Sunday 13 May 2012

On 16 May the Catholic Church remembers St Simon Stock, a 12th- and 13th-century Carmelite monk whose vision of the Virgin Mary is the source of the Brown Scapular devotion.

Sunday 15 April 2012

On 21 April, the Catholic Church honors St Anselm, the 11th-century Benedictine monk and archbishop best known for his writings on Christ's atonement and the existence of God.

Sunday 1 April 2012

Catholics will remember the life of St Francis of Paola on 2 April . The saint founded a religious order at a young age and sought to revive the practices of the earliest monks during a period of corruption in the Church.

Sunday 18 March 2012

On 18 March the Catholic Church honours St Cyril of Jerusalem, a fourth-century bishop and Doctor of the Church whose writings are still regarded as masterful expressions of Christian faith.

Sunday 4 March 2012

Matilda, Queen of Germany and wife of King Henry I, was the daughter of Count Dietrich of Westphalia and Reinhild of Denmark. She was born about 895 and was raised by her grandmother, the Abbess of Erfurt convent. Matilda married Henry the Fowler, son of Duke Otto of Saxony, in the year 909. He succeeded his father as duke in the year 912 and in 919 succeeded King Conrad I to the German throne.

Sunday 19 February 2012

On 3 March, the universal Church celebrates the Feast of St Katharine Drexel, a Philadelphia heiress who abandoned her family's fortune to found an order of sisters dedicated to serving the impoverished African-American and American Indian populations of the United States.

Sunday 5 February 2012

On 10 February, St Scholastica, a nun who was the twin sister of St Benedict, the father of monasticism in Western Europe.

Sunday 11 December 2011

Just after Christmas, the Catholic Church remembers its first martyr, and one of its first deacons, St Stephen.

Friday 11 November 2011

By Benjamin Mann

On 17 November, the Catholic Church celebrates the life and example of St Elizabeth of Hungary, a medieval noblewoman who responded to personal tragedy by embracing St Francis’ ideals of poverty and service. A patron of secular Franciscans, she is especially beloved to Germans, as well as to the faithful of her native Hungary.

Friday 28 October 2011

By Benjamin Mann

No age of the Catholic Church’s history is without its share of confusion and corruption. Still, even in moments when disorder may seem overwhelming, individuals and movements eventually rise to propose the faith with clarity and demonstrate it in action.