Born to the Spanish nobility, the daughter of Don Alonso Sanchez de Cepeda and Doña Beatriz. She grew up reading the lives of the saints, and playing at “hermit” in the garden. Crippled by disease in her youth, which led to her being well educated at home, she was cured after prayer to Saint Joseph. Her mother died when Teresa was 12, and she prayed to Our Lady to be her replacement. Her father opposed her entry to religious life,... Read more

On this day in 1983, movie star Pat O’Brien died. Born William Joseph Patrick O’Brien in Milwaukee in 1899, he served as an altar boy at the Gesu Church while growing up near 13th and Clybourn Streets. He attended the Jesuits’ Marquette Academy with fellow actor Spencer Tracy before they both enlisted in the Navy during World War I. After the war he enrolled at Marquette University. As a young man, he considered the priesthood. And some of the roles... Read more

John Jakob Raskob was a business executive for DuPont and General Motors, the builder of the Empire State Building, and the chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1928 to 1932. He was a key supporter of Alfred E. Smith‘s candidacy for President of the United States.After Franklin D. Roosevelt became President, Raskob became a prominent opponent of the New Deal through anti-Roosevelt organizations like the American Liberty League.His religious convictions motivated him to be substantially involved in charitable giving... Read more

Today in 1917, Pope Benedict XV founded the Pontificium Institutum Orientalium, the Pontifical Institute for Oriental Studies, now the premier center for the study of Eastern Christianity. In 1922 the institute was entrusted to the care of the Jesuits. In the 1928 encyclical Rerum Orientalium, Pope Pius XI encouraged bishops to send students to the Institute to be formed as future professors in Oriental studies. The Faculty of Oriental Canon Law had a crucial role in the production of Code... Read more

On this day in 1890,Pope Leo XIII issued Dall’alto Dell’apostolico Seggio, on Freemasonry in Italy. Read more

Born in Massachusetts to a prominent family, James Kent Stone attended Harvard before joining the Union Army as a lieutenant during the American Civil War. After leaving the service in 1863, he became a professor of Latin at Kenyon College in Ohio. That same year he married Cornelia Fay, with whom he had two daughters. Not long thereafter, he was ordained an Episcopalian priest. In 1867, at age 27, he became president of the college. From there he went on... Read more

The University of San Francisco began as a one-room schoolhouse named Saint Ignatius Academy. Its founding president was Fr. Anthony Maraschi, a Jesuit from northern Italy, who was teaching “mental philosophy” at Loyola College, Baltimore, when the order reached him in 1854 to depart for California’s distant shores. When Fr. Maraschi arrived in San Francisco, he applied for and received permission from Archbishop Joseph Alemany to build a Jesuit church and school. Fr. Maraschi borrowed $11,500 and purchased a lot... Read more

Born in Italy, he joined the Vincentian Fathers at age nineteen and was ordained in 1801. The first fifteen years of his priesthood were spent in Italy, conducting retreats and preaching parish missions. But he felt a call to minister to the people of the United States, so despite his frail health, he spent his spare time learning English. In 1816, at the request of the Bishop of New Orleans, he led the first group of Vincentians to the United... Read more

What tenderness there is in Jesus’ love for man! In his infinite goodness, he established with each of us, bonds of sublime love! His love has no limits. St. John Bosco Read more

The ideal Know-Nothing, as seen in a popular lithograph of the 1850’s. Read more