Saints & Heroes

December 28: The Church considers those babies slaughtered by Herod to be the first martyrs, since they shed their blood because of Christ.

December 30: Though a good bishop, protector of orphans and widows, and a fair judge, St. Egwin incurred the animosity of people who resisted his insistent teaching on marital morality and clerical celibacy.

December 4: Saint John wrote works of theology and poetry at St. Sabas where he died a very old man. He was proclaimed Doctor of the Church in 1890.

December 5: At the age of thirty, Saint Sabas obtained leave to live as a hermit five days of the week, and later retired into further solitude in the desert towards Jericho.

August 8: Saint Dominic founded the Order of Preachers, commonly known as the Dominicans. His ministry was instrumental in defeating the violent heresy of Albigensian.

November 28: Catherine was born Zoé Labouré on May 2, 1806, the ninth of eleven children born to a farm family in Fain-les-Moutiers, France.

November 20: Though only about fifteen years old when crowned in 855, Edmund showed himself a model ruler from the first, anxious to treat all with equal justice.

November 22: Cecilia was a devout Christian maiden of noble Roman birth. She was martyred and is the the patron saint of music and model of chastity.

November 23: Saint Columban resolved at an early age to embrace monastic asceticism and dedicate himself to a strict and disciplined life, abstaining from many of the pleasures of the world.