Today marks the founding of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary in France in 1791. At the height of the French Revolution, Adelaide de Cicé, a French noblewoman, founded this community. What made this community different was that the sisters didn’t wear habits, nor were they known as sisters. To this day they still don’t use the title. While the revolutionary crackdown on the Church was the immediate impetus for this approach, their anonymity (s their vision statement reads)... Read more

Today marks the death of Francis Libermann (1804-1852), founder of a missionary order. Born Jacob Libermann in Alsace, the son of a Rabbi, he converted to Catholicism and was ordained a priest in 1841. He soon founded a community, the Congrregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which worked both with Africans and with people of the African Disapora. In 1848, he merged his community with the Holy Ghost Fathers (now known as the Spiritans), founded in France in 1703.... Read more

Today marks the death of Francis Clement Kelly (1870-1948), Bishop and founder of the Catholic Extension Society. Born in Canada, he was ordained in Detroit in 1893. It was while he was working in rural parishes that he got the idea of creating an organization to meet the needs of parishes like his own. He saw that large portions of America were just as much mission territory as were countries overseas. In 1905, with the help of Chicago Archbishop James... Read more

The Catholic Press has been a part of the American experience since the first newspaper under Catholic auspices was published in Charleston in 1822, The U.S. Catholic Miscellany. But for most of the 1800’s, Catholic journalism was a shaky endeavor, the biggest issue being finance. Newly formed dioceses lacked funds for a newspaper, so most Catholic papers were independently published. Many came and went with amazing speed. Some even locked horns with Church leadership. In the 1830’s, for example, The... Read more

Father Cyprian Davis is a Benedictine priest who teaches Church History at St. Meinrad;’s School of Theology in Indiana. His book The History of Black Catholics in the United States is one I can’t recommend highly enough. The following is a reflection he wrote for Michael Leach and Therese Borchard’s lovely book I Like Being Catholic: As a youngster I devoured history books. There I encountered the Catholic Church with its medieval popes, bishops, saints, and sinners. When I was... Read more

Today marks the feast of St. John Bosco (1819-1888), founder of the Salesians. Born Giovanni Melchiorre Bosco in Piedmont, he was ordained a priest in 1841 and assigned to Turin, where he began a ministry to city’s disadvantaged youth. He started by forming youth clubs and expanded the work into a religious order that is now one of the largest in the Catholic Church. Don Bosco named the community for St. Francis de Sales, whose kindness he wanted to be... Read more

Today marks the birth of Thomas Merton, who writes at the beginning of his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain: “On the last day of January 1915, under the sign of the Water Bearer, in a year of a great war, and down in the shadow of some French mountains on the borders of Spain, I came into the world.” His original opening line was supposed to be this: When a man is conceived, when a human beng comes into nature... Read more

Today marks the death Claudio Acquaviva (1543-1615), fifth General of the Society of the Society of Jesus (and the longest reigning one to date). The son of a nobleman, he studied law before becoming a priest. In 1567, he joined the Jesuits, where his administrative ability was quickly utilized. After serving as provincial in Naples and in Rome, he was elected Superior General in 1581 at age 37. It was during his generalate that the Ratio Studiorum (1599) was promulgated.... Read more

Today marks the death of ana other Lasallian saint in the making, Brother Teodoreto (1871-1954). Born Giovanni Garberoglio in Italy, he taught for forty years in Turin. He also founded a secular institute, the Union of Catechists of Jesus Crucified and of Mary Immaculate. In 1990 he was declared Venerable. Read more

Today marks the death of two De LaSalle Christian Brothers on their way to being canonized. Brother Exupérien, born Adrien Mas in (1829-1905). The website lasallianresources.org has this to say about his life: In his last post, which lasted 32 years, he accomplished remarkable apostolic work. It was he who inspired the Monthly Retreat, destined to revive the spiritual life of the Brothers, and the nine month Second Novitiate. He founded the Saint Benedict Labre Association with the aim of... Read more