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My wife and I went to see Cabrini last night. Given the mixed yet passionate reaction to the film by a variety of folks whose opinions I respect, I was looking forward to it. Having now seen it, I think the mixed reaction is completely appropriate. My reaction was also mixed, though tending more toward the negative. On the positive side, the film had a lot of spoken Italian in it which was fun. It was also well acted and beautifully shot, with a moving soundtrack that reminded me of a cross between The Village and Master and Commander. Though...

[Catholic Caucus] Pope St. Pius X defended the Church against the rising tide of ModernismSt. Pius X was the first pope canonized since St. Pius V in 1672.The primary aim of his pontificate Pius X announced in his first encyclical letter, viz., “to renew all things in Christ.” Here we need but allude to his decree on early and frequent reception of Holy Communion; his Motu Proprio on Church music; his encouragement of daily Bible reading and the establishment of various biblical institutes; his reorganization of the Roman ecclesiastical offices; his work on the codification of Canon Law; his incisive...

Read Mark Twain’s ‘Joan of Arc’ — It Will Surprise You and Make You Want to Become a Saint“I like Joan of Arc best of all my books, and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. The others needed no preparation and got none.” —Mark TwainMark Twain’s Joan of Arc is perhaps the finest novel ever to have been written by an American. It’s a book with the power to change the lives...

To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android. It took 60 years but a postulator from the Vatican finally came to Richard, a lonesome patch of boggy farmland in southern Louisiana’s rice belt, last December. He arrived at St. Edward Roman Catholic Church, which stands at the closest thing the community has to a town center, cater-corner to Richard Elementary and opposite a pasture more than large enough for its dozen cows. He was greeted by the young parish priest, diocesan officials from Lafayette, a medical examiner, gravediggers, a pair...

For the feast of the North American martyrs today, I post the account of Saint Charles Garnier's death and life as taken from the Jesuit Relation of 1650. Garnier was slain by the Iroquois on December 7, 1649 at the age of 44. Fr. Garnier's death occurred during that year of destruction, 1649, when the Iroquois erupted like a whirlwind from their base in present-day central New York and burst upon their traditional enemies to the north. Newly equipped with British muskets and schooled in their use, the Iroquois had an insuperable advantage over the Hurons, Algonquins, and Tobacco nations...

September 3 is the feast of Pope St. Gregory the Great. This most significant of popes lived during a time of societal dissolution, when the Roman Empire in the West was in its final death agony. Though the Eastern Empire had re-established dominion in Africa and Italy in the 550s AD under Justinian, the invasion of the brutal Lombards in AD 568 proved unstoppable, leaving Italy in a state of perpetual fracture and chaos that would last centuries. Following is the opening to Gregory's work, The Dialogues. This great work was written during a period of brief respite, when Gregory...

An intruder was mauled to death by a pair of dogs after breaking into a Georgia home last week, according to local authorities. The homeowner, who was not named, discovered the body of 21-year-old Alex Binyam Abraha on his front porch around 10:30 am on September 24. Authorities said Abraha successfully entered the two-bedroom house in a rural area of Newnan the night before, and was immediately greeted by two pit bulls inside the home. The sheriff’s department initially called in homicide investigators from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation thinking that Abraha's death was a murder. However, the medical examiner...

July 28 is the feast day of two fairly obscure martyrs of Milan, Saints Nazarius and Celsus. According to the Golden Legend compiled much later, Nazarius was a missionary and possibly a presbyter, baptized by the hand of St. Linus in Rome. During his travels in Gaul, Nazarius met the mother of Celsus, a young boy of perhaps ten years of age. The mother asked Nazarius to baptize the boy and take him with him on his journeys of conversion. Both Nazarius and Celsus were martyred, the legend says, during the reign of Nero, having been beheaded in Milan. Generally,...

June 4th is the anniversary of the martyrdom of Quirinus, Bishop of Siscia, during the Great Persecution of the early 4th century AD. Though he was bishop of the Roman town of Siscia (modern-day Sisak in Croatia) in the province of Pannonia, he was taken to the provincial capital of Sabaria (modern-day Szombathely in Hungary) for trial and execution. Thus, he is especially venerated in both Croatia and Hungary though his remains have found their way to Rome over the centuries. Unlike many of the Christian martyrs of this time, Quirinus is known from multiple sources including a passio, the...

"  Clare of AssisiAnthony of PaduaBernard of CorleoneCuré of ArsJoseph of LeonissaAgathangelus & CassianAnastasius HartmannAngelus of AcriApollinaris of PosatBernard of AndermattBernard of OffidaBernardine ColpetrazzoConrad of ParzhamCrispin of ViterboDidacus of CadizFelix of CantaliceFelix of NicosiaFidelis of SigmaringenFrancis of CamporossoFrancis of BassostIgnatius of LaconiIgnatius of SanthiaInnocent of BerzoJoseph of DreuxLaurence of BrindisiLeonard of ChatresLeopold MandicMary MartinengoPio ForgioneSeraphin MontegranoSolanus CaseyVeronica GiulianiNicholas of Gesturi THE LIFE OF SAINT ANTHONY by John Cooper ofm cap. Anthony was born at Lisbon in Portugal in 1195.(1) He was baptised "Fernando" in the Cathedral Church of old Lisbon. On the font is written: "Here the waters of holy baptism cleansed Anthony from all stain of original sin. The world rejoices in his light, Padua in his body, heaven in his soul." (2) His father, was a revenue officer and knight (3) at the court of Alfonso II, king of Portugal. When Fernando was 15 years old, he joined the community of Canons Regular of St...

The city council of Ventura, California has voted to remove a statue of St. Junipero Serra from the grounds of city hall, amid riots and protests in other California cities that have resulted in the destruction of several statues of the saint in recent months. The Ventura City Council voted 6-0 Wednesday evening to remove a bronze statue from outside city hall and a wooden replica inside the building, the LA Times reported. The bronze statue of Serra is a 1989 replica of a 1936 concrete piece. Though the council’s resolution did not specify when the removal would take place,...

Catholic youths protect statue of Saint Serra, June 20, 2020, Ventura, California. VENTURA, California, June 25, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – A group of courageous young Catholics surrounded the statue of a saint in Ventura, California last Saturday, placing their bodies in between Junipero Serra and the mob who wanted to tear him down. The anti-Serra demonstrators had put out a call on social media for the June 20 event that began at 1 PM. Calling the event “Tear down Junipero Serra,” the demonstrators stated that “No longer shall we celebrate the enslavement, rape, and genocide of the original people of Ventura.”...

May 29 2020 Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter Reading 1 Acts 25:13b-21 King Agrippa and Bernice arrived in Caesarea on a visit to Festus. Since they spent several days there, Festus referred Paul’s case to the king, saying, “There is a man here left in custody by Felix. When I was in Jerusalem the chief priests and the elders of the Jews brought charges against him and demanded his condemnation. I answered them that it was not Roman practice to hand over an accused person before he has faced his accusers and had the opportunity to defend...

May 26 is the feast of the early Church father Saint Quadratus of Athens. He is primarily known as a very early apologist for the faith who presented his arguments directly to the emperor Hadrian while the latter was visiting Athens, sometime between AD 124 and AD 132. Practically all of what is known of his life may be found in this brief biographical notice in Saint Jerome’s work, On Illustrious Men: Quadratus, disciple of the apostles, after Publius bishop of Athens had been crowned with martyrdom on account of his faith in Christ, was substituted in his place, and...

Residents of Sicilian capital pray for another miracle from Saint Rosalia, who they say rescued the city from a deadly plague in 1625Legend has it that in 1625, as a plague swept Palermo and killed dozens of people each day, Saint Rosalia appeared before a man. Rosalia, a young Sicilian hermit who died 500 years earlier, told him that if the people of Palermo walked in procession while carrying her relics, to be found in a grotto on Monte Pellegrino, then the “evil fever” would disappear. After months of debate over the authenticity of that apparition, Saint Rosalia’s remains –...

Today, March 9, is the feast day of Saint Frances of Rome. She was an Italian woman who lived in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. A previous post about this amazing saint may be found here. It was claimed that in 40 years of marriage, Saint Frances never once quarreled with her husband. St. Frances was invoked as an intercessor by the people of Rome even centuries after her death. In AD 1656, a ship entered the harbor at Barletta carrying a deadly pathogen—very likely, the Black Plague. The town was immediately infected and the impact was dramatic....

A lamentable feature of modern post-Christian life in the West is the inability of many people to form strong, lasting friendships. This observation has popped up with increasing frequency in the secular media, particularly as it relates to the Millennial generation. A recent poll that made the rounds last year indicated that 22% of Millennials who responded said that they had no friends at all, 27% said that they had no close friends, and 30% said that they had no best friends. The article accompanying the poll suggests that social media usage has been a major driver of this phenomenon....

December 7 is the feast day of Aurelius Ambrosius, known to history as Saint Ambrose of Milan. He was born in Trier to a wealthy Roman family—his father, also named Ambrose, was Praetorian Prefect of Gaul according to Ambrose's ancient biographer, Paulinus of Milan. Paulinus relates a miracle associated with Ambrose's youth that seemed to presage a great future for the child: When he, as an infant placed in a cradle within the courtyard of the governor's residence, was sleeping with open mouth, suddenly a swarm of bees came and covered his face and lips in such a way that...

Andrew Kim Taegon was the first native-born Catholic priest in Korea. He was sired in a family that had supplied numerous martyrs to the glory of Jesus Christ, including his father, Saint Ignatius Kim, and his uncle, Saint Paul Chong Hasang. As a child, Andrew's intelligence impressed a French missionary priest in Korea, and he was sent by his father to Macao to learn Latin and other Western subjects. He later studied for the priesthood and would be ordained in 1844 in Shanghai. After his ordination, he secretly returned to Korea to serve the Catholic community there—a dangerous mission considering...

Who was Saint Patrick? Well, for starters, he wasn't Irish. He was born a Roman (Patricius) during the days when Britain was cut off from the empire immediately before the final collapse of Roman power in the west. Though not born an Irishman himself, Patrick had a deep and abiding love for the Irish and dedicated his life to bringing them to Christianity. Amazingly, two works written by Patrick have come down to us from antiquity. The first is his Confessio, which was written about AD 450 under obscure circumstances. Following is an excerpt from this document, where Patrick tells...