Daily Saints

Saint Alexius of Rome

St. Alexius was the only son of a wealthy senator of Rome, Euphemian, and his wife, Aglaë. He was born and educated in that capitol in the fifth century. From the charitable example of his parents he developed a compassionate attitude at an early age. And joining a church dedicated to the Mother of God at Edessa, there he lived for seventeen years until an image of our Lady spoke and revealed his holiness to the people, calling him “the Man of God”.

Thereupon he fled back to his home; his father did not recognize him, but received him as a beggar and gave him employment, allotting a corner under the staircase as his quarters. For another seventeen years he thus lived unknown in his father’s house, bearing the ill treatment of other servants in patience and silence. After his death a writing was found upon him, giving his name and family and an account of his life.

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Our Lady of Mount Carmel

Daily Saints

The Order of Carmelites takes its name from Mount Carmel, which was the first place dedicated to the Blessed Virgin and where a chapel was erected in her honor before her Assumption into Heaven. July 16 is also the feast of the “Scapular of Mount Carmel”. On that day in 1251, pious tradition says, the Blessed Virgin appeared to St. Simon Stock, General of the Carmelites at Cambridge, England, showed him the scapular and promised supernatural favors and her special protection to his Order and to all persons who would wear the scapular. To obtain the indulgences and other benefits promised to those who wear the Carmelite scapular, a person must be invested by a priest who has the requisite faculties and must lead a consistent Christian life.

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Saint Bonaventure

Daily Saints

St. Bonaventure, born as John, known as “the seraphic doctor,” was born at Bagnoregio, in the Lazio region of central Italy, in 1221. He received the name of Bonaventure in consequence of an exclamation of St. Francis of Assisi, when, in response to the pleading of the child’s mother, the Francis prayed for John’s recovery from a dangerous illness, and, foreseeing the future greatness of the little John, cried out “O Buona ventura”-O good fortune!

Saint Bonaventure’s teaching career came to a halt when the Friars elected him to serve as their General Minister. Shortly before he ended his service as General Minister, Pope Gregory X created him a Cardinal and appointed him bishop of Albano. But a little over a year later, while participating in the Second Council of Lyon, Saint Bonaventure died suddenly on July 15, 1274. There is a theory that he was poisoned.

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Saint Kateri Tekakwitha

Daily Saints

St. Kateri Tekakwitha is the first Native American to be recognized as a saint by the Catholic Church. She was born in 1656, in the Mohawk village of Ossernenon. Her dedication to virginity was instinctive: Kateri did not know about religious life for women until she visited Montreal. She humbly accepted an “ordinary” life. She practiced extremely severe fasting as penance for the conversion of her nation.

Kateri Tekakwitha died the afternoon before Maundy Thursday. Witnesses said that her emaciated face changed color and became like that of a healthy child on her death. The lines of suffering, even the pockmarks, disappeared and the touch of a smile came upon her lips. She was beatified in 1980 and canonized in 2012. She is the patroness of ecology and the environment, people in exile and Native Americans. Her name, Kateri, is the Mohawk form of Catherine, which she took from St. Catherine of Siena.

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Saint Henry

Daily Saints

As German king and Holy Roman Emperor, Henry was a practical man of affairs. He was energetic in consolidating his rule. He crushed rebellions and feuds. On all sides he had to deal with drawn-out disputes so as to protect his frontiers. This involved him in a number of battles, especially in the south in Italy; he also helped Pope Benedict VIII quell disturbances in Rome. Always his ultimate purpose was to establish a stable peace in Europe.

According to eleventh-century tradition, Henry took advantage of his position and appointed as bishops men loyal to him. In his case, however, he avoided the pitfalls of this practice and actually fostered the reform of ecclesiastical and monastic life. He was canonized in 1146. He is the patron saint of the childless, of Dukes, of the handicapped and those rejected by Religious Order.

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St. John Jones & St. John Wall

Daily Saints

These two friars were martyred in England in the 16th and 17th centuries for refusing to deny their faith. On one hand, John Jones was Welsh. He was ordained a diocesan priest and was twice imprisoned for administering the sacraments before leaving England in 1590.

He joined the Franciscans at the age of 60. He ministered to Catholics in the English countryside until his imprisonment in 1596. He was condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. John was executed on July 12, 1598.On the other hand, John Wall was born in England but was educated at the English College of Douai, Belgium. Ordained in Rome in 1648, he entered the Franciscans in Douai several years later.

In 1656 he returned to work secretly in England. In 1678, Titus Oates worked many English people into a frenzy over an alleged papal plot to murder the king and restore Catholicism in that country. In that year Catholics were legally excluded from Parliament, a law which was not repealed until 1829. John Wall was arrested and imprisoned in 1678, and was executed the following year. These two John’s were canonized in 1970.

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Saint Benedict, Abbot

Daily Saints

It is unfortunate that no contemporary biography was written of a man who has exercised the greatest influence on monasticism in the West. Benedict is well recognized in the later Dialogues of Saint Gregory, but these are sketches to illustrate miraculous elements of his career.

Benedict was born into a distinguished family in central Italy, studied at Rome, and early in life was drawn to monasticism. At first he became a hermit, where he experienced series of attempts of being killed and betrayal, it was only in Monte Casino where he founded the monastery that became the roots of the Church’s monastic system. After almost 1,500 years of monastic tradition his direction seems obvious to us. However, Benedict was an innovator.

No one had ever set up communities like his before or directed them with a rule. Benedict died on 21 March 543, not long after his sister, St. Scholastica. It is said he died with high fever on the very day God told him he would. He is the patron saint of Europe and students. St. Benedict is often pictured with a bell, a broken tray, a raven, or a crosier.

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Saint Veronica Giuliani

Daily Saints

Veronica’s desire to be like Christ crucified was answered with the stigmata. Veronica was born in Mercatelli, Italy. It is said that when her mother Benedetta was dying she called her five daughters to her bedside and entrusted each of them to one of the five wounds of Jesus. Veronica was entrusted to the wound below Christ’s heart.
At the age of 17, Veronica joined the Poor Clares directed by the Capuchins. When she was 37, Veronica received the stigmata. Her life was not the same after that.
Church authorities in Rome wanted to test Veronica’s authenticity and so conducted an investigation. Though she protested against it, at the age of 56 she was elected abbess, an office she held for 11 years until her death. Veronica was very devoted to the Eucharist and to the Sacred Heart. She offered her sufferings for the missions, died in 1727, and was canonized in 1839.

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Saint Augustine Zhao and companions

Daily Saints

Christianity arrived in China by way of Syria in the 600s. Depending on China’s relations with the outside world, Christianity over the centuries was free to grow or was forced to operate secretly.

Augustine Zhao Rong was a Chinese soldier who accompanied Bishop John Gabriel Taurin Dufresse of the Paris Foreign Mission Society to his martyrdom in Beijing. Not long after his baptism, Augustine was ordained as a diocesan priest. He was martyred in 1815.

The 120 martyrs in this group died between 1648 and 1930. Eighty-seven of them were born in China, and were children, parents, catechists, or laborers, ranging in age from nine years to 72. This group includes four Chinese diocesan priests. The 33 foreign-born martyrs were mostly priests or women religious. These 120 martyrs were canonized together in Rome on October 1, 2000.

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Saint Gregory Grassi and companions

Daily Saints

Gregory Grassi was born in Italy in 1823, ordained in 1856, and sent to China five years later. Gregory was later ordained bishop of North Shanxi. With 14 other European missionaries and 14 Chinese religious, he was martyred during the short but bloody Boxer Uprising of 1900. Twenty-six of these martyrs were arrested on the orders of Yu Hsien, the governor of Shanxi province. All these martyrs were beatified in 1946, and were among the 120 martyrs canonized in 2000.

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Saint Alexius of Rome

Our Lady of Mount Carmel

Saint Bonaventure

Saint Kateri Tekakwitha

Saint Henry

St. John Jones & St. John Wall

Saint Benedict, Abbot

Saint Veronica Giuliani

Saint Augustine Zhao and companions

Saint Gregory Grassi and companions

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