Óscar Romero
OSCAR ROMERO was born in Ciudad Barrios, a town in the mountainous east of El Salvador, on 15th August 1917. He was the second of seven children. When he was thirteen he declared a vocation to the priesthood. He went to a seminary in San Miguel, then to the capital San Salvador, and from there…
Read MoreThomas Becket
Thomas Becket was an English archbishop and martyr, famously murdered by knights of Henry II at Canterbury Cathedral. After his death, his tomb and relics became a focus for pilgrimage and he was made a saint. Thomas Becket was born in Cheapside, London, to reasonably affluent Norman parents who had settled in England some years earlier. He was given a good…
Read MoreSamuel Ajayi Crowther
Crowther was born with the name Ajayi in Osogun, in the Egba section of the Yoruba people, in what is now western Nigeria. When about 13, he was taken as a slave by Fulani and Yoruba Muslim raiders and sold several times before being purchased by Portuguese traders for the transatlantic market. His ship was…
Read MoreJohn Henry Newman
John Henry Newman began his career as an Anglican churchman and scholar and ended it as a Roman Catholic cardinal. He was born in London on February 21, 1801, and at the age of fifteen, he enrolled in Trinity College, beginning an association with Oxford University that would last for nearly thirty years. Newman moved from Trinity to…
Read MoreJohn Henry Hopkins
John Henry Hopkins Jr. may not have a name the average man or woman would recognize, but he was the author of a work virtually everyone knows, the Christmas carol We Three Kings of Orient Are. While he wrote other carols, hymns and songs, it is this Christmastime favorite that will forever afford him a…
Read MoreRichard Allen
Born into slavery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on February 14, 1760, Richard Allen went on to become an educator, writer, minister and founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Benjamin Chew, a Quaker lawyer, owned the Allen family, which included Richard’s parents and three other children. Chew eventually sold the Allen family to Stokeley Sturgis, a Delaware planter. At age…
Read MoreThomas Cranmer
Before a vast crowd of friends and enemies, the Archbishop thrust his hand into the fire. He was going to his death by being burned at the stake but insisted that the hand that was guilty of such shameful sin must burn first. Jesus said “It is better to lose a limb than for your whole body…
Read MoreAnselm of Canterbury
Anselm was born in Aosta in the Piedmont region of northwestern Italy in 1033. The town was strategically located at the intersection of the Great St. Bernard Pass and the Little St. Bernard Pass. The former road dates back to the Bronze Age and connects Italy with Switzerland. The latter straddles the Italian and French…
Read MoreIsidore of Seville
The 76 years of Isidore’s life were a time of conflict and growth for the Church in Spain. The Visigoths had invaded the land a century and a half earlier, and shortly before Isidore’s birth they set up their own capital. They were Arians—Christians who said Christ was not God. Thus, Spain was split in…
Read MorePatrick
Much myth and legend surrounds the story of Patrick, born in Britain in the late 4th century. St. Patrick is often reduced to a mythical figure who performed magical feats (like driving all the snakes out of Ireland). The truth, as usual, is better than fiction! All that can be known about Patrick comes from two…
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