Trained from his boyhood and ordained a priest by St. Adrian, St. Monan was sent to preach the gospel in the isle of May. He exterminated superstition and many other crimes and abuses and having settled the churches of that island in good order, passed in to the county of Fife and was there martyred…

In 497 St. Simplicius was raised by God to the papacy to comfort and support his church amidst the greatest storms. All the provinces of the Western empire were fallen into the hands of barbarians, infected for the greatest part with idolatry or Arianism. Pope Simplicius was wholly taken up in comforting and relieving the…

St. Cunegundes married St. Henry, Duke of Bavaria who, upon the death of the emperor Otto III was chosen king of the Romans, and crowned in 1002. She had, by St. Henry’s consent before her marriage, made a vow of virginity. Calumniators afterwards accused her to him of freedoms with other men. The holy empress,…

Detachment from worldly goods and a taste for heavenly things go together in the Christian soul. Let us ask St. Casimir, who gave a splendid example of both, to obtain them for us. He was the son of King Casimir IV of Poland and Elizabeth of Austria; amid the dangers of court he lived an…

In the year 272 in Caesarea in Palestine, St. Marinus was to succeed to the place of a centurion when another came and said that he could not have the post on account of his being a Christian. Achaeus, the governor of Palestine, receiving Marinus’ affirmative answer gave him three hours to consider whether or…

The account of the martyrdom of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas forms one of the finest pages of the history of the first centuries of the Church. It shows us clearly the wonderful sentiments of these two women when they heard that they had been condemned to the wild beasts. Knowing their own weakness but relying…

After being committed to the care of the Benedictine monks at Monte Cassino at the age of five, young Thomas Aquinas decided to enter the Order of St. Dominic, whose greatest glory he is. He taught philosophy and theology with such genius that he is considered one of the leading Christian thinkers. His innocence, on…

Of Portuguese origin, St. John of God was first a shepherd, a dealer and then a soldier. At the age of forty he was converted, and devoted himself to the care of those sick in mind, showing himself in this thankless task, a real innovator and at the same time a saint of superhuman heroism.…

In the fifteenth century St. Frances, among the noble leaders of Rome, showed herself an example of what a Christian wife should be. After the death of her husband she retired from the world and lived in a monastery of Oblates that she had founded at Tor de’Specchi near the Tiber, under the Rule of…

Under the Emperor Licinius, in 320, forty soldiers of the garrison of Sebaste in Armenia refused to sacrifice to idols and were put to death out of hatred for Christ. The judge ordered the saints to be exposed, naked on the ice of a frozen pond. In order to tempt them to renounce their faith,…

He is said to have been a British king, who after the death of his queen, resigned the crown to his son and became a monk in the monastery of St. David. He then went into North Britain and joined St. Columba in preaching the gospel among the Picts who then inhabited a great part…

Senator and prefect of Rome, then in succession monk, cardinal and pope, St. Gregory governed the Church from 590 to 604. England owes her conversion to him. At a period when the invasion of the barbarians created a new situation in Europe, he played a considerable part in the transitional stage, during which a great…

An only daughter and heiress of significant fortune, St. Kennocha made an entire sacrifice of herself to God, by making her religious profession in a great nunnery in the county of Fife. By an extraordinary love of poverty and mortification, a wonderful gift of prayer and purity of singleness of heart, she attained to the…

An ardent zeal for the salvation of souls brought this servant of God from Italy to North-Britain. By preaching the word of God, St. Boniface reformed the manners of the people in the provinces of Angus, Marris, Buchan, Elgin, Murray and Ross. He died about the year 630 and was buried at Rosmark. The Breviary…

Son of Conail who was the son of Alild, King of Munster, St. Finian imitated the patience of Job under a loathsome and tedious distemper from which his surname comes. The famous abbey of Innis-fallen which stood in an island of that name, in the great and beautiful lake of Lough-Lane in the county of…

Bishop of Jerusalem from 350-386, St. Cyril did much to maintain the traditional faith of the Church at one of the critical turning points of her doctrinal history. Before he was a bishop his catechetical instructions (preached to the catechumens and the newly baptized) formed a wonderful body of teaching on the sacraments and the…

His mother was St. Bethildes and he spent many years in the court to King Clotaire III.  He bestowed his estate of Maurilly on the abbey of Fontenelle in Normandy. He was consecrated archbishop of Sens in 682 but later resigned his bishopric and after a retreat at Fontenelle entered Friesland as a poor missionary…

At turning points of history God raises up great saints to ensure the fulfillment of the Church’s divine mission for the souls of men. St Benedict was born at Nursia in Umbria in 480 and was sent to Rome to be educated, but soon left the world to live a solitary life at Subiaco. After…

She was a rich Roman lady, who, after the death of her husband, mortified her flesh by wearing rough sackcloth and passed whole nights in prayer, and by humility seemed every one’s menial servant. She died in 384 and is honored on this day in the Roman Martyrology.

In 480, Huneric, the Arian king of the Vandals in Africa began a grievous persecution of the clergy and holy virgins which in 484 became general and occasioned vast numbers of Catholics to be put to death. Victorian was the wealthiest subject the king who had placed great confidence in him. After the king published…

St. Gabriel was chosen by God to announce to mankind the mystery of the Incarnation. He had been sent to Daniel to tell him of the time of Christ’s coming, and to Zachary, when he was offering incense in the Temple, to foretell the birth of John the Baptist, Christ’s precursor. And it was he…

Out of filial devotion, on Friday during Passiontide the Church in her celebration of the mystery of Redemption associates the remembrance of our Lady’s sufferings with those of our Savior. “There stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister Mary of Cleophas, and Salome, and Mary Magdalen. Woman, behold they son,…

St. John Damascene was the great defender of the veneration of images against the iconoclasts, the destroyers of statues and pictures of the saints. He was a learned theologian and carefully gathered together and transmitted to us the teaching of the Greek Fathers and is thus one of the most trustworthy witnesses to oriental tradition.…

A native of Capistrano, St. John became a Franciscan and was one of the great organizers of the struggle against the Mohammedans in the 15th century, when they threatened to overrun the whole of Europe. Mohammed II had taken Constantinople and was already marching against Belgrade, when Pope Callixtus III called St. John Capistran to…

St. Gundleus was the eldest son to the king of the Dimetians in South-Wales. After the death of his father, though the eldest son, he divided the kingdom with his six brothers who nevertheless respected and obeyed him as if he had been their sovereign. He married Gladusa and was father of St. Canoc and…

Born in 525 in Palestine, St. John obtained at a very young age the surname Scholastic. At age sixteen he renounced all the advantages which the world promised him to dedicate himself to God in a religious state. He retired to Mount Sinai which from the time of the disciples of St. Antony and St.…

In a long Christian persecution, King Varanes caused St. Benjamin to be beaten and imprisoned. He had lain a year in the dungeon when an ambassador from the emperor obtained his enlargement on condition he should never speak to any of the courtiers about religion. Benjamin declared that he could not detain the truth in…