, Louisiana, a Catholic college for African Americans with the purpose to prepare teachers.

Katharine Drexel was a woman of intense prayer and found through the Eucharist a source of love for the poor and the oppressed.  Aware of the fact that Native and African Americans lived in inferior conditions as domestics and were victims of oppression, Katharine believed that through education native and black Americans could improve their stations in life and thereby achieve racial equality in America.   With her courage and indomitable spirit, Mother Katharine confronted social injustice and racial prejudice towards minorities over one hundred years before these issues became of public interest in the United States.

Symbol: she wears the habit of her order and is shown with the Native American children whose education she advocated
Feast Day: March 3
Patron Saint: philanthropy, racial justice   
 

Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne was born in Grenoble, France, on August 29, 1769, and died on November 18, 1852, at the age of 83 in St. Charles, Missouri.  She was named after Saint Rose of Lima and the Apostle Philip.  Rose Philippine served the people of the mid-Western United States as a nun of the Society of the Sacred Heart.   She was canonized by Pope John Paul II on July 3, 1988.

Rose Philippine Duchesne was born into a prominent family of bankers and politicians.  She studied at the socially prestigious monastery of Sainte-Marie-d’en-Haut, entering the Order of Vistandine nuns in 1788.  Four years later, the monastery was destroyed during the French Revolution.  During the Reign of Terror that followed, Rose returned to live at her family’s country estate.  During this dispersion, the number of Vitandine nuns fell to three.  In 1804, Rose agreed to merge with the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus established during the Napoleonic era to educate young women.  In 1805, Rose established the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Paris where she opened a school and became the mistress of novices. 

In 1818 the Bishop of New Orleans sought the help of women religious to educate and evangelize the Natives and the settlers moving West into his diocese which the United States had purchased from the French fifteen years earlier.    Rose Philippine responded to the Bishop’s plea and traveled with four other Sisters to the New World.  They settled in St. Charles on the Mississippi River in the Missouri Territory which she described as “the remotest village in the world”.   The nuns of the Sacred Heart established their convent in a log cabin where they also built the first free school west of the Mississippi.  

By 1828 the Sisters of the Sacred Heart had established six communities operating schools throughout Louisiana and in Missouri.   When the Jesuits built a church in St. Charles, the Sisters conducted the school.  In 1835 they built their first brick building.

With the Jesuits, the Sisters of the Sacred Heart established a mission to the Potawatomi tribe in Eastern Kansas along Sugar Creek in 1841.   Rose Philippine joined the mission, but at 71 was unable to do much work.  Named by the Potawatomi children, “Quahkahkanumad, the Woman who Prays Always”, Rose assured the Mission’s success through her constant prayer.  She returned to St. Charles, Missouri after one year and lived in the Convent there until her death.    

Symbol: she wears the habit of her order
Feast Day: November 18
Patron Saint: of perseverance in adversity   
 

Bernard Francis Casey was born in Oak Grove, Wisconsin on November 25, 1870, and died on July 31, 1957, at the age of 85 in Detroit, Michigan.  He joined the Order of Franciscan Minor Capuchin and was known as a wonderworker for his great faith, his ability as a spiritual counselor, and his care for the sick.  Pope Francis approved his beatification which was celebrated by Cardinal Angelo Amato at Ford Field in Detroit, Michigan on November 18, 2017. 

Bernard was the sixth of sixteen children born to Bernard James Casey and Ellen Elizabeth Murphy, Irish immigrant farmers.  In 1878, Bernard Francis contracted diphtheria which permanently damaged his voice; two of his siblings died of the disease that same year.  He left the family farm at the age of 12 and worked at a series of jobs in Minnesota.   After witnessing a brutal murder, he felt the call to priesthood and enrolled in the Saint Francis High School Seminary.  His calling was impeded by his limited formal education and the professors there advised him to join a religious order.  While reflecting before a statue of the Virgin Mary, he heard her tell him to “go to Detroit” where he was received into the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin on January 14, 1897.  He took the religious name of Francis Solanus, a Franciscan Spanish missionary to Peru who called the native children to prayer with his violin, an instrument that Bernard also loved to play.

In 1904 he was ordained in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as a “simplex” priest, meaning that he could say Mass but was prohibited from preaching or hearing confessions.  Fr. Solanus celebrated his first Mass on July 31, 1904, in Appleton, Wisconsin with his family present.  For 20 years, Fr. Solanus served in friaries in New York: Sacred Heart, in Yonkers; St. John’s Church, near Penn Station in Manhattan, and Our Lady Queen of Angels in Harlem.

In August 1924, Fr. Solanus returned to Saint Bonaventure monastery in Detroit where he worked as the receptionist until 1945.   He conducted services for the sick on Wednesday afternoons and became known for his great compassion and for the amazing results of his meetings with visitors, who believed him instrumental in their cures.  He worked to form the Capuchin Soup Kitchen which provided food to the poor during the Great Depression.  He spent his evenings kneeling before the Eucharist.

A trademark of Fr. Solanus’s spirituality was an “Attitude of Gratitude.”  He believed that “Giving thanks is the first sign of a thinking rational creature.”  He suggested that to preserve God’s presence, one should raise your heart to Him through frequent aspirations, “Ask and it shall be given to you.” He advised to make a good intention at the beginning of each week, and frequently refer to it during its execution.  Fr. Solanus devoted himself to the sick and the poor, which includes all of us – as we all suffer both from sickness and poverty in body, mind, or spirit at one time or another. “

Fr. Solanus devoted his life to providing soup for the hungry, kind words for the troubled, and a healing touch for the ill.  Wherever he served, people would line up to speak with him.

When his health began to fail, in 1946, Fr. Solanus was transferred to the Capuchin novitiate of Saint Felix in Huntington, Indiana, where he died.  His last words spoken to the nurse at his side were “I give my soul to Jesus Christ”.  An estimated 20,000 people filed past his coffin prior to his funeral and burial at Saint Bonaventure monastery in Detroit.    Many miraculous cures are attributed to his intercession, both during his earthly life and after his death.
           
Symbol: habit of a capuchin monk
Feast Day: July 30
 

Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton was born on August 28, 1774, in New York City and died on January 4, 1821, at the age of 46, in Emmitsburg, Maryland in the convent of the Sisters of Charity, the Order she founded to educate children of the poor.  Elizabeth Ann Seton was canonized by Pope Paul VI on September 14, 1975, the first person born in America to be named a Saint by the Roman Catholic Church.    

            Elizabeth Ann was the second child of Dr. Richard Bayley, a prominent surgeon, the first Professor of anatomy at Columbia College, and a French Huguenot, and her mother, Catherine Charlton Bayley, was the daughter of an Anglican priest.  She died when Elizabeth Ann was only three years old. 

At the age of nineteen, on January 25, 1794, Elizabeth Ann was married to William Magee Seton (1768-1803), then a wealthy businessman, by the Episcopal bishop of New York. The first years of her marriage were prosperous and happy.  They had five children.  The family were regular communicants at the socially prominent Trinity Church on Wall Street; the Rev. Henry Hobart was Elizabeth Ann’s spiritual director.  She became a charter member of the charity formed for the Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children.  The Setons’ last residence at 8 State Street in Manhattan is today the site of the Church of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary.  

Between 1798 and 1800, William Seton’s trading company lost several ships as a result of England’s blockade of France, and his company went bankrupt.  The economic stress complicated his tuberculosis and   William Seton traveled to Italy, on the advice of his doctor, with his wife, Elizabeth Ann, and their eldest daughter.   His condition rapidly deteriorated and William Seton died on December 27, 1803, a few weeks after the family landed in Livorno.  He was buried in the Old English Cemetery.  Until their return to the United States the following Spring, the widow and her daughter stayed in Livorno with the prominent FIlicchi family of Livorno.  Filippo Filicchi was Seton’s business associate and the US consul to Italy.  He and his wife, Mary Cowper from Boston, introduced Elizabeth Ann to Roman Catholicism.  She accompanied them to Mass at the Filicchi family church of Santa Caterina, the Church of San Jacopo, and the Sanctuary of the Madonna delle Grazie (Our Lady of Graces) where Elizabeth Ann is said to have had a revelation. 

After her return to the United States, Elizabeth Ann Seton continued to correspond with Filippo Filicchi who encouraged her decision to convert to the Catholic faith.  Elizabeth Ann Seton received her first communion on March 25, 1805, at St. Peter’s church, the only Catholic church in Manhattan.  She was confirmed a year later by the only Catholic Bishop in America, the bishop of Maryland, John Carroll.  Elizabeth Ann also started an academy for young ladies to support herself and her children, but when the parents learned about her conversion to Catholicism they withdrew their daughters from the school.  

In 1809, at the invitation of the Sulpician Fathers, Elizabeth Ann Seton moved her family to Emmitsburg, Maryland where she established Saint Joseph’s Academy and Free School dedicated to the education of Catholic girls.  The Sulpician Fathers were French priests who had taken refuge in Baltimore from religious persecution during the Reign of Terror in France.   The school was the first free Catholic school in America and marked the start of the Catholic parochial school system. 

In 1810 Elizabeth Ann Seton established the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph at Emmitsburg, Maryland under the Rule created by St. Vincent de Paul for the Daughters of Charity in France.   The Order was formally ratified in 1812.  Elizabeth Ann Seton made her perpetual vows on July 19, 1813, from which time she became known as Mother Seton.  By 1818, in addition to St Joseph’s Academy, the Sisters had established two orphanages and another school.  Today six groups of sisters trace their origins to Mother Seton.

Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton inspired the foundation of innumerable Catholic schools in the United States, including Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey, which was founded on September 1,
1856 by James Bayley, Catholic Bishop of Newark, a cousin of Theodore Roosevelt, and a nephew of Elizabeth Ann Seton.  As of 2018, over forty churches are dedicated to her, including the church of Santa Elisabetta Anna Seton in the Piazza Lavagna, Livorno, which commemorates her connection with the FIlicchi family and Livorno.  In 2004, the 200th anniversary of his death, the body of her husband, Wiliam Magee Seton was exhumed from the English Cemetery and transferred to this church. 

Symbol: she is shown in her habit
Feast Day: January 4
Patron Saint: seafarers and widows
 

Frances Cabrini was born in Sant’Angelo Lodigiano a small town near Milan, Italy on July 15, 1850; she died in Chicago, Illinois, on December 22, 1917.  She founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to care for poor children in schools and hospitals.  Frances Xavier Cabrini traveled extensively and wherever she stopped, Mother Cabrini established schools, orphanages, and hospitals.  She was canonized in 1946 by Pope Pius XII. 

Frances Xavier Cabrini was the last of thirteen children born to Agostino Cabrini and Stella Oldini.  She received a degree in education from a school run by the Daughters of the Sacred Heart.  She was not permitted to join the Order after graduation because they considered her health too frail.   Instead, Frances taught in the House of Providence Orphanage in Cadagno gathering a group of women to a religious way of life.

In November 1880, when the orphanage closed, she founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and composed its Rule and Constitution.   At this time, she added Xavier to her name in honor of St. Francis Xavier, the missionary to the Far East, where she wished to evangelize.   Instead, Pope Leo XIII urged her to travel “not East, but West.”   

In 1889, Mother Cabrini made her first trip to the United States to minister to Italian immigrants in New York.  She organized catechism and English language classes, schools to educate the children, and orphanages. 

Mother Cabrini had a deep trust in God and was endowed with a wonderful administrative ability.   As resourceful as she was prayerful, Mother Cabrini succeeded in finding people to donate their money, time, and support for her institutions.  She saw in the principles of American democracy a way to integrate and advance Italian immigrants in society.  She promoted the emancipation of women and the capacity of feminine initiatives.  Her work is valued as a reference for modern social services. 

Mother Cabrini loved to travel; she crossed the Atlantic 23 times and founded 67 schools, hospitals, orphanages, and elder care facilities.  Cabrini College in Granada, Minnesota, and Cabrini University in Radnor, Pennsylvania are dedicated to her. She learned Spanish and crossed the Andes to reach Buenos Aires from Panama, traveling on a mule to cross mountains otherwise impassable. 

The Order of Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was the first female order to undertake missionary work which had been the exclusive province of men.  The Missionary Sisters work as teachers, social workers, administrators, and members of institutional boards of trustees.  They can be found on six continents and in 15 countries.

Mother Cabrini became a naturalized American citizen in Seattle, Washington in 1909, six years after her arrival in that city.  She wrote, “This city is charmingly situated and is growing so rapidly that it will become another New York.”  Among her projects in Seattle was the foundation of Columbus (today, Cabrini) Hospital on First Hill.   The Cathedral of St. James, also on First Hill, has a shrine dedicated to her memory.   The parochial church of Sant’Angelo Lodigiano is dedicated to Sant’Antonio Abate and Saint Francesca Cabrini.  In 2010 the central train station of Milan was dedicated to her.  

Symbol: she is shown in the habit of her order
Feast Day: November 13
Patron Saint: of immigrants and hospital administrators
 

Junìpero Serra was born on the island of Mallorca in Spain, on November 24, 1713.  He died on August 28, 1784, at the age of 70, in San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo, in Monterey, California, the second of nine mission churches that he founded along the Pacific Coast.  Father Junipero Serra was canonized by Pope Francis at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. on September 23, 2015.

Fra Junípero Serra is the most widely known figure who lived in pre-U.S. California. Schools, streets, freeways, and a mountain bear his name.  Fra Junìpero Serra, together with Ronald Reagan, represents California in the National Statuary Collection in the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C.

Born Miguel Josep Serra y Ferrer, Serra left home at the age of fifteen to study at the Franciscan convent in Palma de Mallorca.  On September 14, 1730, he took his initial vows in the Order of Friars Minor, taking the name of Brother Junipero, the simplest and most beloved companion of St. Francis.  Serra was ordained a priest in 1738.  He continued to study and obtained a doctorate in theology at the University in Palma de Mallorca where he taught until his departure for Mexico on August 20, 1749.

Serra’s transatlantic voyage lasted 99 days.  After he landed at Vera Cruz on the eastern coast of Mexico, Serra traveled by foot across the mountains to arrive at the missionary College of San Fernando near Mexico City and the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  Serra became famous in the area as a dramatic and effective preacher.    One evening on a lonely and deserted road, Serra and his companion, Br. Palòu, tired and in need of rest, saw a house where they were welcomed by a mother, father, and son.  The following morning after a good night’s sleep, the brothers continued their journey.  When they told people in the area about this experience, the people assured them that no such home existed.  Serra concluded that their hosts were none other than Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, pronouncing this a “Miracle of the Holy Family”. 

The Franciscan friars were appointed to replace the Jesuits as missionaries in Mexico in 1767 by King Charles III of Spain and Fra Junìpero Serra was appointed “Father Presidente” of the missions in California, a position he held until his death.  A year later Fra Junìpero Serra established the mission of San Fernando Rey de España on the Pacific Coast of Baja California.  On July 16, 1769, Serra established the Mission of San Diego, the first of twenty-one Franciscan missions constructed in Alta California, of which he personally established nine.  The Franciscans brought people to the sacrament of Baptism which incarnated Native Americans into the Church and influenced their daily lives and morals.  The Missions became centers for the local communities.  Agricultural development, previously unknown to the native population, flourished. 

The Mission of San Diego was protected by forty soldiers and staffed by two friars, including Fra Junìpero Serra.  By March 1770 supplies began to run low and Serra was informed that if a supply ship did not arrive by March 19, the Feast of St. Joseph, the Mission at San Diego would have to be abandoned.  Serra immediately began a novena seeking the protection of St. Joseph.  At the end of the ninth day, a ship appeared on the horizon full of fresh supplies and new troops.  The Miracle of St. Joseph Novena reignited enthusiasm for the Franciscan missions.

Serra kept a voluminous record of his life and travels in California and of his correspondence with successive Viceroys, Spanish governors, and military commanders who had political authority over the missions.  In a letter of August 22, 1778, Serra wrote to the then Commander General De Croix, “Missions, Señor, missions are what this territory needs. They will provide the territory not only with what is most important, that is, the light of the Holy Gospel, but also with food for the missions themselves, for the royal presidios, which is better than what these pueblos without priests can do, …”   In 1778 Serra obtained authorization from Rome to administer the Sacrament of Confirmation.  In this year he returned to each of the missions from San Diego to San Francisco, in order to confirm all who had been baptized.  He confirmed 5,309 persons, who were with few exceptions, Native Americans converted by the Missions he established beginning in 1769.

Three years after his death his companion, Fra Francisco Palòu, wrote in his biography, Historical Account of the Life and Apostolic Labors of the Venerable Father Fray Junipero Serra: “In this northern and new California, previously inhabited only by Gentiles, [Serra] left fifteen settlements, six inhabited by Spaniards or gente de razón, and nine by full-blooded native neophytes baptized by His Reverence and his missionary companions.”  Palóu continued, Serra was a “dedicated and selfless priest, impelled only by love for all of God’s children to spread the message of salvation and civilization to the farthest corners of the globe.”  These missions remain architectural monuments that testify to Serra’s indefatigable energy in spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the New World.

Symbol: he wears a Franciscan habit, behind him is the mission church of San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo, in Monterey, California, the second of nine mission churches that he founded along the Pacific Coast

Feast Day:  August 28
Patron Saint: of California, Vocations, and Hispanic Americans

John Nepomucene Neumann was born in Bohemia in Prachatit (then part of the Austrian Empire and today in the Czech Republic) on March 28, 1811.  On March 28, 1852, his 41st birthday, John Neumann was named bishop of Philadelphia, serving in this office until his death seven years later. He died of a heart attack on January 5, 1860, and was buried in the crypt of St. Peter’s, the Redemptorist church in Philadelphia, which has become a Shrine to his memory.  Bishop John Neumann was canonized on June 19, 1977, by Pope Paul VI for his personal sanctity, his devotion to Catholic education, and his commitment to personal pastoral visitation.    

John Neumann was the third of six children and evinced early a pious character and gifted intelligence.  He regularly joined his mother at daily Mass.  In 1831, he entered the Seminary in Budweis where he studied theology and languages, including English.  A priest, who knew that the diocese of New York had a desperate need for German-speaking priests, encouraged Neumann to travel to New York before his ordination.  On April 20, 1836, after raising just enough funds, Neumann embarked from Le Havre, landing in New York on the Feast of Corpus Christi.  The following day he arrived at the residence of Bishop Dubois, whose diocese served over 200,000 German Catholics with only 36 German-speaking priests.   Bishop Dubois ordained John Neumann a deacon on the Feast of Saint John the Baptist and a priest on the following day, June 25, 1836, in Old Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. 

Bishop Dubois assigned Neumann to the frontier of western New York where he served as pastor to about 400 German Catholic immigrants living in the 100 square miles around Niagara Falls.  There Fr. Neumann built churches, raised log schools, and taught English to the immigrant community and their children.  After six years, Fr. Neumann longed for spiritual renewal and the community of other religions.  With his Bishop’s consent, he joined the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, also known as the Redemptorists, in Baltimore on October 3, 1840.   He served parishes in Pittsburgh and Baltimore.  On February 10, 1848, John Neumann became a naturalized citizen of the United States. 

In 1852, Fr. Neumann was consecrated as the fourth bishop of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  As Bishop, Neumann lived simply, maintaining his vows of poverty as a Redemptorist priest.  He was known as an able administrator of a diocese previously plagued by debt and annually visited every parish in his diocese and all the religious communities, hospitals, and orphanages, examining the overall state of each institution.

As a Bishop, with his knowledge of languages, Neumann heard the confessions of his many German, Irish, and Italian immigrant parishioners.  He “knew his sheep, each and everyone.”   Responding to their needs, Bishop Neumann built eighty churches, including the first Italian language parish in Philadelphia, and he completed the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in Philadelphia.  He established the Catholic school system with the result that parochial schools rose across America.  He published two catechisms.  Bishop Neumann also founded a religious order for women, the Third Order of St. Francis of Glen Riddle, and drafted their Rule.  He welcomed German nuns of the Sisters of Notre Dame who eventually taught in parochial schools in Baltimore, Pittsburgh, New York, Buffalo, and Philadelphia.   

Pope Pius IX called Bishop Neumann to Rome to attend the solemn promulgation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God on December 8, 1854.  In his pastoral letter, written before his departure, Bishop Neuman wrote, “Henceforth and forever, all generations of true believers shall invoke Mary, Mother of God, as the ever-immaculate virgin, conceived without stain of original sin.”

He is called the “common man’s saint” because his greatness lay in his unwavering faith in Jesus and in Our Blessed Mother through which he met common challenges with uncommon greatness.

Symbol: he is shown wearing his Redemptorist habit with the violet zucchetto of a Bishop
Feast Day: January 5
 

Jozef De Veuster was born in Flemish Brabant in rural Belgium on January 3, 1840. Jozef joined the Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary (the Picpus Fathers) in Leuven taking the name Brother Damien on October 7, 1860.  In 1864 he traveled as a missionary for the Congregation to Hawaii where he was consecrated a priest at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace in Honolulu. 

Beginning in 1873, Fr. Damien volunteered to provide the Catholic sacraments to those suffering from leprosy (also known as Hansen’s disease) who lived in medical quarantine isolated on the eastern end of the island of Molokai.  After eleven years, Fr. Damian became infected by leprosy, sharing not only his parishioner’s marginalization from society but also their physical pain.  He died of leprosy on April 15, 1889, and was buried in the cemetery he had helped to create on Molokai.  Fr. Damien, known as the Apostle of the Lepers, was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on October 11, 2009.

Leprosy is thought to have arrived in Hawaii with workers from China.  In 1865, King Kamehameha V of Hawaii and the Hawaiian Legislature passed the Act to Prevent the Spread of Leprosy and established a medical quarantine colony for those suffering from the disease on the eastern end of the Molokai island.   When Bishop Louis Désiré Maigret sought a Catholic priest to minister to the people living in isolation from society, Fr. Damien along with three other priests volunteered. 

Fr. Damien arrived at the leper colony on Molokai on May 10, 1873, where 816 people infected with leprosy lived.  Fr. Damien worked with the residents to build a church which they dedicated to Saint Philomena.  As their priest, Fr. Damien celebrated the sacraments, taught the catechism, and preached the faith – with words and deeds. 

On Molokai, Fr. Damien helped the superintendents of the colony who were appointed by the king to organize the planting of crops to make the community self-sufficient.  He assisted in the construction of roads, schools, hospitals, and houses.  He performed routine nursing tasks, including dressing ulcers.  Fr. Damien also visited the sick, anointed the dying, built coffins, dug graves, and performed funeral masses delivering the souls of those afflicted with this earthly suffering to Jesus Christ.  After six months he wrote to his brother who had remained in Europe, “I make myself a leper with the lepers to gain all to Jesus Christ.” 

For his dedicated work in the colony, King David Kalakaua bestowed on Fr. Damien the honor of “Knight Commander of the Royal Order of Kalakaua.  Crown Princess Lydia Lili’uokalani visited the colony to present the medal.   Heartbroken at the devastation to the bodies of those infected with the disease, the Crown Princess acclaimed Fr. Damien’s work on Molokai on her return. Her words inspired congregations in Europe and America, including Catholic, Anglican, and Protestant, to send food, medicine, clothing, and supplies to the colony. 

In December 1884 while drawing a bath, Damien put his foot into the scalding water, making his skin blister.  Because Fr. Damien did not feel any pain, he realized that he had contracted leprosy after 11 years on the island.  He continued to work until March 1889 when the disease confined him to his bed.  He was cared for during his last days by Sister Marianne Cope who had assisted Fr. Damien since 1883 (notes on her biography follow).  Fr Damien died of leprosy on April 15, 1889, at the age of 49.  His funeral Mass was said the following day at St. Philomena’s after which the whole colony followed the funeral cortege to the cemetery.   

In January 1936 at the request of King Leopold III of Belgium, Fr. Damien’s body was returned to Belgium and re-interred in Leuven.  After his beatification in June 1995, his right hand was returned to Hawaii and re-interred in his original grave on Molokai.   

A statue of Fr. Damien stands on the steps of the Capitol Building of the State of Hawaii and he represents Hawaii in the National Statuary Collection in the U. S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.  In celebrating Fr. Damien’s canonization on October 11, 2009, President Barak Obama cited Fr. Damien’s resolute care for those suffering from leprosy as a model for treating those suffering from the pandemic of HIV/AIDS.  In fact, several clinics throughout the USA serving HIV/AIDS patients bear Fr. Damien’s name.

Symbol: he is shown wearing the habit of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary with the native people and children suffering leprosy

Feast Day May 10;
April 15, the anniversary of his death, is a minor state holiday known as Fr. Damien Day, in Hawaii;
on this date, the Episcopal Church USA celebrates Fr. Damien together with Sr. Marianne Cope

Patron Saint: of people with leprosy, the State of Hawaii and the Diocese of Honolulu
 

Stanislaw Kostka was born, the second of seven brothers, on October 28, 1550, in Rostkowo, Poland
to an ancient noble family.  He died at the age of seventeen on the night of August 14, 1568.  His holiness was acclaimed during his lifetime and Pope Benedict XIII proclaimed him a saint, together with another Jesuit novice, Aloysius Gonzaga (no. 22, below) on December 31, 1726.

When Stanislaw was fourteen, his family sent him with his older brother to Vienna where they studied at a Jesuit college.   At school, Stanislaw joined the Congregation of Saint Barbara and Our Lady.  After two years in Vienna, Stanislaw fell seriously ill.  He wished to receive the Eucharist, but the owner of the home where he stayed was a Lutheran who would not allow a Roman priest to enter the house.  According to tradition, Stanislaw prayed to his patron, Saint Barbara, who appeared to him in a vision with two angels who administered the eucharist to him.  He also had a vision of Our Lady who encouraged him to become a Jesuit priest.  After these two visions, Stanislaw decided to embrace religious life in the Society of Jesus. 

Fearful of his family’s opposition, the Jesuit fathers in Vienna hesitated to receive him.  Nonetheless, Stanislaw understood that his application would receive favorable support from the general of the Society of Jesus in Rome.  Stanislaw then left Vienna traveling to Rome, on foot, dressed as a mendicant.  He stayed for a month with Saint Peter Canisius at Dillingen and taught school. 

His family pursued him to force his return to Vienna, but their travel was beset by ill luck and Stanislaw arrived in Rome unimpeded on October 25, 1567.  In Rome St. Francis Borgia received him into the novitiate of the Jesuit order a few days after his arrival.   Stanislaw entered the Collegio Romano to study philosophy and theology. The master of novitiates, Fr. Giulio Fazio described Stanislaw as a “model student and a mirror of religious perfection.” 

After a short illness, Stanislaw died of a high fever on the night of August 14, 1568, in Rome, having prayed to the Virgin to allow him to celebrate the Feast of the Assumption with her in Heaven.   Shortly before his death, Stanislaw told a priest that he saw Mary surrounded by many angels. 

On the 450th anniversary of his death, August 15, 2018, in a letter to the Bishop of Plock, Pope Francis wrote, quoting Pope John Paul II, “The journey of his short life, begun in Rostkowo in Mazowsze, through Vienna and then to Rome, can be compared to a great cross-country race towards the goal of every Christian’s life, which is holiness.”[1]

Symbol: Lily, Jesuit habit, Most Blessed Sacrament
Patron Saint of young students
Feast day August 15

The following biography is taken from the website of the Diocese of Richmond, Virginia which is sponsoring the cause of his Sainthood:
Francis (“Frank”) Joseph Parater was born into a devout Catholic family on October 10, 1897, in the city of Richmond, Virginia.  His parents were Captain Francis Joseph Parater, Sr., and his second wife, Mary Raymond.  Mary Raymond was raised as a devout Episcopalian and communicant. At her marriage, she agreed to raise any children born to them as Catholics and converted to Catholicism herself.

Frank was baptized at Saint Patrick’s Church on Church Hill.  Frank’s father was a city employee who cared for the park across from their family home and who also cared for the garden at the Monastery of the Visitation two blocks away.   Frank attended daily mass at the monastery where he served as an altar boy from the day of his first communion until he left Richmond for college.  

Frank was educated at the Xaverian Brother’s School (currently Saint Patrick’s School) and at Benedictine High School in Richmond. He graduated in 1917, top in his class and valedictorian.  In his late teens, Frank became very active in the Boy Scouts of America and achieved the rank of Eagle Scout.  

In 1917, Frank began studies for the priesthood at Belmont Abbey Seminary College in North Carolina.  He continued to lead a very devout life as is detailed in the journal he kept while there. His stated goal was: “To strive by every possible means to become a pure and worthy priest, an alterus Christus [sic].” During this period, he continued to go to Mass and receive Holy Communion daily, prayed the Rosary and Memorare daily, and went to confession weekly in accord with a Rule of Life he had drawn up for himself.  He had an abiding sense that “…the Sacred Heart never fails those that love Him.”  

While at the college seminary, Frank decided to study for the diocesan priesthood because of the great need for priestly ministry in his native Virginia and to forego his desire for monastic life in favor of direct service to the people of God.

In the Fall of 1919, the Right Reverend Denis J. O’Connell, Bishop of Richmond, sent Frank to study at the Pontifical North American College in Rome where he matriculated on November 25, 1919.  In late January 1920, Frank came down with rheumatism which developed into rheumatic fever and caused him tremendous suffering.  On January 27, he was taken to the Hospital of the Blue Nuns and given the Last Rites.   With devotion and unafraid of death, he knelt on the bed and made his last communion.  On February 6, Monsignor Charles A. O’Hern, rector of the college, offered the Mass of the Sacred Heart for Frank.  Frank Parater died on February 7, 1920.  He was buried in the College Mausoleum at Campo Verano.  

In December 1919 Frank Parater had written an Act of Oblation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus which was sealed and marked to be read only in the event of his death in Rome. Frank expressed his motivation for making his offering in this way:
“I have nothing to leave or to give but my life and this I have consecrated to the Sacred Heart to be used as He wills…This is what I live for and in case of death what I die for. …Since my childhood, I have wanted to die for God and my neighbor. Shall I have this grace? I do not know, but if I go on living, I shall live for this same purpose; every action of my life here is offered to God for the spread and success of the Catholic Church in Virginia. …I shall be of more service to my diocese in Heaven than I can ever be on earth.”

The Act of Oblation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus was discovered after his death on February 7, 1920, by Frank Byrne, a fellow seminarian of the Diocese of Richmond.  Two popes have asked for copies of it, and it has been published in English and in the L’Osservatore Romano in Italian.
 

St. Aloysius Gonzaga was born on March 9, 1568, the eldest of seven children, at the family castle in Castiglione delle Stiviere between Brescia and Mantua in northern Italy.  He died at the age of twenty-three on June 21, 1591.  Fourteen years after his death, on October 19, 1605, Pope Paul V beatified Aloysius Gonzaga; he was canonized with another Jesuit novice, Stanislaus Kostka (no. 20, above), on December 31, 1726, by Pope Benedict XIII.

Aloysius de Gonzaga, called Luigi, was the son of Ferrante de Gonzaga (1544-1586) of the noble House of Gonzaga, Marquis of Castiglione in the Duchy of Mantua, and Marta Tana di Santena, of the noble Della Rovere family.  His mother was a lady-in-waiting to Isabel, the wife of King Philip II of Spain.  As the first-born son, Luigi was in line to inherit his father’s title and property.  To prepare him for his role, Luigi was trained as a soldier and educated in language and in the arts.   In 1576, at the age of eight, Luigi was sent to Florence with his younger brother Rodolfo to serve in the Court of Grand Duke Francesco I de’ Medici.  While there he fell ill with a disease of the kidneys and during his recuperation read about the lives of saints.  At the age of nine, he reputedly took a private vow of chastity.  At the age of eleven, in November 1579, the two brothers were sent to the Court of the Duke of Mantua.  Luigi reportedly was shocked both by the violence and by the frivolity that he witnessed in these noble Italian courts.

            In 1580, Luigi returned to Castiglione.  On July 22 of that year, he received his First Communion from Cardinal St. Charles Borromeo.  He taught catechism classes to boys in Castiglione and visited the houses of Capuchin friars and Barnabites in Casale Monferrato where his family spent the winter.  In 1581 his family traveled to Spain at the invitation of the Holy Roman Empress Maria of Austria, arriving in Madrid in March 1582.  Luigi and his brother became pages for her son, Infante Diego. 

At the Spanish court, Luigi had a Jesuit confessor who encouraged him to join the Order of the Society of Jesus.  After the family’s return to Italy in 1584, Luigi pursued his intention to enter the Jesuit order against his father’s wishes.  In 1585 he renounced his birthright and traveled to Rome where he stayed at the home of his cousin, Cardinal Scipione Gonzaga.  On November 25, 1585, Luigi Gonzaga was accepted into the novitiate of the Society of Jesus in Rome. Luigi took his religious vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience on November 25, 1587, and began his studies in theology to prepare for ordination. 

During these years, Luigi continued to suffer from renal problems and his health deteriorated.   In 1590, Luigi had a vision in which the Archangel Gabriel told him that he would die within the year.  And, within that year, the plague broke out in Rome.  The Jesuits opened a hospital for those stricken and Luigi Gonzaga volunteered to work with the plague victims who he washed and fed and prepared to receive the sacraments.  He confessed to his spiritual director, St. Robert Bellarmine, that the sights and smells physically repulsed him, but he persevered in this work.   

By March 3, 1591, Aloysius Gonzaga himself became infected with the plague.  He had a second vision that he would die within the Octave of the feast of Corpus Christi.  In a letter to his mother on June 5, Aloysius Gonzaga wrote: “Consider again and again, most noble lady, this infinite mercy of God and be careful never to make little of it, as you undoubtedly could if you were to lament as though he were dead for one who is living in the sight of God.  There he will give you the help of his intercession much more effectively than when he was still in this life.”[1]

On June 21, 1591, St. Robert Bellarmine gave Gonzaga his last rites.  Just before midnight, Luigi Gonzaga died, his eyes fixed on the crucifix he held in his hands.  He was buried in the Church of the Most Holy Annunciation of Saint Ignatius Loyola in Rome.  His remains now rest in an urn of lapis lazuli in the Lancellotti chapel.  His head was translated to the basilica bearing his name in Castiglione delle Stiviere.  

The Carmelite mystic, St. Maria Magdalena de Pazzi, claimed to have had a vision of Aloysius Gonzaga on April 4, 1600, describing him as radiant in glory because of his interior works, a hidden martyr for his love of God. 

Symbols: he wears a black cassock and surplice, his attributes are a lily for his innocence, a cross for his piety and suffering, and a rosary for his devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary
Patron Saint of students, Roman Catholic youth; plague victims, AIDS sufferers, and their caregivers;  
Feast day:  June 21

Jan Berchmans was the eldest of five children born in the Barony of Diest on March 13, 1599.  He died in Rome on August 13, 1622, at the age of 22 as a novitiate in the Society of Jesus.  Berchmans was canonized by Pope Leo XIII on January 15, 1888. 

Jan Berchmans was known for his piety at an early age, rising early to serve at Mass with “great fervor.”   In 1604, the cult of Notre Dame de Montaigu (Our Lady of Scherpenheuvel, in Dutch) was approved by the Archbishop of Mechelen who published a list of miracles attributed to the Virgin’s intercession.  The history of the Shrine dated back to the 14th century when a wooden statue of the Virgin was placed on an oak tree at the top of a hill in Zirchem, located in the Barony of Diest.  Among the pilgrims to Notre Dame de Montaigu was the young Jan Berchmans, who is reported to have made various pilgrimages, reciting the rosary as he walked the few miles from his home to the Shrine. 

In 1608, when he was nine, his mother became ill with a long and serious illness.  Her son would pass several hours each day by her bedside.  When his mother died, Jan’s father entrusted his care to the local parish priest who believed that the Lord would work wonders in his soul.   After completing his schooling in Diest, he moved to Mechelen where he worked for the canons of the cathedral dedicated to Saint Rumbold and studied with the Jesuit fathers.  Upon entering the Jesuit college at Mechelen, Jan Berchmans enrolled in the Society of the Blessed Virgin and resolved to recite her Office daily.  He also made a special act of devotion to Mary that was proscribed by the director of the Society.   

On September 24, 1616, Berchmans entered the Jesuit novitiate.  After making his first vows, in Antwerp, on January 24, 1618, he traveled to Rome to study philosophy at the Collegio Romano, entering his third-year class in 1621.  In August 1621 Berchmans participated with clear commentary in a discussion of philosophy at the Greek College, then administered by the Dominicans.   However,r upon his return to the Jesuit College he was seized with Roman fever, suffered severe dysentery, and on August 13, 1621, at the age of 22, he died in Rome. 
 
Berchmans had a special appreciation for the value of ordinary things and a strong devotion to Our Lady.  To him is owed the Little Rosary of the Immaculate Conception.  

Like St. Aloysius Gonzaga, Jan Berchmans is buried at the church of Saint Ignatius in Rome.  The Jesuit college at Mechelen where Berchmans studied was relocated to Leuven, Belgium, and there, in the side altar of the Jesuit church of Saint Michel, is a silver reliquary holding his heart.   

Symbols: his hands are clasped holding a crucifix, his book of rules, and his rosary.

Patron Saint of Altar servers and like the other Jesuit novices on this panel, Saints Stanislaw Kostka (no. 20, above) and Aloysius Gonzaga (no. 22, above), Jan Berchmans is a patron saint of young students.

Feat Day on August 13, the day of his dies natalis (heavenly birth) in the Catholic Church’s Martyrologium Romanum; he is celebrated by the Society of Jesus on November 16
 

Nelson Henry Baker was born in Buffalo, New York on February 16, 1842, and died on July 29, 1936, at Lackawanna (Limestone Hill), New York at the age of 94, where he had built a minor basilica, a home for infants, a home for unwed mothers, a boys’ orphanage, a boys’ protectory, a hospital, a nurses’ home, and a grade and high school all under the patronage of an Association dedicated to Our Lady of Victory.  The parish of Our Lady of Victory and the Diocese of Buffalo support his canonization.  On January 14, 2011, Pope Benedict designated him a Venerable and authorized the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to recognize his “heroic virtue”.  

Born the son of a Lutheran father and a Roman Catholic mother, Nelson Baker was baptized a Lutheran at birth and re-baptized in the Roman Catholic Church at the age of ten.  He spent his early years in Buffalo, NY and, after graduating from high school, joined his father and older brother working in the family’s grocery and general store.   In June of 1863, at the age of 21, Nelson was recruited to defend the State of New York against the Confederate army which, led by General Robert E. Lee, had arrived in southern Pennsylvania.  His regiment, the 74th New York, defended the bridges and an aqueduct near Harrisburg, PA forcing Confederate troops to retreat.  His conscription lasted only 30 days after which he returned to Buffalo.   On his return from battle, Nelson opened Baker and Meyer, a feed and grain business, with a friend, Joe Meyer. 

In thanksgiving for the blessings received, Nelson Baker gave generously of his time and talent to the Catholic orphanage at Limestone Hill; there he sensed a calling to become a priest.  He entered the seminary of Our Lady of the Angels in Buffalo on September 2, 1869, at the age of 27.  In May 1874 Baker joined a pilgrimage to the great Catholic shrines of Europe, including St. Peter’s, the tombs of the Apostles in Rome, and Lourdes, but what most impressed Baker was Notre-Dame des Victoires (Our Lady of Victories) on the Ile de France in Paris.  He returned to Buffalo hoping to honor Our Lady of Victories in America.

Baker was ordained a priest on the Feast of St. Joseph, March 19, 1876, at St. Joseph’s cathedral in Buffalo, NY.  His first assignment after ordination was to assist his friend, Fr. Hines, at the orphanage and protectory for boys at Limestone Hill.  The two institutions were mired in debt, a situation that as the years progressed Baker came to view as hopeless.  After six years, Baker asked for, and was granted, a sabbatical of one year, when he served in a parish in Corning, NY.   

In 1883 Baker returned to Limestone Hill as Administrator where he would remain until his death.  On his return, he withdrew his savings earned during his business career to partially pay the Institutions’ debts.  Then, he created an Association, dedicated to Our Lady of Victories, to raise money for Limestone Hill, writing letters to Catholic patrons throughout the United States seeking membership dues of twenty-five cents (25ȼ) to support the Association.  In a few years’ time, he paid off the debt and amassed sufficient funds to build a larger chapel and add two institutions. 

When natural gas was discovered in the early 1890s in the Buffalo area, Fr. Baker, after praying to Our Lady of Victories, decided to drill for natural gas under Limestone Hill.   The drillers followed Fr. Baker, as he prayed the Rosary in procession with others from the Institute.  When he stopped, he buried a small statue of Our Lady and told the men to drill at that spot.  As drilling progressed without success, the project was dubbed “Fr. Baker’s Folly”.  But, he persisted, striking a pool of natural gas at 1,137 feet in depth.  The well continues to service the needs of Limestone Hill and nearby families.

When the Erie Canal was dredged at the turn of the century, diggers discovered the bones and bodies of infants and small children who, it was supposed, had been thrown into the canal by mothers unable to provide for their care.  This sorrowful situation inspired Fr. Baker to open Our Lady of Victories Infant Home as a sanctuary for unwed mothers and their babies.  If mothers did not want to keep their children, a crib and blanket were provided beside an unlocked door to allow the women to deposit their children in need anonymously during the night.   After the home was completed in 1908, Fr. Baker made nightly rounds tucking in the children and blessing them.  By 1919 Fr. Baker added a maternity hospital nearby which grew into a 275-bed general hospital.

In 1921, when Fr. Baker was 79 years old, he began building a cathedral dedicated to his patroness, Our Lady of Victories.  Financed by Her Association the cathedral was completed in May of 1926 without Fr. Baker having to take on any debt.  Pope Benedict XV elevated it to the dignity of a minor basilica on October 3, 1926.  The year, 1926, coincided with the 50th anniversary of Fr. Baker’s consecration as a priest.

With the crash of October 1929, Our Lady of Victories Association fed the hungry, cared for the sick, and in general helped those in need in its community, earning Fr. Baker the sobriquet, “Padre of the Poor”.  

Symbol: The Basilica of Our Lady of Victories stands behind Fr. Baker
 

Mary Magdalen Bentivoglio was born Countess Annetta Bentivoglio in Rome on July 29, 1834, the twelfth child of Count Dominic Bentivoglio of Bologna who was a general in the Papal army.  After the death of her father in 1851 and her mother in 1860, Pope Pius IX, out of regard for her father’s service to the Holy See, took responsibility for her and her two remaining unmarried sisters, placing them in the Monastery of San Lorenzo in Panisperna.  San Lorenzo was a cloistered convent in which the nuns followed the Rule of St. Clare and devoted themselves to prayer.  Contessa Annetta took her vows on the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, October 4, 1865, taking the name Mary Magdalen because she had impressed the Lord Jesus himself.   

The Bentivoglio sisters lived in San Lorenzo in Panisperna in Rome for ten years.  When the monasteries were closed in 1875, during the seizure of the papal States by the Kingdom of Italy, they traveled to the United States at the invitation of Mother Ignatius Hayes, founder of the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception in Little Falls, Minnesota.  Mother Ignatius hoped to establish a presence of contemplative, cloistered nuns in the United States.  Pope Pius IX appointed Mary Magdalen as abbess and her sister, Maria Constanza, as vicaress, of a new convent of nuns who would follow the Rule of the Poor Clares. 

On their arrival in New York City, on October 12, 1875, the women encountered strong resistance to their enclosed, contemplative way of life.  Their chaplain, a Franciscan friar, forbade them from continuing to Minnesota where Mother Ignatius’s invitation awaited them.  The Bishops of New York and Philadelphia needed nuns as teachers and nurses and ruled that the charism of the Poor Clares was incompatible with the American way of life.   The Franciscan Minister Provincial based in St. Louis, Missouri, rejected the offer to the sisters of a home extended by the Bishop of New Orleans.  The Franciscan Provincial instead ordered the sisters to move to Cleveland, Ohio, where they were to join a group of German nuns.  Difficulties in language and differences in their Rules of life forced the Italians to leave the German convent in Ohio.   Mother Mary Magdalen responded to these difficulties by saying, “All my life I have asked for crosses, and now that He has sent them, why should I not be glad”.  Modern Saints: Their Lives and Faces, by Ann Ball, 1991.

Mother Mary Magdalen ultimately established three convents dedicated to the charism of contemplative prayer in the United States.  The first in Omaha, Nebraska, was founded in 1878 with the help of a philanthropist, John A. Creighton.  Creighton believed in the power of their prayer, having entrusted to their prayers the hope of a childless couple.  The couple had twins.  The Bishop of Omaha welcomed the sisters but did not offer any financial support.  The convent of the Poor Clares in Omaha was officially recognized by Pope Pius IX on November 15, 1881.   In 1885, the Bentivoglio sisters founded a second convent in New Orleans, Louisiana.  Upon their return to Omaha, a nun in the Omaha convent accused the Bentivoglio sisters of personal and financial impropriety.  Her accusations forced the sisters to leave the convent that they had founded.  The sisters took refuge with the Sisters of Mercy.  They were cleared of the charges only after legal proceedings which lasted two years.  Ten years later, in 1897, Mary Magdalen left Omaha to establish a third convent of the Poor Clares in Evansville, Indiana, thanks to a bequest from a relative of a nun in the Omaha convent.   Life in Indiana was hard, as the building donated to them had no furniture and no endowment for food.  The nuns lived on the crates in which their belongings had been packed and at times subsisted on bread and water. 

Mother Mary Magdalen died in Evansville, Indiana, lying on the bare floor of the convent on August 18, 1905, at the age of 81.  At her death, the sisters in the room saw her body surrounded by a bright light and smelled the odor of floral perfume.  Soon after, many cures and favors attributed to her intercession were reported.  The sisters petitioned the Bishop of Indiana to investigate.  Mother Mary Magdalen was declared Venerable in 1932 and in 1969 the Sacred Congregation of Rome issued a decree opening the cause of her beatification.

Cornelia Connelly (née Peacock) was born in Philadelphia, PA on January 15, 1809.  She died on April 18, 1879, at the age of 70 in St. Leonard’s on the Sea in Sussex, England, where she established the first Holy Child school in England.   Cornelia Connelly founded the Society of the Holy Child of Jesus (Società del Santo Bambino Gesù) in England in 1846.   The Society is today an international community of Roman Catholic sisters approved by Pope Leo XIII which operates schools and convents in 14 countries in Europe, Africa, and the United States.  In 1992 her life and work were recognized when Saint Pope John Paul II declared her Venerable. 

When Cornelia was fourteen her mother died leaving her an orphan as her father had died five years earlier.  She lived with her half-sister Isabella until 1831 when she married the Rev. Pierce Connelly, an Episcopal priest.  Before her marriage, she was baptized into the Episcopal church. Rev. Connolly was five years her senior, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.  After their marriage, he accepted a call to be rector of the Episcopal Church in Natchez, Mississippi.  They had three children, two sons, Mercer and John Henry, and a daughter, Adeline.   Their marriage seemingly was a happy one in these early years. 

Unfortunately, Pierce Connolly was unable to maintain any vows, personal or professional.
 
In 1835, Pierce resigned from his vows as an Episcopal priest and from his parish.  He moved to Rome in order to convert to the Catholic faith.  Cornelia supported his decision and converted to the Catholic faith in New Orleans while they were awaiting passage to Italy.  In Rome, Pierce Connolly met Pope Gregory XVI and compellingly pleaded his cause for admission to the Catholic Church.  Celibacy requirements prevented, however, his ordination to the Catholic priesthood. 

The Connolly’s returned to the United States in 1838 and became teachers in a Jesuit college in Grand Cocteau, Louisiana.  A fourth child died soon after birth in the summer of 1839; in February 1840, their two-year-old son, John Henry was pushed by their dog into a vat of boiling sugar and died of burns after 43 hours in his mother’s arms.  Cornelia gave birth to their fifth child, Frank, in the spring of 1841.  In her grief at the loss of two children, Cornelia turned to Our Lady of Sorrows to whom she remained devoted for the rest of her life.
 
In 1842, Pierce Connolly left Cornelia and returned to Rome where he sought to be ordained as a Catholic priest.  As a condition of Pierce’s ordination, the Catholic church required that Cornelia consent to an official separation from their marriage vows and to Pierce’s vow of chastity.  Cornelia arrived in Rome two years later and pleaded with Pierce to reconsider the breakup of their family, but he refused.   In May 1844 Cornelia pronounced a vow of perpetual chastity releasing her husband for ordination.  Pierce was ordained a priest in the Catholic church in June 1844.  Pierce traveled to England as chaplain to Lord Shrewsbury, a Catholic nobleman whom he had met in Rome.

Cornelia, now 36 years old, was the single mother of 12-year-old Mercer, 10-year-old Adeline, and 5-year-old Frank.  To help support her family, the English Bishop Nicholas Wiseman invited Cornelia to England to educate Catholic girls.  Cornelia formed the Society of the Holy Child of Jesus with the purpose to teach young women from poor families and drew up a set of rules to regulate the lives of the women who would join her in this calling.  To avoid scandal in Protestant England, Bishop Wiseman ended the visitation rights of Pierce to Cornelia.  The Bishop sent Cornelia to live and work in a large convent at St. Mary’s Church in Derby and he insisted that she place her children in boarding school.   At St. Mary’s Cornelia ran a day school for 200 pupils and an evening school for factory women, and a Sunday school, as well as a school for novices who wished to enter the Society of the Holy Child of Jesus.  In December 1847, Cornelia took her perpetual vows as a nun and was installed as superior general of the Society. 

Earlier that year, in June 1847, Pierce Connolly abandoned the Catholic Church and his ordination vows as a Catholic priest.  He also demanded that Cornelia abandon her vow of chastity and return to him and to married life.  Cornelia refused certain that she was where God wanted her. 

In January 1848, Pierce Connolly, contesting the jurisdiction of Bishop Wiseman over his wife, removed their children from their boarding schools and denied Cornelia all contact with them until she returned to him and to their marriage.  That same year, Pierce Connolly sued Cornelia Connolly in secular English courts, seeking a writ for restitution of his conjugal rights.  Pierce Connolly omitted from his pleading that their separation was initiated by him and by his decision to convert to Catholicism and that Cornelia’s vows of chastity were made to allow Pierce to be ordained a Catholic priest.  To avoid scandal, Lord Shrewsbury asked Cornelia to leave England, but she refused stating that she would not betray her vow of chastity or the Society of the Holy Child of Jesus which she had recently founded.  Bishop Wiseman supported her decision and provided lawyers for her defense.  The case fueled the anti-Catholic fire.  On Guy Fawkes Day marchers carried effigies of Cornelia and the Catholic bishop who were denounced from Protestant pulpits.

In 1850, the Protestant judge in Connolly v. Connolly refused to recognize the laws of the Roman church and ordered Cornelia to return to Pierce and to render him conjugal rights or go to prison.    On appeal, the Privy Council held in Cornelia’s favor and ordered Pierce to pay her court costs, but she could not regain custody of her children who, under British law, were the property of their father.  She endured further sorrow when her firstborn son, Mercer died in 1853 of yellow fever in Louisiana where he had been sent by his father.  Pierce Connolly continued to persecute Cornelia throughout her life, publishing tracts against her and the Catholic church.  She stated that the Society of the Holy Child was “founded on her breaking heart.”     [Flaxman, Radegunde. A woman styled bold: the life of Cornelia Connelly, 1809–1879 (London: Darton Longman & Todd, 1991) p. 78]

Cornelia’s work became her life.  She founded several Holy Child schools in England, one in France, and another in the United States.  The schools offered poor young women a chance to expand their minds and change their lives.  Her teaching methods were radical, focusing on expanding the minds of young girls to give them a real chance in life.  In 1863 she wrote a “Book of Studies” that outlined the school’s curriculum, including the importance of the arts and outdoor activities.   
 

Frederic Baraga was born on June 29, 1797, in the duchy of Carniola, today in Trebnje, Slovenia.  He was the first bishop of the Diocese of Marquette, Michigan where he served from 1853 until 1868.  Bishop Baraga died in Marquette at 70 years of age on January 19, 1868, in the 37th year of his ministry to the native peoples of the Great Lakes.   Baraga studied Native American languages, publishing Ottawa Anamie-Misinaigan (1837), the first book written in the Ottawa language, the monumental Dictionary of the Otchipwe (Chippewa) language, and Catholic catechisms and prayer books in both languages.  His native name was Irenej Friderik Baraga.  His letters about his missionary work were published widely in Europe, inspiring many, including St. John Neumann (Panel 5, n. 17), to emigrate to the United States as missionaries.  In 2012, Pope Benedict XVI declared Bishop Baraga a Venerable.

Frederic Baraga was the fourth of five children born to John Nepomuc and Maria Katherine Josefa de Jencic Baraga who inherited the estate of Mala Vas and a substantial fortune.  Both his parents died young leaving Baraga an orphan at the age of 14.  He moved to Ljubljana where he lived in the house of George Dolinar, a lay professor in the diocesan seminary.   He was fluent in Slovenian, French, and German and studied Latin and Greek in school.  Baraga attended law school at the University of Vienna where he graduated in 1821.  In Vienna, he met St. Clement Maria Hofbauer who shared with him the spiritual writings of his Redemptorist founder, St. Alphonsus Liguori (panel 34).  In 1865, Bishop Baraga supported Hofbauer’s cause for sainthood in a letter to Pope Pius IX: “For three years I enjoyed the singular blessing of having as my confessor the Servant of God, a blessing I number among the greatest blessing Divine Providence has granted me during my entire life.”

With Hofbaurer’s encouragement, Frederic attended the seminary at Ljubljana and was ordained a Catholic priest on September 21, 1823, in the cathedral of St. Nicholas.  At this time he renounced his birthright and the fortune he had inherited.  He strongly opposed the heresy of Jansenism and embraced penance, poverty, and service of the poor.  Baraga wrote a prayer book in Slovenian for the Catholic laity.

In 1830, Baraga responded to a call from the Bishop of Cincinnati, Ohio, for priests to minister to a growing Catholic population.  Baraga arrived in Cincinnati on January 18, 1831.  The Bishop sent Baraga to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to minister to the large German immigrant population who had emigrated there to work in the iron and copper mines.  He also began to minister to the tribes native to the region.  His ministry allowed him to study the native languages at various missions along the shore of Lake Michigan: to the Ottawa Indians at Arbre Croche (Harbor Springs to Cross Village, Michigan), 1831-1833, and at Grand River (Grand Rapids, Michigan), 1833-1835.  In 1835 he moved north to minister to the Ojibway (Chippewa) Indians at La Pointe, Wisconsin where he stayed until 1843 when he founded a mission at L’Anse on Lake Superior. 

Baraga traveled long distances on foot and, in winter months, on snowshoes, earning the titles, “Apostle of the Lakelands” and “Snowshoe Priest”.  He catechized and baptized many, establishing communities around a church and a school.  Baraga worked to protect the Indian tribes from forced relocation.  He opposed the fur traders who enticed the Natives with whiskey and guns.  He encouraged agriculture.  Each winter his converts were a little better prepared in log homes with winter provisions from their gardens because of their industry and sober living.  His publications introduced Europeans to Native American culture.

On November 1, 1853, Pope Pius IX created the diocese of Sault Ste Marie, Michigan, and named Baraga its first Bishop.  Although he spoke eight languages fluently, Baraga had difficulty finding priests who could do the same.  He traveled twice to Europe to raise funds for his diocese.  Before leaving he wrote his first pastoral letter in English and Ojibway.  His message: stand firm in faith, adore, respect, obey and love God all the days of your life.  His remains the only pastoral letters printed in the language of the native peoples of America.

In 1866, Bishop Baraga moved the Cathedral to Marquette which was more centrally located and easier to reach by ship and train.  Due to his hard work and dedication, Bishop Baraga reported to the Holy See that his diocese rested on a firm foundation, with enough priests and churches to meet the needs of his population.    He died on the early morning of the Feast of the Holy Name, January 19, 1868, and is buried below the altar in the Cathedral of St. Peter in Marquette.    Catholics and non-Catholics wrote after his death that a Saint had lived and died in their midst.

Symbol: behind Bishop Baraga is the Mission Church of Our Savior Friend of Children (now known as Holy Angels), built by Bishop Baraga in 1856-1857 to serve the Native Americans and French Traders at Payment Landing on Sugar Island, Sault Ste Marie, Michigan.  The church is open in the summer months and was restored thanks to generous private donations, including from the Sault Tribe. 
 

Mother Mary Angeline Teresa McCrory was born in Mountjoy in Northern Ireland on January 21, 1893, and she died on her 91st birthday in 1984 at the St. Teresa Motherhouse at Avila-On-Hudson in Germantown, New York.  She founded an order of Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm.  On June 28, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI recognized her life and work and declared her Venerable. 

When she was seven years old her family left Ireland and moved to Mossend, Scotland.  Their house abutted the Holy Family Church whose pastor, Rev. Dean Cronin, was influential in Mary Angeline’s calling to religious life.  At the age of nineteen, she joined the Order of the Little Sisters of the Poor and made her novitiate in La Tour, France.  Before her departure for France, she visited Fr. Cronin who offered her a book from his shelves; Mary Angeline picked The Life of St. Teresa of Avila, a Carmelite nun.  After professing her vows, the Order sent Sister Mary Angeline to the United States where she arrived in November 1915.  In 1926 she was assigned to be the Superior of a Home for the Aged in Bronx, New York.  
 
Sister Mary Angeline was concerned that the European customs followed in the home did not meet the needs of the elderly in New York City.  After discussing her concerns with Patrick Hayes, Cardinal of New York, Sister Angeline withdrew from the Order of the Little Sisters of the Poor.  With the Cardinal’s blessing, she formed a new congregation of nuns within the Carmelite Order devoted to the care of the elderly and the infirm.  This is the first order of nuns organized to care solely for the aged.

Sister Mary Angeline served in the Bronx as superior general of the Carmelite order she founded until 1978.  Sister Kevin Patricia, the prioress of the sisters in the Bronx, stated “Mother always felt that it was important to reach out and clasp the hand of an aged person. It was important to have that human touch, that kindness. She would stress that if she were here today.”  

As of 2019, the Carmelite Order, founded by Sister Angeline serves in 18 elder-care facilities around the USA and in one in Ireland.
 

Henriette Delille was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on March 11, 1813.  Of Creole heritage, Henriette’s great-great-grandmother was a slave who arrived in the United States from West Africa.  Henriette died on November 16, 1862, at the age of 49, having established an Order of Sisters and an associated Lay Association dedicated to the Holy Family to serve black Americans, both slave and free, in New Orleans.  In 1988 Saint Pope John Paul II named her a Servant of God.  In 1997 the United States Catholic Bishops unanimously endorsed her cause for sainthood.  On March 27, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI named her a Venerable.  Miracles attributed to her are under medical scrutiny; if she is canonized Henriette DeLille will become the first U.S. native-born African American saint.

Henriette’s mother, Marie-Josèphe Diaz, was a free woman of color born in New Orleans and her father, Jean-Baptiste Lille Sarpy was born in Fumel, France.  Because of restrictions on interracial marriages, theirs was a common-law union.  They lived in the French Quarter near St. Louis Cathedral.   Henriette’s sister, Cecile Bonile, followed her mother in a common law marriage with a wealthy Austrian, Samuel Hart, and her descendants are in touch with members of the Order of the Holy Family.  Funeral records found in 2004 may indicate that Henriette had two sons both of whom died before the age of three.  However, Henriette, raised as a Roman Catholic in the French tradition, rejected marriage and from her childhood followed a religious path. 

In 1827 when she was 14 Henriette became a teaching assistant to Sister Marthe Frontier at the school she founded for children of color, teaching slave children when such education was prohibited by law.  In 1834, Henriette was confirmed in the Catholic faith.  When Henriette was 24 years old, she had a religious experience, writing on the flyleaf of a book about the Eucharist, “Je crois en Dieu.  J’espère en Dieu.  J’aime. Je v [eux] vivre et mourir pour Dieu.”  [“I believe in God.  I hope in God.  I love.  I want to live and die for God.”]

In 1836, with two friends, Juliette Gaudin, and Josephine Charles, Henriette drew up rules for a small unrecognized congregation called The Sisters of the Congregation of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  The order, composed of seven Creole women and one French woman, was formed to nurse the sick, care for orphans and the poor, and to instruct free and enslaved children and adults.   Records of St. Mary’s Church, St. Augustine, and St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans record her ministry to sponsor and serve as a witness for people of color in their baptisms, confirmations, and marriages. The Cathedral dedicated a prayer room in Henriette’s honor.  She catechized with Pere Etienne Rousselon at St. Augustine Church and taught at the parochial school of St. Claude.   

In 1837, Father Etienne Rousselon of New Orleans secured formal recognition of the Order under the name, Sisters of the Holy Family, and Henriette took the title Mother.  The Community was very poor and made many sacrifices to accomplish their mission.   She also established the Association of the Holy Family, a lay community of black Americans, to assist the Sisters in their calling.  The Order took into their home elderly women who needed more care than simple visitation.  In 1849 the Association built a new home, the Lafon Nursing Facility of the Holy Family, which is the oldest continuously operating Catholic nursing home in the United States. 

Henriette persevered in her calling in the face of slavery and racism.  She lived a holy, prayerful, and virtuous life.  At her death, the Order had 12 members.   They cared for the sick and the dying and served heroically during the yellow fever epidemics that struck New Orleans in 1853 and again in 1897.  Henriette was remembered as devoting herself untiringly for many years and without reserve to the religious instruction of the people of New Orleans, principally slaves.  “For the love of Jesus Christ, she made herself the humble servant of slaves.”

In 1862, the year of her death, America was in the grip of its Civil War against slavery in the South, and New Orleans was occupied by Union troops.   Even after the Civil War freed the slaves, Jim Crow laws in Louisiana disenfranchised black and colored Americans and prohibited offering them an education.  In defiance of these laws, the Sisters of the Holy Family taught black and Creole students in parochial schools. 

By 1909 the Order had grown to 150 members and operated parochial schools in New Orleans for 1,300 students.   Today, the Sisters of the Holy Family have more than 300 members who serve the poor by operating free schools for children, nursing and retirement homes in Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, California, and Washington D.C., and a mission in Belize.

Patron of racial equality, gender equality, social equality, educational equity, health equity, and equanimity.

Alphonse Gallegos was born on February 20, 1931, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and died on October 6, 1991, as Auxiliary Bishop of Sacramento and Titular Bishop of the See of Sasabe in Tarragona in Spain.  He is known as the Bishop of the Barrios.   On July 8, 2016, Pope Francis named him a Venerable in recognition of the holiness of his life and of his heroic virtue.

Alphonse Gallegos was the eighth of eleven children.  The family prayed the rosary daily together and studied the catechism.  Alphonse Gallegos was born with a severe myopic condition and suffered from poor vision his entire life.  Despite multiple surgeries, his sight remained poor and he wore extremely thick glasses.  To provide better medical care and educational opportunities for him, the family moved to Watts in Los Angeles, California shortly after his birth.  Alphonse Gallegos attended Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles.  

The family attended San Miguel parish which was run by the Order of Augustinian Recollects.   Timothy Manning, then Auxiliary Bishop of California, confirmed Alphonse Gallegos and would remain a mentor to him.  At San Miguel, Alphonse Gallegos developed “a deep desire to follow the religious life.”   

In 1950 Gallegos entered the Order of Augustinian Recollects as a seminarian and professed his solemn vows three years later.   He studied at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri, and graduated from Saint Thomas Aquinas College and from Saint John’s University, both in New York.  He also graduated from Loyola University in Los Angeles. 

In 1954 Gallegos moved to Tagaste Monastery in Suffern, NY.  As his vision worsened, he had difficulty reading his breviary and he prayed the rosary instead.  Despite doubts about his preparation, he was ordained a priest on May 24, 1958, because of the virtues of holiness, humility, and community spirit he demonstrated.   For the next eight years, Fr. Gallegos lived at Tagaste Monastery and worked in neighboring hospitals and religious communities.  

In 1972 Fr. Gallegos returned home and became the pastor of his childhood parish of San Miguel in Watts.  The neighborhood was predominantly African American and poor.  Riots in the 1960s had left the area divided and subject to gangs, violent crime, and poverty.  Fr. Gallegos made the local children his priority and he was active in the parish school.   On weekends, Fr. Gallegos spent time with Latino lowriders (drivers of customized cars painted with intricate colorful designs and rolling on wire-spoke wheels).   He blessed their cars and encouraged them to pursue their education and find lives outside of gangs.  He also tried to help the vulnerable elderly and expanded his ministry to the many ethnic communities in the area, including Korean, Chinese, African American, as well as Hispanic.  In 1978, he became the pastor of Cristo Rey in Glendale. Both parishes are in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.   

Cardinal Timothy Manning appointed Fr. Gallegos his advisor on Hispanic Affairs.  In 1979, he transferred to Sacramento to become the first director of the Division of Hispanic Affairs of the California Catholic Conference.  His office worked on immigration matters and migrant workers.   He was named Auxiliary Bishop of the Diocese of Sacramento by Saint Pope John Paul II and consecrated on November 4, 1981.   In 1983 Bishop Gallegos became pastor of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. 

Bishop Gallegos was known for his pastoral concern for the poor and commitment to the culture of life.  His motto was “Love one another.”  His life was an example of a “good, humble, generous human being.” He was known for his charity and his ability to bring together people of all backgrounds.

Bishop Gallegos died on October 6, 1991, when he was struck by a car as he and his driver were returning to Sacramento from Gridley, CA where he had led a pro-life rosary.   More than 2000 people attended his funeral, including 300 lowriders who formed the long funeral procession.

Mother Maria Kaupas was born in Ramygala, Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire, on January 6, 1880. She died on April 17, 1940 in Chicago, Illinois, at the Mother House of the Order of the Sisters of Saint Casimir which she founded to educate the children of Lithuanian immigrants in the United States and to care for the sick.  On July 10, 2010, Pope Benedict SVI recognized her life and work and declared her Venerable. 

Casimira Kaupas, the name she was given at her birth, left Lithuania in 1897 when she was 17 years old, for Scranton, Pennsylvania where she worked as the companion and housekeeper of her brother, Fr. Anthony Kaupas, a priest serving the needs of Lithuanian immigrants.  In 1901, Casimira returned to Lithuania but soon realized that she was drawn to religious life.  Her brother encouraged her to return to the United States, advising her that Lithuanian Priests in the United States wanted to establish a new religious congregation dedicated to the education of children in schools being built by the Church in Pennsylvania.  To this end, Casimira began her novitiate with the Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Cross in Ingenbohl, Switzerland in 1902. 

In 1905, with her brother’s help, Jeremiah Shanahan, Bishop of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, agreed to sponsor a new congregation of sisters to be formed by Casimira and to be dedicated to education.  Mother Cyril of the Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Scranton agreed to help prepare her as a novitiate.  Casimira took the name Sister Maria and made her profession of religious vows on August 29, 1907.  She founded the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Casimir, the patron Saint of Lithuania.  Mother Maria immediately began teaching at Holy Cross School in Mount Carmel, PA, and other parochial schools in the area.

In 1911, the Sisters of Saint Casimir moved their mother house to Chicago, Illinois, to serve its large Lithuanian population.  When the construction of the house was completed in 1913, Sister Maria was elected the Superior General of the Order, a position she held until her death.  They staffed schools in Lithuanian parishes in Chicago.   As the Order grew, the Sisters opened parochial schools across the United States and a home mission in New Mexico.

When the 1918 influenza epidemic broke, Mother Maria began the Sisters’ ministry of health care, in addition to education.  In 1928, the Sisters of St. Casimir opened the Holy Cross Hospital in Chicago.

In 1932, Mother Maria decided to open a retreat house in Scranton, with the purpose of using the property as a country retreat for her Sisters and as a school for young Lithuanian girls.  Its mission was to nurture their Catholic religion and national heritage and encourage their entry into religious life. The Order purchased a 203-acre plot named Maple Lane Farm and worked to transform the existing buildings into a retreat and a school.  Later in the year, Cardinal Dennis Doughtery blessed the “Villa Joseph Marie” predicting that it was “… destined to grow and to…serve as a general academy.”  Former farm buildings were transformed into Regina Hall where students resided and Maria Hall where they took classes.  Harvest from the farmlands and orchards, together with the Sisters’ homemade bread, were sold to support the growing school.   

As the student population grew, the Sisters decided that they had to build a new school structure and become a traditional day school which they did in 1957.  The original simple curriculum became a premier college-preparatory high school with about 400 students and 40 faculty.  The central mission remains to welcome and educate young women.  [O'Neil Schenk, Margaret. Villa Joseph Marie: A History. Unpublished manuscript, 2000].

The Mother Maria Kaupas Center in Mount Carmel, PA, in the Divine Redeemer Parish in the Diocese of Harrisburg honors the life and work of Mother Maria Kaupas with a ministry of community service.

Augustus Tolton was born in Missouri in 1854 into a family of slaves.  Rejected by every seminary in the United States because he was black, Fr. Tolton was accepted in 1880 at the Pontifical Urban College under the Society for the Propaganda of the Faith in Rome.  He was ordained a Catholic priest at the Basilica of Saint John Lateran in 1886 and returned to Illinois to serve the black community in his first parish in Quincy,
Illinois.  He died of a heat stroke in Chicago on July 8, 1897, at the age of 43.  On June 12, 2019, Pope Francis recognized his life and work and declared him Venerable. 

A Slave Heritage in Missouri.  Fr. Tolton’s parents were slaves, the property of Catholic families who lived on adjoining farms in Missouri, and were baptized by their respective Catholic owners.  Their owners, the Elliots, and the Hagers, by contract, permitted his mother, Martha Jane Chisley, and his father, Peter Paul Tolton, to enter into a Catholic marriage.   The contract further provided that the Eliots would provide a slave cabin for their family home; that Peter Paul would remain the slave of the Hager family; and that Martha Jean and all of the children born of the marriage would become the property of the Elliot family.  The Toltons had three children, Charles (b. 1853), Augustus (b. 1854), and Anne (b. 1859).  Baptismal records show that Augustus was baptized on April 1, 1854 “a child, property of Stephen Elliot”; Savilla Elliot was his sponsor in baptism.   

Escape to Illinois, a Free State.  With the outbreak of the Civil War, Peter Paul Tolton ran away from the Hager farm and joined the Union Army.   Martha Jane escaped from the Elliot farm shortly after with their three children, Charles then 8, Augustus, then 7, and Anne, then only 2.   They traveled 20 miles on foot to Hannibal, Missouri, where a row boat carried them across the Mississippi River into Illinois, a Free State.  Augustus remembered how Confederate soldiers in Hannibal tried to arrest them.  Even with assistance from Union soldiers stationed in Hannibal, the Confederates shot at them during their trip across the wide river to Illinois. On landing in Illinois, Martha Jean and her children traveled another 20 miles on foot to Quincy where a community of run-away slaves lived.     

In Quincy the family stayed with a kind widow, Mrs. Davis, who had a daughter and who cared for the children after Martha Jane found work in the Harris tobacco factory.  When Augustus was 9, he and his older brother, Charles, also worked in the factory, turning tobacco leaves into fine cigars.  A year later, Charles caught pneumonia in the factory and died. When the Civil War ended, Martha Jane learned that her husband, Peter Paul, had died from dysentery on a battlefield in Arkansas, leaving Martha Jane a widow with two children, Augustus and Anne.

Catholics in Quincy, Illinois.  In Quincy, the children attended St. Boniface Catholic Church and Martha Jane wanted to enroll Augustus in the parish school.  The all-white parent body opposed his admission and petitioned the Bishop that he be removed from the class.  He then went to a newly formed Negro School. The students, largely mulatto, made fun of Augustus who at 14 years old, very tall and very black, was placed with the youngest children because he could neither read nor write.  Martha Jane then moved to another Catholic parish, St. Peter’s, run by an Irish priest, Fr. Peter McGirr.   Knowing of Augustus’ problems in school, Fr. McGirr insisted that Augustus attend his parish school operated by the Sisters of Notre Dame.  Fr. McGIrr guaranteed Martha Jane that Augustus would have no trouble.  Augustus remembered the School fondly, “As long as I was in that school, I was safe.  Everyone was kind to me.  I learned the alphabet, spelling, reading, and arithmetic.”  He also memorized the Latin Mass and began to serve Mass.   He continued to work in the tobacco factory, but his devotion was such that he served daily Mass before going to work. And, Augustus began to discuss the possibility of ordination with Fr. McGirr. 

Seminary and Ordination in Rome.  Although the Bishop of Illinois agreed to pay for his seminary training, no seminary in the United States would accept a Negro candidate.  Neither would the St Joseph Society for Foreign Mission in London.  In desperation, Fr. McGirr and his friend, Fr. Richart, O.F.M., wrote to the superior general of the Franciscans in Rome.  They described Augustus as 26 years old, a reverent acolyte, a devoted son, a faithful worker, a diligent student, and a zealous lay apostle.  After months of waiting, Augustus was accepted as a seminarian at the Pontifical Urban College under the Society for the Propaganda of the Faith in Rome. The College, founded by Pope Urban VIII in 1624, drew students from foreign lands to be trained as priests, take holy orders, and return to their homelands as missionaries.  Cardinal Saint John Henry Newman (1801-1890) is among its prominent alumni.

On February 15, 1880, Augustus left Quincy taking the train to Chicago and on to Jersey City, from where his ship would sail to LeHavre, France.  He traveled with $50 from the Bishop, $10 from the Franciscans, and a letter to be presented to the Cardinal on arrival in Rome.  During his six years in seminary, Fr. Francis Ostrop of Carlinville, Illinois sent Augustus money for books and supplies.  On the ship, he traveled with several other friars.  He arrived in Rome on March 12, 1880. 

Augustus enjoyed Rome and used the opportunity to learn the geography, history, and languages of the many cultures.  He attended papal ceremonies of Pope Leo XIII, visited the 600 churches of Rome, and learned its architecture by making sketches in his notebook.  He learned to play the accordion and played Negro Spirituals.  On April 24, 1886, at the age of 31, Augustus Tolton was ordained a priest at St. John Lateran in Rome.  Fr. Augustus intended to be a missionary in Africa, but Cardinal Giovanni Simeoni decided to send Fr. Tolton back to Quincy, Illinois.  “America,” the Cardinal said, “has been called the most enlightened nation in the world.  We shall see if it deserves that honor.  If the United States has never before seen a black priest, it must see one now.”  

Fr. Tolton celebrated his first Mass at the Basilica of St. Peter’s and then sailed home. 

Return to Quincy as a Parish Priest.  On July 6, 1886, Fr. Tolton celebrated his first Mass in America at St. Benedict the Moor in New York City.  Fr. McGirr planned a joyous celebration for Fr. Tolton’s arrival in Quincy where he said his first mass at St. Peter’s. Hundreds of people stood in line for his blessing and Fr. Tolton thanked the priest, the sisters, and his mother, who had given him encouragement. 

Fr. Tolton was installed as pastor of St. Joseph’s, in Quincy, living with his mother near St. Joseph’s School which served the extremely poor black community.   The students who attended the Negro School also received shoes, clothes, and food.  “Good Father Gus” was known for his musical talents which included playing the organ and for his beautiful singing voice.  He quickly became famous for the eloquence of his sermons. His talents attracted a large congregation and the church was integrated.  The white congregants at St. Joseph’s supported the parish and the Negro school which also received money from St. Boniface, the church that had repudiated the young Augustus Tolton. 

In 1887, a new priest, Fr. Michael Weiss, was appointed to St. Boniface.  He immediately blamed Fr. Tolton for the large debt he inherited and was jealous of the white parishioners who worshipped in Fr. Tolton’s congregation.   He taunted his fellow cleric with racist slurs and convinced the Bishop to bar Fr. Tolton from ministering to white people.   The Bishop did worse: he closed St. Joseph’s Church and instructed Fr. Tolton to leave Quincy, which he did on December 19, 1889.

A Black Parish in Chicago, Illinois.  Fr. Tolton arrived in Chicago in the week before Christmas 1889.  The Archbishop appointed him pastor of St. Augustine Parish with “full pastoral jurisdiction over all Negro Catholics in Chicago.”  The parish met in the basement of St. Mary’s church.  Eventually, Fr. Tolton transferred to a storefront church which he named, St. Monica’s Chapel.  His mother and his sister joined him in a Rectory nearby and nineteen black parishioners from Quincy also moved to Chicago to worship at St. Monica’s.  Assisted by donations from Katherine Drexel (see Panel 3), among others, Fr. Tolton succeeded in beginning the construction of a church building for his parish which, by 1891, had six hundred parishioners. 

His parishioners struggled with poverty and Fr. Tolton shared their poverty “with ardent charity and self-denying zeal.”  A priest from Dubuque, Iowa who lived with Fr. Tolton and his mother during the summer of 1896 recalled that “They lived in a poorly furnished but very clean house.  The meals were simple affairs….  On the wall directly behind Father’s place hung a large black rosary.  As soon as the evening meal was over, Fr. Toltan would rise and take the beads from the wall.  He kissed the large crucifix reverently.  We all knelt on the bare floor while the Negro priest, in a low voice, led the prayers with deliberate slowness and with unmistakable fervor.” 

Fr. Tolton died on the streets of Chicago of a heat stroke on July 8, 1897, at the age of 43.  At his specific request, Fr. Tolton was buried in St. Peter’s Cemetery in Quincy, Illinois where he received his First Communion and his Confirmation, where he served Mass and where his vocation was nourished.  A large crowd, including both white and black parishioners, attended his funeral and the cortege to the cemetery was four blocks long.

Source: They Called Him Father Gus: The Life and Times of Augustine Tolton, First Black Priest in the USA, by Fr. Roy Bauer, https://www.dio.org/uploads/files/Tolton/Resources/Father_Gus.pdf

Symbols:  Fr. Tolton wore the vestments he received at Seminary in Rome: the black cassock and black biretta of a seminarian, and, because the seminary had a special connection to the Pope, he also wore a red sash around his waist and a red tassel on the biretta and the missionary cross around his neck he received at his ordination as a priest. 

Patron: racial and educational and social equality
 

Mother Mary Theresa Dudzik was born in Plocicz, in western Poland on August 30, 1860.  She died on September 20, 1918, in Chicago, Illinois.  Mother Mary Theresa formed the Congregation of the Franciscan Sisters of Chicago on December 8, 1894, to aid the elderly and those in need, the first religious order founded in the city of Chicago.  On March 26, 1994, Saint Pope John Paul II recognized the heroic virtues evident in her life and named her a Venerable.

Josephine Dudzik, the name she was given at her birth, was baptized and made her first communion at the Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Kamien Krajenski, Poland.   The Dudzik family moved to America and settled in Chicago in 1881 when Josephine was 21.  They joined the large Polish immigrant community in the northwest side of Chicago and attended St. Stanislaus Kostka (see Panel 6) Church. 

After the death of her father, Josephine, and her mother lived alone.  Josephine was moved by the poverty of the aged, poor, and orphaned who she met in her neighborhood.  She tried to help them, even sheltering some in her own home.  She served them tea and cakes and taught them how to pray.  She said, “I felt the misery and suffering of others, and it seemed to me, that I could not love Jesus, or even expect Heaven if I were concerned only about myself.”

In Chicago, Josephine prayed to help the poor and needy.  She joined the Third Order Secular of St. Francis.  The order strengthened her will to serve others.   During the severe financial crisis of 1893, her pastor at St. Stanislaus Kostka Church, Fr. Barzynski, helped her to form a religious community dedicated to a common life of prayer, labor, and service to poor girls and needy women.  She promised to care for this community in times of difficulty as well as in times of prosperity.   On December 8, 1894, with four other Polish women, she took her religious vows and changed her name to Mary Theresa.  They formed the Franciscan Sisters of Chicago.  Mother Mary Theresa Dudzik was their Foundress and religious superior.

The Franciscan Sisters of Chicago followed the Rule of St. Francis: “Observe the Holy Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ living in obedience, in chastity, without owning anything of your own.”  The spirit of St. Francis taught her and her sisters to love all human beings as her brothers and sisters and to celebrate each day joyfully as God’s gift.   The sisters rose at 4:30 am to pray and meditate.  Mother Mary Theresa had a deep devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and believed intensely that the Liturgy of the Eucharist, meditation, and prayer were essential to union with Christ.  They sewed, washed, and ironed clothes, mended church linens, cleaned the rectory, and cared for the priests.  Through these labors, the sisters brought in money to buy food and supplies for the old and infirm residents in their homes. 

Through hard work and faith in the generosity of God’s mercy, the sisters built the St. Joseph Home for the Aged and Crippled in 1898 and St. Vincent’s Orphan Asylum in 1899, both in Chicago.  She taught obedience through her actions, spending the last years of her life working in the laundry, in the garden, and in sewing church linens.  

Following a long and painful illness from malignant cancer, Mother Mary Theresa received the last rites of the Church and died on September 20, 1918, surrounded by her Sisters gathered in prayer.  At her death the Order numbered 160 women.   Her remains were brought to the mother house of the Franciscan Sisters of Chicago from St. Adalbert’s Cemetery in 1972 and placed in a granite sarcophagus in the Sacred Heart of Jesus chapel.

Last year, on December 8, 2019, the Franciscan Sisters of Chicago celebrated their 125th Anniversary.  The Order continues to serve the people through education and service to the elderly and the poor and the sick and to many Catholic parishes. 
 

Pierre Toussaint was born a slave in the French colony of Saint-Domingue on June 25, 1766.  He died a free man at the age of 87 in New York City on June 30, 1853.  Raised a Catholic, Pierre attended Mass daily throughout his life.   In 1968, Cardinal Terence Cooke supported Toussaint for sainthood because of his selfless acts of charity, helping orphans, immigrants, and the poor.  The Cardinal exhumed Toussaint’s body and reinterred him in the crypt below the altar of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the first layman so honored.  In 1996, Pope John Paul II recognized his life and work and declared him Venerable. 

Pierre was born on the Artibonite plantation to Ursule, a slave owned by the Bérard family.  His father’s name is not known.  Pierre was educated by Bérard family tutors and raised as a Catholic.  He was trained as a house slave.   

In 1878, the Bérard family left the Caribbean island and moved to New York City taking five slaves, including Pierre and his sister, Rosalie, after the revolt of the Haitian slaves and free people of color formed the nation of Haiti.   The Bérard family lost much wealth on their flight and, upon arriving in New York, Jean Bérard, his master, apprenticed Pierre to a French hairdresser.  When Jean died trying to reclaim his wealth a short time later, Pierre became the sole support of Madame Bérard, his master’s widow.
  
Through his new profession of hairdressing, Pierre learned English and made contacts with upper echelons of New York society.   Pierre and his sister, Rosalie, remained house slaves even after Madame Bérard re-married to another Caribbean planter, Monsieur Nicolas, but Madame Bérard made her second husband promise to free Pierre after her death which Monsieur Nicolas did when Pierre was 45 years old.   At this time, Pierre adopted his surname in honor of Touissant L’Ouverture, the leader of the slave revolt against the French colonists which established the nation of Haiti.  “Like Caesar Hope of Virginia, Pierre chose his name to express the merger of two identities, one that reflected white expectations and one that reflected his personal aspirations.”  From D. Douglas W. Bristol, Jr.  Knights of the Razor: Black Barbers in Slavery and Freedom, JHU Press 2020.

Toussaint’s popularity as a hairdresser among New York’s top society grew and so did his earnings.  He saved his money and purchased the freedom of his sister, Rosalie.    He also purchased the freedom of Juliette Noel, a slave who was 20 years his junior.  In 1811, Toussaint married Juliette Noel.  The three continued to live at the Nicolas home for four years until the Nicolas family left New York and moved to the South.  Pierre and Juliette Toussaint adopted Euphemia, his sister’s daughter, after Rosalie died, raising Euphemia as their own child.

Pierre Toussaint’s business as a hairdresser prospered.  He attended daily Mass for 66 years at Saint Peter’s in New York.  He bought a house on Franklin Street where the Toussaints sheltered orphans and fostered numerous boys in succession.  They supported them in getting an education and in learning a trade.  He would then find some of their jobs through his connections in the City.   Pierre and Juliette organized a credit bureau, an employment agency, and a refuge for priests and destitute travelers.  Because Pierre spoke French and English new immigrants turned to him for help.  He would arrange the sales of their goods to raise money for them to live on.  During the cholera epidemic, he crossed barricades to nurse patients. 

Pierre and Juliette Noel became leading members of New York society.  They gave generously and contributed to, and raised money for, the building of Old Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on Mulberry Street.  He was also a benefactor of the first Catholic School for black children in New York City at St. Vincent de Paul on Canal Street.  

Euphemia died of tuberculosis, like her mother, and before her adoptive parents.  Juliette died in 1851.  Two years later, Pierre died on June 30, 1853, and was buried next to his wife in the cemetery of Old St. Patrick’s Church on Mott Street.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen was born in El Paso, Illinois, on May 8, 1895.  He died at the age of 84 on December 9, 1979, in New York City.   Sheen was a prolific writer of books and articles on Catholic life and faith.  Called the “golden voice” by Time Magazine, his radio and television broadcasts spanned four decades and reached millions of people.  Pope Benedict XVI recognized his heroic virtues and declared him Venerable in 2012. 

Baptized John Peter Sheen, he decided to use his mother’s maiden name, Fulton, when his family moved from rural Illinois to Peoria.   He developed an interest in the priesthood as an altar server at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Peoria.  After graduating college, Sheen completed Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota.  He was ordained a priest on September 20, 1919, at the Cathedral in Peoria.  In 1923, Sheen graduated with a Doctor of Theology from Catholic University in Washington, D.C.  Sheen completed his studies in Rome at Saint Thomas Aquinas International Pontifical Institute “Angelicum”.   After graduation, Sheen taught theology at Catholic University until 1950.

From 1930 until 1950, Sheen hosted The Catholic Hour on NBC radio.  The transmission had a public of over four million people.  In 1950, Sheen celebrated the first televised Mass which opened the path to a weekly television show that aired on NBC for seven years every Tuesday evening at 8:00 pm.  Called Life is Worth Living, Sheen spoke to a live television audience standing before shelves filled with books and a statue of the Madonna and Child.  The show had over 30 million viewers.  In 1952 Sheen won an Emmy Award as the most exceptional television personality.  Accepting the award, Sheen thanked his co-writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. 

Pope Pius XII nominated Sheen as titular bishop of Cesariana and Auxiliary Bishop of New York on May 28, 1951; positions he held until 1966.  He was so ordained at the Basilica of San Giovanni e Paolo in Rome.  Bishop Sheen participated in the Second Vatican Council.  

From 1958 until 1966, Sheen was the national director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith.   His final program, The Fulton Sheen Show, aired from 1961 until 1968 at which point, at the height of his popularity, Sheen retired from public life.  His resignation in 1966 from the society was forced by Francis Joseph Spellman (b. May 4, 1889 - d. December 2, 1967), the powerful Cardinal of New York, who arranged for Sheen’s transfer to, and appointment as Bishop of, the Diocese of Rochester in upstate New York.   In his preface to the 2008 edition of Treasure in Clay: The Autobiography of Fulton J. Sheen, the Catholic journalist Raymond Arroyo hypothesized that Cardinal Spellman wanted at least a portion of the Bishop’s earnings to be donated to the Diocese of New York.  Instead, during his tenure, Sheen donated over $10 million of his earnings to and raised hundreds of millions of dollars for, the Society.   

As Bishop of Rochester, Sheen created the Ecumenical Housing Foundation for the urban poor.  At the end of July 1967, Sheen took the contrary position to Cardinal Spellman and denounced the War in Vietnam. 
On October 6, 1969, a month after he celebrated the 50th anniversary of his ordination, Sheen retired as Bishop of Rochester.  Pope Paul VI elevated him to Archbishop of Newport, a ceremonial title, and allowed him to return to New York City to continue his writing.  On October 2, 1979, two months before his death, Pope John Paul II visited Sheen at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City and said, “You have written and spoken well of Our Lord Jesus Christ and of the Church.”

On December 9, 1979, shortly after an operation on his heart at Lenox Hill Hospital, Archbishop Sheen died in his private apartments in the presence of the Holy Sacrament.  He is buried in the crypt of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.  
 

Fr. Patrick Peyton was born in Attymass, County Mayo, Ireland, on January 9, 1909.  He died, holding a rosary, at the age of 83 on June 3, 1992, in San Pedro, California.  His rallies to pray the rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary earned him the nickname, the “Rosary Priest.”  On December 8, 2017, Pope Francis recognized his heroic virtues and declared him Venerable. 

Patrick Joseph Peyton was born the sixth son of nine children living on a subsistence farm in Ireland.  As a youth, he helped his father work the farm.  His elder sisters emigrated to find work in America and encouraged Patrick to join them.  Patrick and his brother Tom sailed for America on May 13, 1928.  Before their departure, their father dedicated them to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and their mother entrusted them to the care of Our Lady.  They settled with their sisters in Scranton, Pennsylvania.  Both found work at St Peter’s Cathedral in Scranton and both became priests. 

Patrick obtained a B.A. degree at Notre Dame and pursued a graduate degree in theology at Catholic University.  In his second year, Patrick was diagnosed with tuberculosis and languished for a year with the disease in the infirmary of Notre Dame.   At a priest’s instruction, Peyton prayed a Rosary novena at the end of which he was cured by Our Lady’s intercession.  After his ordination on June 15, 1941, Patrick dedicated himself to Our Lady and to spreading the practice of the family Rosary.  

Fr. Peyton began the Family Rosary Crusade from his first parish in Albany, New York.  Radio broadcasts followed.  In a 1946 radio broadcast, Fr. Peyton declared that “The rosary is the offensive weapon that will destroy Communism and the great evil that seeks to destroy the faith.”  By 1948, Fr. Peyton began to travel around the world, hosting Rosary Rallies.  His message was to draw people into a deeper relationship with Mary and family prayer.  

During a priesthood that lasted over fifty years, Fr. Peyton preached to an estimated 28 million people, using radio, film, television, and the help of celebrities like Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly and James Cagney, to reach a global audience.  Among his best-remembered phrases are: “The family that prays together stays together” and “A world at prayer is a world at peace.”

By his death on June 3, 1992, Fr. Peyton had produced more than 600 television and radio shows and three feature-length films on the life of Christ, divided into the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious mysteries of the Rosary.   Six months after his death, on December 8, 1992, in Manila, Philippines, Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin celebrated the Golden Jubilee of the Family Rosary Crusade. 

Fr. Peyton worked with the rich and the poor, the famous and the ignored, to promote prayer in the world.  His work continues through the Holy Cross Family Ministries which includes the Family Rosary and the Family Theater Productions.  
 

Fr. Félix Varela y Morales was born in Havana, Cuba, on November 20, 1788.  He died in St. Augustine, Florida, at the age of 64 on February 18, 1853.  Exiled from Cuba in 1823 for demanding the abolition of slavery and self-rule for Spain’s colonies, Fr. Varela served for thirty years in the Archdiocese of New York as vicar-general and advocate for Irish immigrants. On April 8, 2012, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints recognized his life as worthy of praise and declared him Venerable. 

Félix Varela grew up in St. Augustine, Florida where he moved after his mother died in childbirth.  He was raised by his grandfather, Lieutenant Bartolomé Morales, a commander of military forces in Spanish Florida.  He returned to Havana as a teenager where he attended San Carlos and San Ambrosio Seminary and the University of Havana.  At the age of 23 Félix was ordained in the Cathedral of Havana.   He joined the faculty of the seminary and taught philosophy, physics, and chemistry, distinguishing himself as a man of culture and learning with his publication of Miscelánea filosófica.

In 1821, Fr. Varela was elected to represent Cuba in the Spanish Parliament in Madrid.   He joined a petition for the independence of Latin America and published an essay arguing for the abolition of slavery in Cuba.  When King Ferdinand VII returned to power in Spain in 1823, Fr. Varela was sentenced to death for his positions against Spanish policies.  Before his arrest, Fr. Varela fled to Gibraltar and then to the United States.

Fr. Varela settled in New York City in 1823 and worked for the next 30 years in the Archdiocese of New York where in 1837 he was named Vicar General of the Diocese of New York, which at the time included all of New York State and northern New Jersey.  In this role, he assisted the large influx of immigrants to the United States, and especially those from Ireland.
 
In New York, Fr. Varela founded El Habanero, the first Spanish-language newspaper in the United States, and he published many essays on religious tolerance, the importance of education, and the need for cooperation between the Spanish and English-speaking communities.   In 1827, in what is today known as Chinatown, Fr. Varela founded the Church of the Immigrants, today known as the Church of the Transfiguration, which is home to his memorial.   

Fr. Varela was a theological consultant to the committee of American bishops who drew up the Baltimore Catechism, which remained the standard teaching tool for Catholic children in the United States for a century, until the 1960s.  For his work, he was awarded a Doctorate of Theology by St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore, Maryland.

In 1848, Fr. Varela retired to St. Augustine Florida where he died five years later.   Sixty years after his death his body was returned to Cuba where it was buried in the Aula Magna of the University of Havana. 
 

Fr. Michael McGivney was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, on August 12, 1852.  He died two days after his 38th birthday in Hartford, Connecticut in 1890.   He is known as the founder of the benevolent order of the Knights of Columbus.  On March 15, 2008, Pope Benedict XVI declared him a Venerable Servant of God and was beatified in Hartford on October 31, 2020. 

Michael McGivney was the oldest of six children born to Irish immigrant parents in Waterbury, Connecticut.  At the age of 13, he left school to work in a brass factory to support his family.  Three years later, he traveled to Quebec, Canada, with the pastor of his Catholic Church and entered the College of St. Hyacinthe to prepare for admission to Our Lady of Angels Seminary, in Niagara Falls, New York.   After Seminary, Michael McGivney enrolled in St. Mary’s College in Montreal which was run by the Jesuit Order.  He later transferred to St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore, Maryland where, after four years, he graduated on December 22, 1877, and was ordained a priest in the Cathedral of the Assumption in Baltimore by Archbishop James Gibbons that same day. 

Fr. McGivney began his ministry as a curate at St. Mary’s Church, New Haven, Connecticut on Christmas Day 1877.  At St Mary’s he worked with the youth, holding catechism classes, and organizing an abstinence society to fight alcoholism.  In 1881 he began working with laymen to form a fraternal benevolent society to strengthen their religious faith and to provide for the financial needs of immigrant families who found themselves in financial difficulties caused by the illness or death of the family breadwinner.  This eventually led to the creation of the Knights of Columbus which held its initial organizational meeting in New Haven on February 7, 1882.   On March 29, 1882, the Connecticut legislature granted a charter to the Knights of Columbus as a legal corporation.  The Order’s principles were “Unity” and “Charity”, “Fraternity” and “Patriotism” were added later. 

When he died eight years later, the Knights of Columbus had fifty-seven councils, all of which sent representatives to his funeral at which the Bishop of Hartford presided and more than 70 priests from the Diocese of Connecticut attended.
Today the Knights of Columbus is a global service order with membership limited to practicing Catholic men.  Since its foundation, the Knights have opposed religious prejudice, particularly against Catholics.  The Knights support refugee relief, Catholic education, local parishes, and diocese, and promote the Catholic position against same-sex marriage, abortion, and birth control.  As of 2019, the Knights had nearly 2,000,000 members in over 16,000 councils worldwide.

To mark their hundredth anniversary in 1982, the Knights of Columbus brought the remains of Father McGivney from Waterbury back to St. Mary’s Church in New Haven, where he had founded the Order.
 

Gemma Galgani was born near Lucca in Italy on March 12, 1878, and died there twenty-five years later, on April 11, 1903.   

Gemma suffered from chronic ill health throughout her life which prevented her from entering a religious order.  When able, she cared for her younger siblings, otherwise, she devoted herself to prayer, offering her sufferings to God.   For her sweet and generous disposition, she became known as the “Flower of Lucca”.

When Gemma was twenty-one years old, on June 8, 1899, she understood that an unusual grace would be granted to her.  She began to suffer intense pain and bleeding and the marks of the stigmata, appeared on her hands, her feet, and her heart.  Thereafter, each Thursday evening, Gemma would fall into a rapture and the marks of the stigmata would appear.  The bleeding would continue until Friday afternoon or Saturday morning.   When it stopped, white gashes would remain where the wounds had closed.   

Her confessor recorded the following words, among many she spoke during her frequent states of ecstasy:     
 
"Why did you suffer for me, dear Jesus? For love! The nails...the crown...the cross...all for the love of me! For You, I sacrifice everything willingly. I offer You my body with all of its weakness, and my soul with all its love."

When her ecstasy ended Gemma would return to her quiet life.  Gemma often saw her Guardian Angel and frequently sent the Angel on errands, usually to deliver a message to her confessor in Rome.   

In January 1903, Gemma was diagnosed with tuberculosis.  At the start of Holy Week, she began suffering greatly.  Gemma died on Holy Saturday at the age of 25.  At her death, according to her parish priest, “She died with a smile which remained on her lips so that I could not convince myself that she was really dead.”

Pope Pius XII canonized her on May 2, 1940, thirty-seven years after her death.   Gemma is the great-grandaunt of Carol Landon, a parishioner of St. Bede.

Symbol: Photos taken during her lifetime show Gemma next to the crucifix with the marks of the stigmata on her hands. 

Patron Saint of pharmacists and students (Gemma was a good student, reputedly at the top of her class).  She is also invoked against temptations, against the death of parents, and against tuberculosis.
 
Feast Day:  April 11

Alphonsus Maria de Liguori was born to a noble family at Marianella near Naples in Italy on September 27, 1696.   He died near Naples 91 years later, on August 1, 1787, at the stroke of the noon Angelus bell with a picture of the Blessed Mother in his hands.   

St. Alphonsus was a priest and moral theologian.  He is the founder of the Redemptorist Order and holds the title, of Doctor of Prayer, in the Church.  

Alphonsus Maria de Liguori had an exceptional education in philosophy, literature, and the arts, earning doctorates in civil and canon law.  Upon graduation, he became a lawyer in Naples.  He also worked with the Confraternity of Our Lady of Mercy caring for the incurably ill at local hospitals.  At the age of 26, he left the practice of law.  He was ordained a priest in 1726.  

As a priest, Alphonsus devoted himself to caring for the poor and most abandoned.  His “mission among the people” attracted followers with whom Alphonsus established the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, commonly known as the Redemptorists. 

Alphonsus and his brothers attracted many with their message of hope in Christ for all people.  Alphonsus preached the redeeming love of God.  “The soul’s entire holiness and perfection lies in love for Jesus Christ, our God, our highest good, our Redeemer.  Charity is the bond and safeguard of all the virtues which perfect man.”

Alphonsus wrote more than one hundred books, including his most influential, Moral Theology, which offers a guide to a moral life.   “…our whole salvation depends on prayer…For if you pray, your salvation will be secure.”

Alphonsus also had a special devotion to the Blessed Mother.  He prayed the Rosary daily, including the Litany of Our Lady, and encouraged others to pray to Her and to visit the Marian shrines to increase their love for the mother of God.  

Canonized not long after his death in 1839, Alphonsus was named a Doctor of the Church in 1950. 

Pope St. John Paul II described St. Alphonsus as a “close friend of the people, a missionary who went in search of the most abandoned souls, a founder who wanted a group which would make a radical option in favor of the lowly, a bishop whose house was open to all, and a writer who focused on what would be of benefit to people.”

Symbol:  Redemptorist habit, with a bishop’s crucifix around his neck

Patron Saint of confessors and moral theologians
 
Feast Day:  August 1

Born in Wearmouth in 673, from the age of seven, Bede lived in Benedictine monasteries in North East England.  He never traveled farther north than the monastery at the Holy Island at Lindisfarne on the Scottish coast or farther south than the cathedral city of York.  Bede died on the vigil of the Ascension of Christ, at Jarrow, on May 25, 735, shortly after he finished an Anglo-Saxon translation of the Gospel of John.
Bede is called the Venerable to acknowledge his wisdom, a title formalized at the Council of Aachen in 853.  A millennium later, in 1899, Pope Leo XIII declared the Venerable Bede a Doctor of the Church.   

The Venerable Bede was a Benedictine monk, a writer, and a historian. He is known as “the Father of English History” for his works, Christianity in England (729) and the first History of the English Church and People (731).   Bede’s History is the first work to date events from the time of the Incarnation, Anno Domini, and his books are a fundamental source of knowledge for English and European historians.  
Bede believed that love, rather than learning, was his life's purpose. “It is better,” he famously said, “to be a stupid and uneducated brother who, working at the good things he knows, merits life in heaven than to be one who –  though being distinguished for his learning in the Scriptures, or even holding the place of a teacher – lacks the bread of love."

At his death, Bede was buried in the monastery at Jarrow.  Two centuries later, when Vikings threatened England’s eastern coast, the monks left Jarrow and took Bede’s remains with them to their new monastery.  Today the Venerable Bede lies in Our Lady’s Chapel in the Cathedral in Durham, England.

In October 1932, Bishop Andrew Brennan dedicated the newly built parish church on the campus of The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia to St. Bede.  The choice of The Venerable Bede as this parish’s patron saint highlights the Catholic origins of Christianity in England before the Reformation and the Catholic Church’s historical roots in intellectual scholarship.  It also highlights the Catholic Church’s historical roots in England whose monarchs, King William and Queen Mary, founded the College by Royal Charter in 1693.

Symbol:  wears a Benedictine habit, sits in a study with the books he has written 

Patron Saint of writers and historians
 
Feast Day:  May 25
 

Patrick was born in Roman Britain around 385 AD.   As a youth, he was taken captive to Ireland as a slave and worked as a herdsman.  After making his escape to Britain, a vision inspired him to become a priest.   Patrick was later ordained a bishop and sent to Ireland to preach the Gospel.  Patrick converted thousands to Christianity, beginning with the chiefs of the Druid tribes, through his preaching and working of many miracles.  He died on March 17, 461 at Saul, the first of many churches he built in Ireland.  His tomb today is believed to be at Downpatrick in Ireland. 

By the end of the 7th century, Patrick was revered as the patron saint of Ireland.

Patrick is known for two written works, his Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus and his Confessio.   In the first, Patrick condemns Coroticus, a British Roman tyrant, whose soldiers invaded Ireland, killing and capturing many Irish Christian converts.  Patrick condemned the murders, demanded the return of those captives who survived and called on all Christians to have nothing to do with Coroticus and his soldiers unless and until they repented. 

In the Confessio, Patrick defends his years as a missionary in Ireland against a demand of British bishops that he return to Britain and answer charges of corruption, misuse of funds, and an unnamed sin he committed as a youth.  Patrick refuses their demand which was likely the result of Patrick’s earlier condemnation of Coroticus.  Instead, Patrick offers them the Confessio, or his spiritual autobiography in which Patrick relates how he came to be a missionary in Ireland.  Patrick describes his wanton youth as a British nobleman, his kidnapping by Irish pirates, his religious conversion, his escape from slavery, and his return to Ireland as a missionary.  Patrick acknowledges that his mission in Ireland required certain actions, including payments to authorities.  Throughout the Confessio, Patrick recognizes his debt to God for choosing Patrick as His instrument to bring the Gospel to the Irish people:
“I give thanks to my God tirelessly who kept me faithful in the day of trial, so that today I offer sacrifice to him confidently, the living sacrifice of my life to Christ, my Lord, who preserved me in all my troubles….Today, among heathen peoples, I praise and proclaim your name in all places, not only when things go well but also in times of stress. Whether I receive good or ill, I trust him unreservedly.” 

The Breastplate of St. Patrick in the Old Irish language is a prayer for protection, expressing Patrick’s love of, total devotion to, and trust in God. Found in many versions, all contain these words:
"Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me.   
Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in the hearts of all that love me, Christ in the mouth of friend and stranger.”  

Symbol :  Bishop’s miter and crozier
Patron Saint of engineers and paralegals; his patronage is invoked against snakes and sins   
Feast Day:  March 17

The Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla, written c. 180 AD, record that a young noble virgin of Iconium (Turkey) converted to Christianity after hearing the preaching of St. Paul.  Like other early female Christian saints, she became estranged from her family and her fiancé vowing to remain a virgin, “one must fear only one God and live in chastity.”

According to the Apocrypha, the Roman authorities condemned Thecla to be burned at the stake.  A miraculous storm saved her.  She left Iconium and traveled with Paul to Antioch of Pisidia where another Roman nobleman sought her sexual favors.  When she refused, he accused her of assault.  The Roman authorities again sentenced her to death by wild beasts.  Again, a miracle saved her when the female beasts protected her from the male aggressors.  Thecla traveled to Myra where she again met Paul.  She preached the Gospel in areas of Turkey to women and encouraged them to live a life of chastity.  

The Apocrypha records that when Thecla retired from preaching, she lived in a cave in Seleucia Cilicia and became a healer.  Physicians in the area, jealous of her healing powers, solicited young men to despoil her.  Again, she was miraculously saved.  Her prayers to God opened a passage through the rocks that closed behind her, saving her from their attack. 

Thecla traveled to Rome and died beside St Paul’s tomb.  

Gregory of Nyssa in a 4th-century text records that Thecla sacrificed herself by dying to the flesh, practicing great austerity, and extinguishing in herself all earthly affections so that nothing remained in her but spirit.  She is referred to in the earliest Acts of Martyrs.   The Acts of Polyeuctes (d. 259 AD) refers to Thecla and Perpetua as the inspiration for other virgin martyrs. 

A catacomb of St. Thecla on the via Ostiensis, near the burial place of St. Paul, is mentioned in 7th-century itineraries.   In 2010 technicians working for the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology announced the discovery of St. Thecla’s tomb, not far from St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, under a building belonging to an Italian insurance company.   In the ceiling of the burial chamber is a fresco, at the center is Christ as the Good Shepherd, and, in four corners, are the oldest existing fresco paintings of Sts. Peter, Paul (with the pointed beard), Andrew, and John are datable to the 4th century. 

The Eastern Church calls Thecla an Apostle and protomartyr among women.   

Symbol:  late Roman garb
Patron Saint of  
Feast Day:  September 23