The reading of a devotional book prompted the seventeen-year-old Pierre-Francois Neron, of Bornay, France, to turn his thoughts to the service of God. As a parish sacristan, he spent whole nights praying in church. Inspired by accounts of missionaries he had read in the Annals of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, Pierre became a priest of the Paris Society for Foreign Missions at...
Saint Justus of Trieste is an early Christian martyr and the primary patron saint of the city and diocese of Trieste, Italy.
Arrested during the Diocletianic persecutions for refusing to sacrifice to Roman gods, he was sentenced to death by drowning with weights in the Gulf of Trieste (typically dated to November 2, 293 AD or 303 AD). According to tradition, his body washed ashore intact...
Saint Nuño de Santa Maria Álvares Pereira was a Portuguese general, born Nuno Álvares Pereira on 24 June 1360 in Cernache do Bonjardim. He was the illegitimate son of Dom Álvaro Gonçalves Pereira, prior of Crato, and Iria Gonçalves do Carvalhal. About a year after his birth a royal decree legitimised him, so he received a knightly education. At 16 he married Leonor de Alvim, a wealthy young...
Ampliatus, called Amplias in the King James Version, was a Roman Christian whom Paul greets in his letter to the Romans: "Greet Ampliatus, whom I love in the Lord." The Eastern Orthodox Church counts him among the Seventy Disciples. Tradition holds that he and his companions joined the Apostle Andrew and died as martyrs. He may have been bishop of Odessos (Varna), in modern Bulgaria....
Saturninus is honored as a Christian martyr of Cagliari in Sardinia. His memory is associated with the persecution under Diocletian, and the National Museums of Cagliari place the traditional martyrdom in 303 or 304.
The later martyrdom tradition presents him as a young man raised by Christian parents. During sacrifices to Jupiter at the city’s Capitolium, someone recognized him as a...