Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824) was born in Germany to a devout peasant family. From a young age she received divine knowledge imparted to her through extremely detailed visions of the lives of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and the saints. As a child her guardian angel often appeared to her, and Jesus himself visited her while she was tending sheep. She was often called upon for...

St. Josephine Bakhita (d. 1947) was born into a wealthy Sudanese family near Darfur. She was kidnapped when she was nine years old and forced into slavery. Her kidnappers named her Bakhita (“fortunate” in Arabic). She was sold and resold, beaten and tortured by her owners, until in 1883 she was purchased by a kind Italian consul who treated her well. He brought her to Italy to work...

St. Colette of Corbie was a carpenter‘s daughter whose parents were near 60 at her birth. Colette was orphaned at age 17, and left in the care of a Benedictine abbot. Her guardian wanted her to marry, but Colette was drawn to religious life. She initially tried to join the Beguines and Benedictines, but failed in her vocation.  On 17 September 1402, at age 21, she became an...

Today the Church memorializes twenty-six Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries and Japanese converts crucified together by order of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Following their arrests, they were taken to the public square of Meako to the city's principal temple. They each had a piece of their left ear cut off, and then paraded from city to city for weeks with a man shouting their crimes and...

St. Agatha (231-251 A.D.) was born in Sicily into an affluent family. At a young age she made the decision to devote herself to Christ, resisting every offer of marriage. Struck by her beauty and wealth, a magistrate named Quintian desired to marry her. He plotted to use his political power to force her hand, and threatened to prosecute her for the crime of Christianity unless she accepted his...