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Venerable Rafael Cordero y Molina
Rafael Cordero y Molina, a self-educated Afro-Puerto Rican, is remembered as the “Father of Public Education” in Puerto Rico. Born in San Juan to a poor family of free Blacks,…
Photo courtesy of Jennifer Smith Stepanek, Ph.D. Used with permission.
Mattie J. T. Stepanek
If he had lived past his fourteenth birthday, if science had discovered a cure for the rare mitochondrial disorder that had previously claimed his three older siblings, Mattie Stepanek would…
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Martyrs of “Mother Emanuel”
Ten years ago, in the evening hours of June 17, 2015, a prayer service at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, was interrupted by a young white…
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Gabrielle Bossis
As a child in France, Gabrielle Bossis enjoyed a special sense of God’s presence. She liked to carry on “simple talks” with Jesus, a practice she continued all her life.…
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St. Mary Elizabeth Hesselblad
Mary Elizabeth Hesselblad, who was born to a poor Lutheran family in Sweden, immigrated to the United States in 1888 and enrolled in nursing school in New York City. There,…
Illustration by Frank Kacmarcik, OblSB, Saint John's Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota. Used with permission.
Sts. Mary and Elizabeth
Today’s feast does not commemorate one saint but a meeting between two pregnant saints: Mary, the mother of Jesus, and her kinswoman Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist. According to…
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Servant of God Emil Kapaun
Army chaplain Emil Kapaun, a priest from Pilsen, Kansas, shipped out to Korea in July 1950, soon after the outbreak of war, along with the Eighth Cavalry Division, Third Battalion.…
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Julian of Norwich
Little is known of this extraordinary Englishwoman apart from what she recorded in the account of her mystical revelations. There she recorded how she had prayed in her youth that…
Painted by Plautilla Nelli from Wikimedia Commons
St. Catherine of Siena
St. Catherine of Siena was one of the greatest saints of a tumultuous era. Like other great mystics, she enjoyed an intimate relationship with Christ. This was certified by a…
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Cesar Chavez
In the early 1960s, Cesar Chavez wrote a new chapter in the history of the American labor movement by organizing the first successful union of farmworkers. Through his commitment to…
