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Saint of the Day

April 29: Saint Joseph Cottolengo

If you enjoy this daily blog of lesser-known saints, see my book, which contains short biographies of saints for every day of the year. Saint Joseph Cottolengo (1786-1842) was a parish priest of Turin, Italy, when he was called to the bedside of a poor, pregnant woman. The woman had been refused by hospitals because of […]

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Saint of the Day

April 28: Saint Pamphilus of Sulmona

If you enjoy this daily blog of lesser-known saints, see my book, which contains short biographies of saints for every day of the year. Saint Pamphilus’ life shows us that arguments over the liturgy didn’t start in the twentieth century. Saint Pamphilus was the bishop of the dioceses of Sulmona and Corfinium in Italy in the […]

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Saint of the Day

April 27: Saint Maughold

If you enjoy this daily blog of lesser-known saints, see my book, which contains short biographies of saints for every day of the year. Saint Patrick is said to have converted all of Ireland, and Saint Maughold (d. c. 498) is said to be one of his most dramatic converts. After all, Maughold was a pirate […]

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Saint of the Day

April 26: Saint Richarius

If you enjoy this daily blog of lesser-known saints, see my book, which contains short biographies of saints for every day of the year. Saint Richarius (d. c. 645, sometimes called Radbertus) was a pagan living in France when two Irish priests came to his hometown to preach the Gospel. When his pagan neighbors threatened the […]

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Saint of the Day

April 25: Blesseds Robert Anderton and William Marsden

If you enjoy this daily blog of lesser-known saints, see my book, which contains short biographies of saints for every day of the year. Blesseds Robert Anderton and William Marsden were sixteenth-century Englishmen who had been ordained as Catholic priests. They had been forced to travel to France to be ordained because of the anti-Catholic persecution […]

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Saint of the Day

April 24: Blessed Mary Euphrasia Pelletier

If you enjoy this daily blog of lesser-known saints, see my book, which contains short biographies of saints for every day of the year. Rose Pelletier was born in 1796 into a faithful French family; she became a religious sister in an order which cared for what used to be known as “fallen” women. That is, […]

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Saint of the Day

April 23: Blessed Helen of Udine

If you enjoy this daily blog of lesser-known saints, see my book, which contains short biographies of saints for every day of the year. Blessed Helen (1396-1458) was the happy wife and mother of a large family in northern Italy when her husband died. This great loss struck her deeply, and she decided to live a […]

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Saint of the Day

April 22: Blessed Francis of Fabiano

If you enjoy this daily blog of lesser-known saints, see my book, which contains short biographies of saints for every day of the year. Blessed Francis of Fabiano (1251-1322) was always such a cheerful child that his parents later said he came into the world, not crying, but laughing. He became a Franciscan at the age […]

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Saint of the Day

April 21: Saint Malrubius

If you enjoy this daily blog of lesser-known saints, see my book, which contains short biographies of saints for every day of the year. Saint Malrubis (d. 722) was born in Ireland, became a monk, and was about twenty-nine years old when he traveled to Scotland to bring the Gospel to the people there. He established […]

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Saint of the Day

April 20: Saint Marcian

If you enjoy this daily blog of lesser-known saints, see my book, which contains short biographies of saints for every day of the year. Saint Marcian was just a young man running away from the destruction caused by Visigoth armies when he entered a monastery at Auxerre, France. He was an obedient, devout novice when his […]

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Saint of the Day

April 19: Blessed James Duckett

If you enjoy this daily blog of lesser-known saints, see my book, which contains short biographies of saints for every day of the year. James Duckett was a young apprentice to a printer in London, England, when he read a book that changed his life. The Firm Foundation of the Catholic Religion convinced him of the […]

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Saint of the Day

April 18: Blessed Mary of the Incarnation Acarie

If you enjoy this daily blog of lesser-known saints, see my book, which contains short biographies of saints for every day of the year. Barbara Avrillot was born in sixteenth century France. She was pious from a young age and wanted to be a nursing sister of the poor. But her parents wanted their only child […]

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Saint of the Day

April 17: Blessed Clare of Pisa

If you enjoy this daily blog of lesser-known saints, see my book, which contains short biographies of saints for every day of the year. When Theodora (known to her family as Thora) was born in 1362, her father was the leader of the republic in the city of Pisa, Italy. As such, he betrothed her to […]

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Saint of the Day

April 16: Saint Optatus and Companions

If you enjoy this daily blog of lesser-known saints, see my book, which contains short biographies of saints for every day of the year. Not many saints have the honor of being memorialized in a poem by a famous writer. Prudentius (348-405) was a poet from northern Spain who lived after the Roman emperor Constantine […]

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Saint of the Day

April 15: Saint Abundius

For the next month, there will be a daily post of a lesser-known saint each day. These are saints who aren’t in my book but who are still saints of the Church, as listed in the 2004 Martyrologium Romanum, the official list of saints published by the Vatican. These daily posts will give you a […]

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The Lost Saint of Easter

Solemn feast days of our Lord trump every other feast, most particularly Easter, which is why we won’t be celebrating Saint Joseph Moscati (or any of the other saints commemorated on April 12) this year. But in this year of COVID-19, perhaps we can think of him all the same on Easter. Joseph (1880-1927) was […]

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