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…

Maura O’Halloran, who was born to a large Catholic family in Boston and raised in Ireland, displayed from a young age a deep compassion for human suffering. After graduating from…

St. Teresa, one of the towering figures of all Christian history, was the daughter of a wealthy Spanish merchant. Though she became a nun at twenty, her vocation initially had…

Among the heroes of the Holocaust, the German industrialist Oskar Schindler cuts a curious figure. Not a man of evident faith or even conventional virtue, he was in fact an…

Thérèse Martin, a young French Carmelite, died of tuberculosis on October 1, 1897, at the age of twenty-four, only nine years after entering the convent in Lisieux. Her short life…

The Book of Margery Kempe offers a vivid self-portrait of a remarkable religious seeker from fourteenth-century England. Margery was the wife of a beer brewer, with whom she bore fourteen…

St. Joseph was born to a poor family in the small Italian town of Cupertino. His early life gave no evidence of any special gifts. He was considered slow-witted and…

Sadhu Sundar Singh, who wore the robes of an Indian holy man to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, was one of the most fascinating and enigmatic figures of modern…

What little is known of St. Phoebe and her part in the early Church is derived from her brief mention in St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “And I commend…

Maria Micaela Desmaisières was born in Madrid to a noble family. Her mother died when she was a child, and she spent much of her early life in the company…