Blessed are They

Born: April 1, 1854 Died: July 9, 1897 Feast: N/A Patron saint of: N/A Tolton is known as the first American priest of African descent who identified as Black (three brothers—James, Patrick, and Alexander Healy—were ordained earlier, but they identified and “passed” as white). In 2010 the Archdiocese of Chicag , ...

Born: February 14, 1879 Died: April 4, 1963 Feast day: April 4 Patron saint of: chaplains The previous fall, on Oct. 23, 2005, a cousin of mine, Padre Gaetano Catanoso, had been named a saint by Pope Benedict XVI in his first canonization ceremony. I was there with my family, along with tens of thousands of ot , ...

Born: April 10, 1938 Died: April 7, 2014 Before his murder in Homs, a war-torn city less than 200 miles away from Amman, Frans had lived and ministered in Syria for nearly 50 years. He considered Syria his home and refused to flee when the civil war came and left Homs destroyed and its population starving. He wa , ...

Born: April 10, 1953 Died: December 2, 1980 Jean Donovan offers a rare gospel witness in these brutal times. Donovan was born on April 10, 1953 and grew up in upper-middle-class Westport, Connecticut. During college she spent a life-changing year in Ireland, where a charismatic priest committed to the Latin Americ , ...

Born: January 7, 1844 Died: April 16, 1879 Feast day: April 16 Patron saint of: illness, people ridiculed for their piety, poverty, shepherds Bernadette Soubirous was a frail young woman from a large, impoverished family who, at the age of 14, began to receive visions of the Blessed Mother. When instructed by , ...

Born: March 25, 1748 Died: April 16, 1783  Feast Day: April 16 Patron of: Homeless people  Cities are of many minds about their mentally ill homeless people. New York puts them up in slum hotels for $3000 a month. Phoenix passes laws to keep them off the sidewalks. In Washington, movie stars fast and , ...

Born: March 25, 1347 Died: April 29, 1380 Feast Day: April 29 Patron of: Italy When you know what God wants you to do, don’t let anything stand in your way. That certainly could have been an unspoken motto of Saint Catherine of Siena. The youngest of 25 children, Catherine announced at a young age her intent , ...