Born in Segovia, Spain, the son of a wealthy merchant, he was studying with the Jesuits when his father died. He had to return home and take over the family business. He married and had several children. After the death of his wife and children, he sold the business and applied to the Jesuits. He was accepted as a brother in 1571. He worked as a porter at the Jesuit college on the island of Majorca. Overlooked by some of... Read more

Today also marks the death of Father Edward F. Sorin (1814-1893), founder of the University of Notre Dame. Born in France, he was ordained a priest of the Diocese of LeMans before joinging the recently organized Holy Cross Fathers in 1839. In 1841, he was sent to America with six Holy Cross Brothers to start the community’s first American foundation. From 1841 to 1866, he was head of the Holy Cross community in the United States. He was elected Superior... Read more

Born in Maryland, he studied at Mount St. Mary’s College, Emmitsburg, before pursuing seminary studies at the Urban College in Rome, where he was ordained in 1846. He taught theology at Mount St. Mary’s for ten years before he was named Bishop of Natchez, Mississippi, in 1857. The diocese embraced the entire state at the time. During the Civil War, trying to keep the Church’s neutrality, he was arrested for refusing to have prayers said for Union forces in his... Read more

Born in Limerick, Cantwell was the first of fifteen children. At a time when Ireland had a priestly surplus, newly ordained priests were often sent to other dioceses around the world that needed priests. Cantwell was sent to San Francisco, where he organized the Newman Club on the University of California’s Berkeley campus. In 1904, he became secretary to San Francisco Archbishop Patrick Riordan, and in 1914 he was named Vicar General of the Archdiocese. In 1917, he was named... Read more

On this day in 1840, eight Sisters of Notre Dame from Namur, Belgium, came to Cincinnati, Ohio, at the request of Bishop John Purcell. They came to America with the idea of evangelizing the Native peoples, but they soon set up shop in Cincinnati, where they opened their first school in January 1841. By 1849 they had nine schools in the city. From Cincinnati they spread elsewhere: Dayton, Toledo, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. Wherever they went they set up tuition... Read more

The Reluctant Saint is a 1962 film which tells a somewhat fictionalized version of the story of Joseph of Cupertino, a 17th Century Italian saint. It stars Maximilian Schell as Joseph, as well as Ricardo Montalban, Lea Padovani, Akim Tamiroff, and Harold Goldblatt. The movie was written by John Fante and Joseph Petracca and directed by Edward Dmytryk. Saint Joseph of Cupertino was an Italian saint. He was said to have been remarkably unclever, but prone to miraculous levitation and... Read more

Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.Blessed John XXIII Read more

Born in New York City to immigrant parents, John Joseph Burke studied at the Jesuits’ St. Francis Xavier College (now Xavier High School) in Manhattan. In 1896, he joined the Paulists and was ordained in 1899. After working in parishes, he was appointed to the staff of The Catholic World in 1903 and soon rose to its editorship. An organizational genius, Burke was instrumental in the founding of several organizations: the Catholic Press Association (1911), the Chaplain’s Aid Association (1917),... Read more

Born in Cleveland, Joseph Patrick Hurley was ordained a priest in 1919. After a few years of parish work, he was named secretary to Bishop Edward Mooney, apostolic delegate to India. (Mooney had Cleveland connections.) From 1934 to 1940, he worked in Rome as an attaché in the Papal Secretariat of State. In 1940, he was named Bishop of St. Augustine, Florida. During his 27 years as bishop, he presided over an enormous increase in Florida’s Catholic population. He was... Read more

Although he was born in Kiskeam, where his mother’s family were from, in North Cork, Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty grew up in Killarney, where his father was the steward of the old Killarney Golf Club when it was located in Deerpark. Hugh had a vocation for the priesthood and as a young seminarian he was posted to Rome in 1922, the year Mussolini came to power in Italy. He earned a degree in theology in just one year while studying in... Read more