Calendar

Born: October 12, 1891 Died: August 9, 1942 Feast day: August 9 Patron saint of: Europe Edith Stein was born to Jewish parents on October 12, 1891—Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement—in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland). At 14 she simply “stopped praying,” and it would be years before she came to , ...

Born: August 9, 1946 Died: October 16, 2011 After joining the Jesuits in 1964, Dean Brackley dedicated his life to fighting poverty and promoting justice. In 1989 Brackley volunteered to take the teaching position of a Jesuit brother who was martyred along with five other Jesuits and two women at the University , ...

Born: July 16, 1194 Died: August 11, 1253 Feast day: August 11 Patron saint of: eye disease, laundry, television, bicycle messengers, good weather, needleworkers Clare. Chiara. The clear one. As her name suggests, Clare had clarity of purpose and intense determination from an early age. She was probably no , ...

Born: August 12, 1852 Died: August 14, 1890 Feast day: August 13 Patron of: Knights of Columbus McGivney, the founder of the Knights of Columbus, the world’s foremost Catholic fraternal benefit society with close to 2 million members, had many striking characteristics that made people notice him: His y , ...

Born: January 8, 1894 Died: August 14, 1941 Feast day: August 14 Patron saint of: prisoners, drug addicts, people with eating disorders, and families. Declared “the Patron Saint of Our Difficult Century” by Pope John Paul II, St. Maximillian Kolbe was a simple man of profound holiness. Born Raymund Kolbe i , ...

Born: August 15, 1896 Died: December 14, 1985 Today the cause for the canonization of Doherty, a former Russian baroness, is under consideration by the church. But when I first discovered her work and thought in the late 1970s, she was still considered a bit troublesome. Doherty was a peer of Dorothy Day, and , ...

Born: c. 1348 Died: August 15/16, 1376/79 Feast day: August 16 Patron saint of: bachelors, dogs, falsely accused people, surgeons, pilgrims St. Rocco, also known as St. Roch, was born to a wealthy family in 1340 in Montpellier, France. He was orphaned at a young age and raised by his uncle, the Duke of Mon , ...

Born: c. 1848 Died: August 21, 1894 Feast day: August 21 Rasoamanarivo came of age just as the gospel began penetrating Madagascar. Queen Ranavalona I feared any outside influence within the recently unified island and opposed Christianity. With her death in 1861, French Catholics gained a foothold. Rasoa , ...

Born/Died: c. 13th century Feast day: August 22 St. Guinefort the Dog is not a traditional saint. In fact, according to the Catholic Church, he isn’t really a saint at all. According to a 13th-century legend in southern France, Guinefort was a 15 out of 10 certified good boy who belonged to a knight, who als , ...

Born: c. 3rd century CE Died: 303 Feast day: August 25 Patron saint of: actors, comedians, dancers, musicians Anyone who was a member of a Catholic high school or college drama club during the 1950s and ’60s no doubt knows about St. Genesius—the patron saint of actors. According to legend, he was an actor , ...

Born: 600 AD Died: August 18, 670 Feast Day: August 30 Patron of: gardeners, herbalists, people with hemorrhoids and sexually transmitted diseases   Back in 1974, when she wrote The Saints of Ireland, Mary Ryan D’Arcy lamented the fact that even if you wanted to, you couldn’t buy a statue of St. Fiacre fo , ...