St. Methodius I Patriarch of Constantinople, modem Istanbul. He was born in Syracuse, Sicily, and died in Constantinople. His feast day is celebrated on June 14 in both the East and the West. After some time in Constantinople, he was sent to Rome in 815 as the representative of Patriarch Nicephorus, who was exiled by Emperor Leo V the Armenian for refusing to yield to the imperial decrees on the destruction of icons. Methodius returned in 821 and was himself scourged and imprisoned for seven years. Finally, in 842, Empress Theodora arranged for......
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On June 13, Catholics honor the memory of the Franciscan priest St. Anthony of Padua. Although he is popularly invoked today by those who have trouble finding lost objects, he was known in his own day as the “Hammer of Heretics” due to the powerful witness of his life and preaching. The saint known to the Church as Anthony of Padua was not born in the Italian city of Padua, nor was he originally named Anthony. He was born as Ferdinand in Lisbon, Portugal during 1195, the son of an army officer named Martin......
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Anthony grew up in a poor but pious family in a small farming village near Genoa, Italy. The owner of his family farm paid for Anthony’s seminary education because he was such a promising student. He was very young for ordination and required a special dispensation, however he was ordained in 1812 and served as a parish priest, and eventually founded several religious communities, some of them short-lived. In 1827, he founded the Missionaries of St. Alphonsus, which lasted until 1848. He also founded the Oblates of Saint Alphonsus in 1828, which lasted only 20......
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St. Norbert was born at Xanten in the Rhineland, about the year 1080. The early part of his life was devoted to the world and its pleasures. He entered upon the ecclesiastical state in a worldly spirit. The thunderstorm had boiled up suddenly as Norbert was out riding. Norbert, who had always chosen the easy way, would never have deliberately gone on a journey that promised danger, risk, or discomfort. He had moved easily from the comforts of the noble family he was born into at about 1080 to the pleasure-loving German court.......
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Today, together with the whole Church, we honor twenty-two Ugandan martyrs. They are the first martyrs of Sub-Saharan Africa and true witnesses of the Christian faith. Charles Lwanga, a catechist and a young leader, was martyred in 1886 with a group of Catholic and Anglican royal pages, some of whom were not yet baptized. King Mwanga, who despised the Christian religion, gave orders that all the Christian pages in his service be laid upon a mat, bound, placed onto a pyre and burnt. This took place at Namugongo, just outside Kampala. St.......
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Little Imelda Lambertini loved Jesus so deeply that she often wondered, “Can anyone receive Jesus into their heart and not die?” This caused her to request, when she was just five years old, to receive Jesus in the Eucharist. However, as it was the year 1327, her request was out of the question. At that time children were not allowed to receive their First Holy Communion until they were at least 12 years old. But Imelda was persistent. Although her father was an Italian count and she had a comfortable home life,......
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OUR LADY OF HOPE, PONTMAIN, 1871 In the village of Pontmain, about 30 kilometres to the north of Laval, a farmer was working in his barn with his little boys Eugene and Joseph Barbadette, aged 12 and 10. On the evening of 17 January 1871, the two boys were helping their father in the barn when the eldest, Eùgene, walked over towards the door to look out. As he gazed at the star studded sky he noticed one area practically free of stars above a neighbouring house. Suddenly he saw an apparition of......
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