Saint Isabel of France (1225-1270)
Beautiful, clever, and the daughter of a king (Louis VIII of France), Princess Isabel was destined for a life of pomp and luxury. But her heart was drawn elsewhere. When her frequent fasts and austerity cause her to fall ill, her mother consulted a holy woman, who...
Servant of God Brother Juniper (1258)
Brother Juniper was one of the original companions of St. Francis and " a man of such unshakeable humility, patience, and self-contempt, that the rising waves of temptation and tribulation could not move him." Brother Juniper evidently attained such a degree of...
Saint Angela Merici (1474-1540)
Born in Lombardy and orphaned at an early age, Angela Merici became a Franciscan tertiary and embraced a life of prayerful simplicity. After spending many years in almost continuous pilgrimage, visiting shrines of Italy, she had a vision one day in which she beheld a...
Blessed Gabriele Allegra (1907–1976)
Known as “the St. Jerome of China”, Fr. Gabriele was born Dec. 26, 1907 in a village in the province of Catania, Sicily, and entered the Order as a youth of 16. While he was studying theology at St. Anthony’s College in Rome, an academic conference was held there on...
Sister Dorothy Hennessey (1913-2008)
In 2001, Sr. Dorothy Hennessey, eighty-eight, made headlines when she was arrested with her younger sister Gwen Hennessey for trespassing at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. They were part of a large contingent of human rights protesters waging a...
Saint Berard and Companions (1220)
In 1219, in the midst of the Fifth Crusade, St. Francis embarked on a risky mission. Crossing the battlefield in Syria he sought an audience with Sultan Malik al-Kamil of Egypt. Though he did not succeed in converting the sultan, he was received graciously and...
Blessed Odoric of Pordenone (1285-1331)
Odoric of Pordenone passed his early life unremarkably as a Franciscan friar, a vocation he had embraced at the age of fifteen. In 1317, however, some impulse inspired him to embark on a fantastic journey that took him to the ends of the known world and back again....
Saint Bernard of Corleone (1605-1667)
Filippo Latino, the son of a shoemaker in the town of Corleone, trained as a soldier and earned a reputation as the greatest swordman in Sicily. Equipped with a hot temper, he was evidently quick to draw his blade. This was the cause of his conversion. One day, in a...
Saint Angela of Foligno (1248-1309)
St. Angela came from a wealthy family in Foligno, Italy, where her early life was given over to frivolity and pleasure seeking. She married a rich man and bore three sons. But her existence lacked a higher purpose. By the time she was thirty-seven, she found her life...