Bernard was a shoemaker by trade, and considered the greatest swordsman and duelist in Sicily in his day. After mortally wounding a man named Canino in a duel, he sought sanctuary from the law in the church of the Capuchin Friars Minor in Palermo. While hiding there, he had a true conversion, and became a Capuchin lay-brother in 1632, changing his name to Brother Bernardo. He was noted for his...

St Tommaso was born in Cori (Latina) on 4 June 1655.   He knew a childhood marked by the premature loss first of his mother and then of his father, thus being left alone at the age of 14 to look after his younger sister.   Shepherding sheep, he learned wisdom from the simplest things.   Once his sister was married, the youth was free to follow the inspiration that...

Saint Agatho, (born c. 577, Sicily—died Jan. 10, 681, Rome; feast day January 10), pope from 678 to 681. A cleric well-versed in Latin and Greek, he was elected pope in June 678. He judged that St. Wilfrid, bishop of York, had been unjustly deprived and ordered his restoration, and he received the submission of Exarch Theodore of Ravenna, whose predecessors had aspired to...

St. Marciana was a young Christian girl who was beaten, tortured and handed over to gladiators as a sex toy during the persecutions of Diocletian; she brought one of the gladiators to Christianity. Accused of vandalizing an idol of the goddess Diana, she was thrown to wild animals in the arena. She was gored by a bull and mauled by a leopard in the amphitheater of Caesarea, Mauritania, around...

St. Apollinaris Claudius (2nd c.), also called St. Apollinaris of Hierapolis, was a bishop in what is today Turkey. He became famous for his polemical writings against the heretics of his day, showing that their theological errors were taken from the pagans. His most famous work was an Apologia for the Christians addressed to Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius in the year 177 A.D. In it he reminded...