St. Felix was born to a peasant family in Cantalice. When he was twelve, he was hired out as a shepherd and plowman. He found such work conducive to meditation. A turning point in his life came when the team of oxen he was driving suddenly bolted, knocking him down and pulling the sharp plow across his body. When he found himself completely unharmed, he determined once to present himself for admission as a lay brother at the local Capuchin monastery of Citta Ducale.
Very quickly, Felix acquired a reputation for holiness. Even members of his community referred him as “the saint.” After making his final vows, he was sent to Rome, where he lived for forty years, serving the community’s official beggar for food and alms. People call him “Brother Deo Gratias,” for his habit of constantly giving thanks to God. Among his friends was St. Philip Neri, who read aloud to the illiterate brother the proposed rule for his new order and afterward incorporated his comments and amendments.
Felix was well know for his austerity. He walked barefoot, lived on little than bread crusts and table scraps, and was later found t have worn a shirt of iron links. If anyone insulted him he would reply, “I pray God that you may become a saint!”
He died on May 18, 1587, after receiving a vision of Our Lady. He was canonized in 1712.
St. Paschal, who was born in Spain, spent his early life as a shepherd. Though he had no formal education, he taught himself to read and write, and he enjoyed the long days and nights with his flock, which afforded hours of uninterrupted prayer. At the age of twenty-one, he applied for admission to a friary of reformed Franciscans of St. Peter of Alcántara, a community known for its strict poverty and austerity. Paschal adapted happily to this environment, assigned mostly to menial tasks and joining his brothers in care for the poor and sick.
What distinguished Paschal was his extraordinary devotion to the Eucharist. He would spend hours each night or early morning on his knees before the Blessed Sacrament. Often he volunteered to serve at one Mass after another. Even while he lived he was known as “the saint of the Eucharist.” And later, long after his death, he would be named the patron of all Eucharistic congresses and confraternities of the Blessed Sacrament.
On one occasion, Paschal was sent on a mission to France carrying letters for the minister general of the Observant Franciscans. It was a dangerous undertaking to cross Huguenot territory in his Franciscan garb, and several times he was stoned and severely injured. Nevertheless, he returned safely to resume his simple life.
He died on May 17, 1592, at the age of fifty-two. He was canonized in 1690.
I was born poor and am resolved to die in poverty and penance.
Francis Ignatius Vincent was born to a large family in the village of Laconi in Sardinia. He was a frail child and during one bout of illness his mother vowed, should he recover, that she would give him to the Franciscans. When he did rally, his father balked at fulfilling this pledge. “Today or tomorrow,” he reasoned, “this year or the next, it all comes to the same thing.” But Francis would not be deterred from his vocation. When he was twenty-one, he applied to the Capuchins and received the name Brother Ignatius.
Ignatius spent most of his life in obscure and humble assignments. He had no special talents, save his extraordinary aptitude for begging. This became the principal occupation of his life. People proved exceptionally happy to give him alms, and in exchange he often reconciled feuding neighbors, reformed sinners, or left a trail of miraculous healings.
There was in town a notorious moneylender whom Ignatius never approached. The moneylender took offense at this ostracism and complained to the Capuchin superior, who subsequently instructed Ignatius to include this man on his rounds. Ignatius complied with this command, and he returned that evening with a bag filled with food. But when he opened it up it was dripping with blood. “What is this?” asked the superior. “Father Guardian,” Ignatius replied, “this is the blood of the poor. And that is why I ask nothing from that house.”
Ignatius died on May 11, 1781. He was canonized on 1951.
Benedetta Gattorno was born in Genoa to a wealthy family. Married at twenty-one, she was widowed six years later, with two young children to care for – one of them deaf and mute. Despite these challenges, she underwent what she called a “conversion” to greater love of God and her neighbors. Already a daily communicant, she took private vows of chastity and obedience, later adding poverty when she became a Franciscan tertiary.
Her confessor urged her to established a religious congregation, but she worried about what would happen to her children. In this, she received encouragement from Pope Pius IX. During an audience, he reassured her that God would provide for her children. And so, in 1866, she founded the Daughters of St. Anne (named for the mother of Mary), and later took the name Anna Rosa. The mission of the sisters was to be “Servants of the poor and ministers of mercy,” seeking out and responding to all forms of suffering – whether among the poor, the abandoned, orphans, the sick, or elderly. She took a special interest in deaf children.
In 1878, the first sisters left Italy to establish houses in Latin America and other parts of Europe. By the time of Anna Rosa’s death on May 6, 1900, there were thirty-five hundred sisters at work in over three hundred houses. She was beatified in 2000.
Elizabeth Hayes, the daughter of an Anglican priest, pursued a circuitous spiritual journey. Starting out in an Anglican religious community in Oxford, she converted to Catholicism and later joined a Franciscan community in Greenwich. Aside from the traditional three religious vows, she took a fourth – to make herself available to the needs of mission. Her subsequent journey led her to Jamaica, then France, and finally to Belle Prairie, Minnesota, at that time a remote outpost. Operating out of a log cabin with a small group of sisters, she formed the Missionary Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception.
They faced enormous hurdles. At one point, Mother Mary Ignatius Hayes, as she was now known, travelled to Italy, hoping to find other Franciscans willing to join her in the prairie. She returned alone. But, eventually, her community grew and she decided it was time to spread out – this time to serve the African American in the South. In 1879, she established a new community in Georgia, providing education to the children of recently freed slaves.
The next year, she traveled to Rome for an audience with Pope Leo XIII. He persuaded her to open a novitiate in Rome. She complied, though it meant she would never return to the United States. She died on May 6, 1894.
Constanza Troiani was born in Italy in 1813. At the age of six, following her mother’s death, she was entrusted to the Franciscan Sisters of Ferentino. At sixteen, in the convent in which she was raised, she was accepted as a novice, taking the name Sr. Mary Catherine of St. Rose of Viterbo.
Many years passed. One day, a visiting priest just back from Egypt spoke of the need of sisters is Cairo. Mary Catherine, who had always yearned to be a missionary, won permission from her convent to accept this challenge and with five other sisters departed for Cairo. Once there – the first Italian sisters in Egypt – they set about learning Arabic and embarked on care for the poor, opening an orphanage that welcomed children of all races and religious backgrounds.
Yet, her convent had considered this a temporary mission, and when the sisters were instructed to return, they faced a dilemma. Choosing to sever ties with their congregation, they received a permission from Rome to establish a new congregation: the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Egypt. Along with their previous work, Mother Mary Catherine, known widely as “Mother of the poor,” fearlessly took up the antislavery cause. Asked by a sister during an outbreak of cholera whether anything frightened her, she replied,
“My dear, only a lack of faith frightens me.”
Her passing, on May 6, 1887, was mourned throughout Cairo by Christians and Muslims alike. She was beatified in 1985.
