Feast Day: 30 August St Margaret Clitherow was born in York, the youngest of four children of Thomas Middleton (d.1567), wax chandler and freeman of York, and his wife, Jane (c.1515-85), daughter of Richard Turner, innkeeper. She was almost certainly baptised at the church of St Martin, Coney Street where her father was churchwarden between
Feast Day: 24 August In the New Testament, Bartholomew is mentioned only in the lists of the apostles. Some scholars identify him with Nathanael, a man of Cana in Galilee who was summoned to Jesus by Philip. Jesus paid him a great compliment: “Here is a true Israelite. There is no duplicity in him” (John
Feast Day: 30 August Converting in dangerous times St Anne Line is believed to have been born as Alice Higham and was the oldest daughter of a Puritan landowner. During her early 20s she, her brother and her husband all converted to Catholicism. For making such a choice, she lost her dowry and her brother
Feast Day: 13 August Today’s martyrs died on the island of Sardinia, perhaps from overwork in the mines or perhaps from starvation or neglect rather than execution. In a pacific interlude following the persecution which was their doom, a later pope, Fabian, returned their bodies to Rome for dignified burial. Pontian was interred in the
Feast Day: 14 August One evening at the dawn of the 20th century in Poland, a ten-year-old boy named Raymond prayed to the Mother of God, asking her what kind of man he was to be. In answer to his prayer, Mary appeared to him later that night, holding two crowns. Mary, who had seen
Feast Day: 10 August The feast of St Lawrence is celebrated on 10 August. As a deacon in the early Church in Rome, St Lawrence championed the inherent value of all human beings, even when it ultimately led to his martyrdom. St Lawrence was a deacon in Rome during the reign of the Emperor Valerian,
Feast Day: 9 August “We bow down before the testimony of the life and death of Edith Stein, an outstanding daughter of Israel and at the same time a daughter of the Carmelite Order, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, a personality who united within her rich life a dramatic synthesis of our century. It
Feast Day: 6 July Maria Goretti was the daughter of a poor Italian tenant farmer. She had no chance to go to school, never learned to read or write. When Maria made her First Communion not long before her death, she was one of the larger and somewhat backward members of the class. On a
Feast Day: 29 June On 29 June the Church celebrates the feast day of two great saints, Saint Peter and Saint Paul. Peter and Paul are known as the two pillars of the Church. Their lives were very different but both overcame weakness; St Peter denied Christ and St Paul persecuted the Church. Both repented
Feast Day: 22 June John Fisher was born in Yorkshire, England in 1469, the son of a cloth dealer. He was educated at Cambridge University beginning at age 14, and became a distinguished scholar. He was ordained a priest in 1491 at age 22, and became vice-chancellor of the university ten years later. John Fisher
