The feast of the Holy Family, most often celebrated on the Sunday after Christmas, encourages us to imagine the setting in which Jesus spent his childhood years learning a trade…

In many religious traditions, the birth of a Divine King is attended by wondrous signs from heaven. The same is true of the nativity stories of Jesus. But in the…

Dorothy Sayers was the daughter of an Anglican clergyman and headmaster. She became best known as a writer of detective novels (many featuring Lord Peter Wimsey), but she also wrote…

In 1948 Thomas Merton became well known with the publication of his bestselling memoir, The Seven Storey Mountain, the story of his restless youth, culminating in his conversion and his…

Elisa Angela Meneguzzi, who took the name Liduina in religious life, was born to a peasant family in northern Italy. At fourteen she entered domestic service, working for the next…

St. Leonard, who was born in Port Maurice in Italy, joined the Franciscans when he was twenty-one, hoping to spend his life preaching the Gospel in China. In the end,…

At a time when slavery was still the law of the land in the southern United States, Henriette DeLille founded a congregation for “free women of color” in New Orleans.…

The decade of the 1980s that began in El Salvador with the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, ended on November 16, 1989, with the slaughter of the Jesuit community of…

Bishop Paride Taban was born in Katire, Sudan, to a Christian mother. His father, a Muslim, was arrested before his birth. Upon his release and finding his wife pregnant, he…

Marcellus was a centurion in the Roman army, serving in the city of Tangier in North Africa. During a feast in honor of the emperor’s birthday, he suddenly threw down…