Ruth Pfau was born in Leipzig in 1929. After surviving Allied bombing during the war, she escaped East Germany to study medicine in Mainz. Inspired by the example of a…

On July 10, 1970, a frail and elderly man left the company of the Red Guards and walked across the bridge linking mainland China and the island of Hong Kong.…

According to an ancient legend, these seven young Christian men, seeking to escape persecution under the emperor Decius (d. 251), hid in a cavern, where they fell into a miraculous…

Julia Frances Catherine Postel was born in a small French town near Cherbourg. After studying in a Benedictine convent, she returned home to teach school, though privately she dedicated herself…

For years, Eve Lavalliere was the toast of Parisian society, a famous beauty and the most popular actress on the French stage. While performing for royalty across Europe, she enjoyed…

The Way of a Pilgrim, an extraordinary narrative published in Moscow in 1884, is the story of an anonymous man of peasant origins, who, following the death of his wife,…

St. Emma was raised in the court of Henry II, the Holy Roman Emperor, to whom she was related, and was educated by his wife, St. Cunigunde. When Emma came…

In 1964 the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and other civil rights organizations called for a Freedom Summer, recruiting northern activists to join local civil rights workers in the South…

In 1883 Antoni Gaudí, a young architect in Barcelona, was offered the task of designing and building the Church of the Holy Family, a project sponsored by a lay association…

Mariam Thresia Mankidiyan was born to a poor Catholic family in the southern Indian state of Kerala. When she was twelve her mother died, forcing her to leave school to…