Friday 19th April 2024

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Catholic Heroes… St. Anne, Mother Of Mary

August 2, 2022 saints Comments Off on Catholic Heroes… St. Anne, Mother Of Mary

By DEB PIROCH Our Baba, or my Great-Grandmother Anna, was an immigrant to this country from Slovakia. I was blessed to know her when I was very young, elementary school age, and she about 90. She and her husband Joseph had been married over 70 years. She was fragile and was reverting to speaking Slovak again, but always had a rosary in her hand.My father, Joe, stayed with his grandparents during his days in high school and later again in medical school. She was a third order Franciscan and each night retired to do her prayers after dinner. He would bring her tea and they would talk and she knew, in her holy simplicity, just the right advice to give…Continue Reading

Catholic Heroes . . . Augustinian Martyrs Of El Escorial

July 26, 2022 saints Comments Off on Catholic Heroes . . . Augustinian Martyrs Of El Escorial

By DEB PIROCH With the resurgence of socialist, leftist agendas in the West, it’s critical to memorialize in our hearts the many martyrs who lost their lives, sacrificed to Spain’s “Red Terror.” Nearly seven thousand shed their blood for the Church during the Spanish Civil War. The ones mentioned in this article are but a small portion of the 498 beatified by Pope Benedict XVI October 29, 2007. We outline first the history, which is unfamiliar to many.The first group of many groups of martyrs was beatified by Pope St. John Paul II, who well knew the dangers of Communism. Pope Paul VI had stopped any immediate processes of canonization, because he felt 50 years should pass, and also, that…Continue Reading

Catholic Heroes . . . St. Teresa Of Calcutta

July 12, 2022 saints Comments Off on Catholic Heroes . . . St. Teresa Of Calcutta

By DEB PIROCH God gives us saints for our times. With the recent Supreme Court ruling, one’s mind turns to Pro-Life Saints — like Pope St. John Paul II, or Mother Teresa.When abortion was legalized in 1973 in America, the Supreme Court ruling overturned the majority of U.S. states’ laws which made abortion illegal. And while Roe v. Wade created a precedent in law where none existed for abortion, this did not in any way morally justify the killing of innocent unborn children. Since that time many nations have followed the example of the United States, but the U.S. is unique in that here our leaders and electorate continue to wage a fight back and forth against abortion, with the…Continue Reading

Catholic Heroes… St. Justin

July 5, 2022 saints Comments Off on Catholic Heroes… St. Justin

By DEB PIROCH A mere century after Christ and less after Paul wrote to the Ephesians, Justin was born in Samaria. His parents were Greek pagans, but he seems to have always sought God through philosophy. First a Stoic, he rejected this approach for not providing him with the answers he sought. (Stoics seek to do virtue through wisdom, temperance, justice, and courage. These resemble some aspects of Christianity, but there is no God.)Next, he went to the Peripatetic, whose ideas derived from Aristotle. The teacher was only interested in collecting fees, so Justin dropped him. The Pythagorean he next visited would neither address his questions, unless he first studied music, astronomy, and geometry. Justin gravitated to the school of…Continue Reading

Catholic Heroes . . . St. Catherine Of Alexandria

June 28, 2022 saints Comments Off on Catholic Heroes . . . St. Catherine Of Alexandria

By DEB PIROCH Catherine of Alexandria, Egypt was likely a pagan princess. She lived long ago, in the third century, and converted through a vision of the Blessed Virgin and the Christ Child. Catherine pledged her virginity to Christ and, according to legend, become His mystical spouse.Alexandria was the center of learning in the ancient world, and Catherine was intelligent with her wits about her. When Emperor Maxentius persecuted Christians, she determined to confront him and tell him the error of his ways. He found it hard to condemn such beauty, and instead summoned fifty philosophers from his kingdom to debate her. During the session that followed, her points were so well-argued that she ended up converting many of those…Continue Reading

Catholic Heroes… Saints For Corpus Christi

June 21, 2022 saints Comments Off on Catholic Heroes… Saints For Corpus Christi

By DEB PIROCH Corpus Christi, the solemnity instituted by Pope Urban IV, is over seven hundred years old. In 1263, the year prior to its declaration, a miracle occurred in the Italian city of Bolsena, which acted as a catalyst for the event.By coincidence, I have been to Bolsena, approximately an hour from Rome by taxi, and I knew of the Eucharistic miracle there. I did not know till more recently of the role this miracle played in granting Corpus Christi a role in the feast days of the Church.A visiting priest, some say from Germany, some say from Prague or Bohemia, was visiting Italy and stopped in the town to say Mass. He was having doubts about the Real…Continue Reading

Catholic Heroes . . . St. John Bosco

June 7, 2022 saints Comments Off on Catholic Heroes . . . St. John Bosco

By DEB PIROCH Don Bosco (1815-1888), who became a spiritual father to hundreds of fatherless boys, lost his own father at the age of two. The youngest of three brothers, one a stepbrother, he was born to Francis and Margaret Bosco, peasant farmers in Italy. His father caught pneumonia and died suddenly, leaving his wife a widow at 29 to care for her elderly mother-in-law, and three boys. Even grimmer, there was a terrible famine and no food. But as a woman with a firm grip on her faith, she would later become Venerable Margaret Bosco and would raise her son John to be a saint.Little John Bosco, for that was his given name, had a dream at the age…Continue Reading

Catholic Heroes St. Christina Mirabilis

May 31, 2022 saints Comments Off on Catholic Heroes St. Christina Mirabilis

By DEB PIROCH Born in Brusthem, Belgium, Christina Mirabilis (c. 1150-1224) was one of three sisters. “Mirabilis” means “Astonishing.” And according to her biography, the sisters decided to divide duties so that that the eldest would pray, the middle one care for the house, and the youngest, Christina, care for the sheep. The poor shepherdess died, however, or so they thought. She awoke in her coffin during her funeral Mass and floated to the top of the church for all to see. They all ran away except her sister and the priest. She came down only for Communion, having levitated to escape the smell of sin.Christina had died. Today we might say she had suffered a seizure from epilepsy or…Continue Reading

Catholic Heroes . . . St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe

May 24, 2022 saints Comments Off on Catholic Heroes . . . St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe

By DEB PIROCH A newly consecrated saint this past weekend is St. Titus Brandsma, whom Pope Francis has named a patron saint of journalists. We can always use more intercessors! But the Pope neglected to mention his “brother” saint. St. Maximilian Kolbe has long been a known a patron saint of journalists. Both men were martyrs in Nazi concentration camps: Kolbe died a martyr in Auschwitz, while Brandsma died in Dachau. Both suffered death in the exact manner, by injection of carbolic acid.However, read on to find out more about St. Maximilian, his life using the media in dedication to Our Lady and how he embraced martyrdom as a possible consequence of his life from a young age.St. Maximilian was…Continue Reading

Catholic Heroes . . . St. Joseph Of Cupertino

May 17, 2022 saints Comments Off on Catholic Heroes . . . St. Joseph Of Cupertino

By DEB PIROCH St. Joseph, born in 1603, experienced his first ecstatic vision when he was only elementary school age and, his jaw dropping in astonishment, he was in utter amazement at what was shown him. Classmates not surprisingly bestowed on him the name of “bocca aperta,” or “open mouthed.” The only son of Felix and Frances Desa, he was not bright. However, he was raised piously and even had two uncles who were religious. He used to joke that he had no need of the novitiate, for he had undergone that ritual already under the stern eye of his mother.His father fell badly into debt and had to flee to escape his lenders. Perhaps a lack of secular ambition…Continue Reading