Guido Maria Conforti was born in Casalora di Ravadese (diocese and province of Parma, Italy), in 1865, the eighth of ten children of Rinaldo Conforti and Antonia Adorni. He attended elementary school from 1872 and each day on his way to the school he would stop by the church of Santa Maria della Pace, his parish church, where he used to have conversations with the crucified Jesus Christ. This...

Maria Luisa Manganiello was born to a farming family. She was strongly drawn to religious life and became a Secular Franciscan Tertiary. Having received the blessing of Pope Bl. Pius IX for her project, Teresa was in the process of forming a new congregation when she died of a sudden illness. However, her work led to the creation of the Franciscan Immaculatine Sisters by Fr. Lodocivo Acernese,...

St. Martin de Porres (1569-1639) was born in Lima, Peru. He was the illegitimate son of a Spanish nobleman and a freed slave woman from Panama, of either African or Native American descent. His parents never married. For the first eight years of his life his father did not acknowledge him, and abandoned the family after Martin's sister was born. St. Martin de Porres was raised in poverty...

Saint Victorinus of Pettau or of Poetovio (died 303 or 304) was an Early Christian ecclesiastical writer who flourished about 270, and who was martyred during the persecutions of Emperor Diocletian. A Bishop of Poetovio (modern Ptuj in Slovenia; German: Pettau) in Pannonia, Victorinus is also known as Victorinus Petavionensis, Poetovionensis or Victorinus of Ptuj. Born probably in Greece on...

In addition to it being the Feast of All Saints, November 1 is also the feast day for a number of individuals as well. St. Deborah (11th c. B.C.) was a godly widow and saint of the Old Testament. She was a courageous prophetess and champion of the Israelites. All Israel came to her to judge their disputes, and God prophesied to Israel through her. She was Israel's only female judge. Her...