Saints

On this day, August 4th, in 1859 – the same year that Darwin published his specious Origin of Species, and one year after Marx’s Communist Manifesto, both of which, sadly, shook the faith of many – the world witnessed the quiet passing into eternity of a most remarkable man, a simple country priest who lived[…]

The Church commemorates two pastors today, separated by a millennium and a half: The fourth-century Eusebius of Vercelli (+371), the first bishop we know of in northern Italy, who has gone down in history as one of the great foes of the insidious heresy of Arianism, which taught that Christ was not truly God. Eusebius[…]

Saint Alphonsus Ligouri (1696 – 1787) was a renaissance man, whose kind was a rarity in his post-renaissance era, and even more so now in our age of specialization, often in esoteric subjects that would have puzzled anyone before, say, 1960. Alphonsus received a double doctorate in civil and canon law at the tender age[…]

When we read the life of Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) he at first glance seems to belong more to the early days of the desert Fathers, or, perhaps, to the mediaeval ‘fools for Christ’, who gave up all to follow Him – begging for alms, sleeping outside, pilgrimaging from place to place. Saint Ignatius[…]

Saint Peter Chrysologous (+450) was, as the traditional account has it, chosen bishop of Ravenna in 433 after the then-reigning pontiff, Pope, Sixtus III, had a vision of Saint Peter the Apostle and Saint Apollinaris (the latter a former bishop of Ravenna) who pointed out a young man as the next episcopus. Soon afterwards, a[…]

This memorial of Saint Martha, in accord with a decree from the Congregation of Divine Worship, now also includes her brother Lazarus, the one raised from the dead, and her sister Mary, leaving aside the controversy over whether she is the same ‘Mary’ as the Magdalene we celebrated a week ago, as some small-t traditions[…]