Statue of Blessed Emily Tavernier. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Dante Alighieri, one of the great literary geniuses of all time, was also a man of action, committed to social justice and the affairs of his native Florence.

Mother Teresa died on September 5, 1997. By that time she had long been acclaimed as a living saint.

St. Giles was among the Fourteen Holy Helpers, a group of saints commonly invoked in the Middle Ages for protection against illness and misfortune.

Though her thinking became increasingly Christ-centered, she believed her vocation was to remain on the “threshold of the Church”—in solidarity with all those outside. She could not bear to separate herself from “the immense and unfortunate multitude of unbelievers.”

John Eudes was initially attracted to the French Oratory of Jesus, a society of priests living in community and pursuing a life of prayer and devotion.

Though her conversion was a bitter blow to her mother, Stein felt that in accepting Christ she had been reunited—by a mysterious path—with her Jewish roots.

Aside from his role in founding the Jesuits, Ignatius made a huge contribution through the publication of his Spiritual Exercises, a manual devised for the spiritual formation of his followers.

Stanley Rother, a priest from Oklahoma, volunteered in 1968 to serve in his diocese’s mission to Santiago Atitlán, a picturesque Indian town in Guatemala.

Mary Magdalene was one of the original Galilean disciples of Jesus and one of the many women who followed him in his itinerant ministry.