Priest (1837–1900)Edward McGlynn, who was born in New York City to Irish immigrants, studied in Rome and was ordained a priest in 1860. At the age of twenty-nine, he was…

Cardinal, Archbishop of Florence (1872–1961)In May 1938, Mussolini welcomed Hitler to tour Italy, where he was warmly welcomed in Rome and other cities. The exception was Florence, where the Cardinal…

Archbishop of São Paulo, Brazil (1921–2016)Paulo Evaristo Arns, the son of German immigrants, was born in Brazil. In 1943, he entered the Franciscans and two years later was ordained a…

Ascetic (409–493)One of the more unusual forms of ascetic witness in the fifth century was that of the stylites, or pillar-saints, of the Syrian wilderness. Like other Desert Fathers, they…

Bishop of Myra (Fourth Century)St. Nicholas is one of the most popular of all saints: patron of Russia and Greece and of many classes of people, from children to prostitutes.…

Married Couple (d. 1951 and 1965) Luigi and Maria Beltrame Quattrocchi were the first married couple (non-martyrs) to be beatified together. They met as teenagers in Rome and were married on…

Christian Apologist (1898-1963) Clive Staples Lewis, who was born in Belfast in Northern Ireland, spent most of his life in Oxford, where he served as a scholar of medieval literature.…

Abolitionist and Feminist (1793–1880) Lucretia Coffin, the daughter of a whaling captain, was educated in Quaker schools in New York before settling in Pennsylvania. In 1811 she married James Mott, in…

Mystic (ca. 1210 - ca. 1282)Mechthild of Magdeburg, a German mystic of the thirteenth century, is known to us entirely through The Flowing Light of the Godhead, a kind of…

Priest (1898–1963)In 1922, Hugh O’Flaherty, a young Irish seminarian, was assigned to pursue studies in Rome. Following his ordination in 1925, he stayed on to work for the Holy See,…