Today marks the birth of Mother Mary Anselma Felber (1843-1883), foundress of the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. Born Elizabeth Felber, at seventeen she entered the Convent of Perpetual Adoration in Maria Rickenbach, Switzerland. In August 1874 she led a group of sisters to Conception, Missiouri, to help the Benedictine Fathers in ministering to the area’s German population. They taught school and opened an orphanage. They also produced vestments, made altar breads, and operated a printery. In 1882 the Sisters... Read more

In 1789, when the United States got its first President, it also got its first Roman Catholic Bishop, John Carroll (1735-1815). On November 6, 1789, he was named Bishop of Baltimore, and his diocese encompassed the entire American nation. Born to a prominent Maryland family, his brother Daniel signed both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. Their cousin Charles Carroll was the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence. John studied in Europe, where he joined the Jesuits... Read more

Today marks the death of Father Basil Moreau (1799-1873), a French priest who founded the Congregation of the Holy Cross to addresss the pastoral and educational needs of the local Church, which was still recovering from the French Revolution. The community’s name is taken from the place where it was founded: Sainte Croix, a suburb of LeMans, France. Within a few years, the community had three branches for priests, sisters and brothers. Their first overseas mission was to Algeria in... Read more

Today marks the death of Alessandro Valignano (1539-1606), the Italian missionary who oversaw Jesuit activity in Asia for over thirty years. He was among the first Europeans to master the language. It was Valignano who sent the great Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci to China, but his real ambition was the conversion of Japan, a country whose culture he greatly respected. His approach there was to evangelize the culture from within, starting at the top. Hence Jesuits working there assumed the... Read more

Today marks the death of Bishop Frederic Baraga (1797-1868), first Bishop of Marquette and the first Slovenian priest in America. Ordained in 1823, he answered a call for volunteers to minister to Michigan’s Native peoples. For nearly forty years he worked in northern Michigan, often traveling on snowshoes through harsh winter weather. He wrote the first Chippewa dictionary, as well as catechisms and devotional books. In 1853 northern Michigan was detached from the Diocese of Detroit and Baraga was named... Read more

Today marks the death of Mother Joseph of the Sacred Heart (1823-1902). Born Esther Pariseau in Montreal, she joined the Sisters of Providence at age twenty. In 1856, she and four other sisters were sent to Fort Vancouver, Washington. In 1858 she founded the first permanent hospital in the Pacific Northwest, St. Joseph’s. By the time of her death she had established 29 institutions across the Pacific Northwest: schools, hospitals, orphanages, homes for the elderly, and a mental asylum. Her... Read more

At the time of his assassination, plans were underway for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to make a retreat with Thomas Merton at Our Lady of Gethsemani Abbey. On April 5, 1968, Merton wrote to Coretta Scott King: Some events are too big and terrible to talk about. I think we all anticipated this one: I am sure he did. Somehow when John Yungblut spoke of Martin coming here for a brief retreat before the big march, I had the... Read more

Since today begins the week of prayer for Christian Unity, it’s a good opportunity to mention one of its founders, Father Paul Wattson (1863-1940). The son of an Episcopal priest, he was ordained in 1885. Over the years he felt a growing call to the religious life. In 1898 he and Lurana Mary White, an Episcopal nun, founded a community based at Graymoor Chapel in upstate New York. Named the Society of the Atonement, its purpose was to work Anglican-Catholic... Read more

Between 1870 and 1920 some 650,000 Slovak immigrants came to the United States. A largely Catholic population, they had 241 parishes by 1930. Today marks the death of an early leader of the Slovak community, Father Stephen Furdek (1855-1915), the first Slovak priest in America. Born in Slovakia, he volunteered for the Diocese of Cleveland, which had a growing Slovak and Czech population. When he was ordained in 1882, Cleveland had a few Czech parishes, but no Slovak. In 1885... Read more

A 1959 Gallup Poll listed him as the seventh most popular person in the world (I’m not sure who the first six were). In his time, Dr. Thomas A. Dooley (1927-1961) was a Catholic folk hero whose humanitarian work in Southeast Asia won him the admiration of popes and presidents. Today marks his death of cancer, a day after he celebrated his thirty-fourth birthday. Born to an upper-class St. Louis family, Dooley graduated from the Notre Dame University. After medical... Read more