Inspired by Truth, Enlightening Minds for the Church in Canada and Throughout the World
Inspired by Truth, Enlightening Minds for the Church in Canada and Throughout the World
BENEDICT XVI GENERAL AUDIENCE Saint Peter’s Square Wednesday, 24 October 2007 Saint Ambrose of Milan Dear Brothers and Sisters, Holy Bishop Ambrose – about whom I shall speak to you today – died in Milan in the night between 3 and 4 April 397. It was dawn on Holy Saturday. The day before, at[…]
Saint Nicholas of Myra (+343) has gone down in legend in more ways than one. His general story follows below, but through the years has developed into the genial ‘Santa Claus’, the rotund, cherubic figure, a creation of the cartoonist Thomas Nast in Harper’s Weekly in 1881, with the red suit and ample physiognomy, which[…]
BENEDICT XVI GENERAL AUDIENCE Saint Peter’s Square Wednesday, 6 May 2009 John Damascene Dear Brothers and Sisters, Today I should like to speak about John Damascene, a personage of prime importance in the history of Byzantine Theology, a great Doctor in the history of the Universal Church. Above all he was an eyewitness of the[…]
Saint Francis Xavier – the relic of whose forearm, instrumental in the baptizing of tens of thousands made a tour around Canada a number of years ago – was one of those remarkable men of history, whose intensity, focus and singleness of purpose echo through the ages. His desire to give everything to save souls,[…]
Today, on this first day of December, we call to mind Saint Edmund Campion – see Avellina Ballestri’s fine recounting of his glorious life from the archives – one of the most charming in the pageantry of the English martyrs. His sense of optimism and good cheer, in the face of the most arduous conditions, even[…]
BENEDICT XVI GENERAL AUDIENCE Wednesday, 14 June 2006 Andrew, the Protoclete Dear Brothers and Sisters, In the last two catecheses we spoke about the figure of St Peter. Now, in the measure that sources allow us, we want to know the other 11 Apostles a bit better. Therefore, today we shall speak of Simon Peter’s[…]
A blessed feast of Saint Andrew to all our readers! Today, the last day of November, were it not the first Sunday of Advent, we would be celebrating the first Apostle called, along with his brother, the first Pope. It is quite close to my own heart, as Andrew’s patronage includes not only my native[…]
November 27th is the anniversary of the apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1830 to Saint Catherine Labouré (1806 – 1876), a Visitation Sister, during her evening meditation. Our Lady was so real, reported Sister Catherine, that she could feel the folds on her dress, and whose beauty she could not describe. The Mother[…]
In one of those ironies of God’s history – choosing what seems weak to confound the apparently strong – the patron saint of philosophers is a teenage virgin martyr from the fourth century. Catherine of Alexandria (+305) dedicated herself to study ‘from a young age’, as her disputed biography (written centuries after her death) relates.[…]
On this memorial of the Martyrs of Vietnam, we commemorate a whole panoply of white-robed witnesses, Christians, bishops, priests, Franciscans, Dominicans, lay men, women and children, who were put to death in the most horrific of ways in the series of persecutions in that troubled country in the 17th to 19th centuries. There were thousands[…]
