Saint Francois de Laval was born at St. Martin de Montigny-sur-Avre, Normandy, France. He wanted to become a priest from his earliest childhood. When he was eight years old, his father placed him with the Jesuits, where he lived for fourteen years far from his family.

Francois lost his father in 1636. His uncle, a bishop, appointed him a canon of Evreux to assist his family. He was ordained a priest on May 1, 1647. King Louis XIV chose him as the first Bishop of New France. On December 8, 1658, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, the thirty-eight year old prelate was consecrated a bishop. He left for Quebec on June 16, 1659, and immediately began making pastoral visits throughout his immense diocese.

Upon his arrival, he won everyone’s confidence with his charity, piety, discernment and impartiality. His first concern consisted in advancing the organization of the Church in Canada. He contributed greatly towards both the civil and religious formation of the country. Even though he had to face many difficulties, with his wise, firm action, he succeeded in implanting the Faith all over North America

Bishop de Laval first founded the Seminary of Quebec which gathered together a community of priests; in 1663 he entrusted the formation of his clergy to this seminary. Five years later, a Minor Seminary was opened for the recruitment of his clergy. In conformity with holy practice in the early centuries of the Church, all the clerics and churchmen lived out of a common fund.

Blessed Francois de Laval had to fight with all his might against disorders that had been introduced into the country at the beginning of its colonization, chiefly the traffic of intoxicating liquor. Saint Mary of the Incarnation wrote, “The bishop has had many conflicts in New France concerning liquor given to the natives which almost led to the total ruin of this new Church.” Thanks to his apostolic zeal, this shameful commerce was absolutely forbidden.

The secular powers raised serious opposition to his evangelizing activities, but Bishop de Laval never capitulated in the face of his adversaries’ odious proceedings. With firmness and perseverance, the holy bishop resisted all encroachments of civil authorities in Church government. He rose up with authority against anyone who wanted to hinder the implantation of Christianity in the blessed land of New France. With supreme patience, he endured all the wicked actions that earthly magnates wrought against him, as well as two major fires that demolished his seminary, for which he had labored so hard.

This holy bishop, a pioneer of the Church in New France, lived in constant, heroic renouncement. He wore a hair shirt and slept very little, so as to be able to pray all his offices and rosaries. As for the brief rest he granted himself, he took it on a wretched mat laid on a bed of boards, without even a sheet to cover himself. His great evangelical simplicity was also very praiseworthy, for never did any man have a greater horror of showmanship and vanity, especially when it presented itself under a cover of religion.

This worthy, virtuous prelate wore old, patched garments. For twenty years he owned only two winter cassocks. At his death one of them was still good; the other, threadbare and patched, attested to his wonderful spirit of poverty. Hard on himself, this admirable man of God was prodigal to excess towards Christ’s poor. Every year he never failed to give the needy 1,500 to 2,000 pounds.

Blessed Francois de Laval endured the sufferings of his last years with great serenity and resignation to God’s will. During Holy Week in 1708 he contracted the illness that was to take him to the grave. On May 6, 1708, he died in the company of his priests, reciting the Rosary and the Litany of the Holy Family, which devotion he had propagated throughout Canada.

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Saint Angelus of Jerusalem, who was one of the early members of the Carmelite Order, suffered martyrdom for the Faith at Leocata, Sicily. The story of his life, as it has come down, is not very reliable. It may be summarized as follows: His parents were Jews of Jerusalem who were converted to Christianity by a vision of our Lady. She told them that the Messiah they were awaiting had already come to pass and had redeemed His people, and she promised them two sons, who would grow up as flourishing olive trees on the heights of Carmel-the one as a patriarch and the other as a glorious martyr.

From childhood the twins displayed great mental and spiritual gifts when, at the age of eighteen, they entered the Carmelite Order, they already spoke Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. After Angelus was born in Jerusalem in 1185, his parents were converted Jews. Angelus was one of the first Carmelites to come to Sicily from Mt. Carmel. According to trustworthy sources, he was killed by unbelievers in Licata during the first half of the thirteenth century. He has been named patron of many places in Sicily.had been a hermit on Mount Carmel for five years, Our Lord appeared to him and bade him go to Sicily, where he would have the grace to offer the sacrifice of his life. The saint immediately obeyed the call. During his journey from the East as well as after his arrival in Sicily, he converted many sinners by his teaching, no less than by his miracles.

At Palermo over two hundred Jews sought Baptism as the result of his eloquence. Similar success attended his efforts in Leocata, but he aroused the fury of a man called Berengarius, whose shameless wickedness he had denounced. As he was preaching to a crowd, a band of ruffians headed by Berengarius broke through the throng and stabbed him. Mortally wounded. He has been named patron of many places in Sicily.fell on his knees, praying for the people, but especially for his murderer.

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The Saint Florian commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on May 4th, was an officer of the Roman army, who occupied a high administrative post in Noricum, now part of Austria, and who suffered death for the Faith in the days of Diocletian.

His legendary “Acts” state that he gave himself up at Lorch to the soldiers of Aquilinus, the governor, when they were rounding up the Christians, and after making a bold confession, he was twice scourged, half-flayed alive, set on fire, and finally thrown into the river Enns with a stone around his neck. His body, recovered and buried by a pious woman, was eventually removed to the Augustinian Abbey of St. Florian, near Linz.

It is said to have been at a later date translated to Rome, and Pope Lucius III, in 1138, gave some of the saint’s relics to King Casimir of Poland and to the Bishop of Cracow. Since that time, St. Florian has been regarded as a patron of Poland as well as of Linz, Upper Austria and of firemen. There has been popular devotion to St. Florian in many parts of central Europe, and the tradition as to his martyrdom, not far from the spot where the Enns flows into the Danube, is ancient and reliable. Many miracles of healing are attributed to his intercession and he is invoked as a powerful protector in danger from fire or water. He is patron of Fire Fighters His feast day is May 4th.

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Philip was one of the first chosen disciples of Christ. On the way from Judea to Galilee Our Lord found Philip, and said, “Follow Me.” Philip straightway obeyed; and then in his zeal and charity sought to win Nathaniel also, saying, “We have found Him of whom Moses and the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth.” And when Nathaniel in wonder asked, “Can any good come out of Nazareth?” Philip simply answered, “Come and see,” and brought him to Jesus.

Another saying of this Apostle is preserved for us by Saint John. Christ in His last discourse had spoken of His Father; and Philip exclaimed, in the fervor of his thirst for God, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough!” The tradition of the ancients has established that he died a martyr at Hierapolis in Phyrgia. There the remains of a church known to be dedicated to him have been identified, north of the entrance to the great necropolis. His relics were later transported to Rome, to the church of the Holy Apostles.

Saint James the Less (the Younger), author of the canonical Epistle, was the son of Alpheus, the brother of Saint Jude and a cousin of Our Lord, whom he is said to have resembled. Saint Paul tells us that he was favored by a special apparition of Christ after the Resurrection. (I Corinthians 15:7) On the dispersion of the Apostles among the nations, Saint James remained as Bishop of Jerusalem, where the Jews held in such high veneration his purity, mortification, and prayer, that they named him the Just. He governed that church for 30 years before his martyrdom.

Hegesippus, the earliest of the Church’s historians, has handed down many traditions of Saint James’s sanctity. Saint James was a celibate Nazarite consecrated to God; he drank no wine and wore no sandals. He prostrated himself so long and so often in prayer that the skin of his knees was hardened like a camel’s hoof. It is said that the Jews, out of respect, used to touch the hem of his garment.

He was indeed a living proof of his own words, “The wisdom that is from above is first of all chaste, then peaceable, modest, ready to listen, full of mercy and good fruits.” (James 3:17) He sat beside Saint Peter and Saint Paul at the Council of Jerusalem. When Saint Paul at a later time escaped the fury of the Jews by appealing to Caesar, the people took vengeance on James, and crying out, “The just one has erred!” stoned him to death. During his martyrdom he prayed for his persecutors in the same words pronounced by Jesus: “Heavenly Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”

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Saint Athanasius, the great champion of the Faith was born at Alexandria, about the year 296, of Christian parents. Educated under the eye of Alexander, later Bishop of his native city, he made great progress in learning and virtue. In 313, Alexander succeeded Achillas in the Patriarchal See, and two years later St. Athanasius went to the desert to spend some time in retreat with St. Anthony.

In 319, he became a deacon, and even in this capacity he was called upon to take an active part against the rising heresy of Arius, an ambitious priest of the Alexandrian Church who denied the Divinity of Christ. This was to be the life struggle of St. Athanasius.

In 325, he assisted his Bishop at the Council of Nicaea, where his influence began to be felt. Five months later Alexander died. On his death bed he recommended St. Athanasius as his successor. In consequence of this, Athanasius was unanimously elected Patriarch in 326.

His refusal to tolerate the Arian heresy was the cause of many trials and persecutions for St. Athanasius. He spent seventeen of the forty-six years of his episcopate in exile. After a life of virtue and suffering, this intrepid champion of the Catholic Faith, the greatest man of his time, died in peace on May 2, 373. St. Athanasius was a Bishop and Doctor of the Church.

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The feast of Saint Joseph the Worker was established by Pope Pius XII in 1955 in order to Christianize the concept of labor and give to all workmen a model and a protector. By the daily labor in his shop, offered to God with patience and joy, St. Joseph provided for the necessities of his holy spouse and of the Incarnate Son of God, and thus became an example to all laborers. “Workmen and all those laboring in conditions of poverty will have reasons to rejoice rather than grieve, since they have in common with the Holy Family daily preoccupations and cares”(Leo XIII).

“May Day” has long been dedicated to labor and the working man. It falls on the first day of the month that is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Pope Pius XII expressed the hope that this feast would accentuate the dignity of labor and would bring a spiritual dimension to labor unions. It is eminently fitting that St. Joseph, a working man who became the foster-father of Christ and patron of the universal Church, should be honored on this day.

The texts of the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours provide a catechetical synthesis of the significance of human labor seen in the light of faith. The Opening Prayer states that God, the creator and ruler of the universe, has called men and women in every age to develop and use their talents for the good of others. The Office of Readings, taken from the document of the Second Vatican Council on the Church in the modern world, develops this idea. In every type of labor we are obeying the command of God given in Genesis 2:15 and repeated in the responsory for the Office of Readings. The responsory for the Canticle of Zechariah says that “St. Joseph faithfully practiced the carpenter’s trade. He is a shining example for all workers.” Then, in the second part of the Opening Prayer, we ask that we may do the work that God has asked of us and come to the rewards he has promised. In the Prayer after Communion we ask: “May our lives manifest your love; may we rejoice for ever in your peace.”

The liturgy for this feast vindicates the right to work, and this is a message that needs to be heard and heeded in our modern society. In many of the documents issued by Pope John XXIII, Pope Paul VI, the Second Vatican Council and Pope John Paul II, reference is made to the Christian spirit that should permeate one’s work, after the example of St. Joseph. In addition to this, there is a special dignity and value to the work done in caring for the family. The Office of Readings contains an excerpt from the Vatican II document on the modern world: “Where men and women, in the course of gaining a livelihood for themselves and their families, offer appropriate service to society, they can be confident that their personal efforts promote the work of the Creator, confer benefits on their fellowmen, and help to realize God’s plan in history” (no. 34).

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Pope Saint Pius V was born Antonio Ghislieri of poor parents near Alessandria on January 17, 1504.  His education began with the Dominicans, and he entered the Dominican order at age 15, taking the name Michael, and became a priest in 1528.

Pope Pius V was a professor of philosophy and theology for years, and served his order and the Church in several high offices:  Provincial Superior; Inquisitor at Corno and Bergamo; Bishop of Sutri and Nepi; cardinal; Grand Inquisitor, Bishop of Mondovi and elected Pope Pius V in a modest ceremony on January 17, 1566, his 62nd birthday,

In 1571 a huge Muslim fleet threatened Christendom. Don Juan of Austria led an outnumbered Christian fleet to fight the Muslim navy. Pope  Pius V entrusted the Christian fleet to Our Lady.

On October 7, 1571, the Christian fleet won a decisive battle in the Bay of Lepanto. Pope Pius V wished to institute a special feast to honor the Blessed Virgin’s assistance in securing the victory and the safety of Christendom. The feast was to be celebrated on October 7,  and Pope Pius V called it the feast day of Our Lady of Victory.

Two years later Pope Gregory XIII changed the name of the feast day to Our Lady of the Rosary as it was through the praying of the rosary that the battle had been won.

October is the month of the Most Holy Rosary. Numerous popes and saints have acclaimed the efficacy of the Rosary.  It is, indeed, a most powerful spiritual weapon. Pope John XXIII called the Rosary “The Psalter of the poor.” Theologians have called the Rosary, “The school of contemplation” because it introduces the faithful to meditative prayer.

Among Pope Pius V’s numerous merits were his fervent Marian devotion and the institution of the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.

Pope John Paul II endorsed his predecessor in the Chair of Peter and petitioned, “May the apostolic zeal, the constant pursuit of holiness, and the love of the Virgin, which characterized the life of Saint Pius V, stimulate all.”

Pope John Paul II then challenged us to imitate Pope Pius V’s Marian devotion by rediscovering the simple and profound prayer of the rosary. “Thanks to the fervent recitation of the rosary, extraordinary graces can be obtained through the intercession of the Lord’s heavenly Mother.”

Pope Pius V was a great reformer, committed to eradicating simony, the buying or selling of ecclesiastical pardons or offices, and nepotism from the Roman Curia. To numerous relatives who rushed to Rome with the hope of some privilege, Pope Pius V gave comment that a relative of the pope can consider himself sufficiently rich if he is not indigent.

Pope Pius V published the catechism of the Council of Trent and an improved edition of the Missal and Breviary. The Pontiff tried to make Rome truly a holy city and punished immorality severely. The rigid discipline that Pope Pius V imposed on the Church was the constant norm of his own life.

Pope Pius V promoted several pastoral reforms in the wake of the Council of Trent: The obligation of residence for bishops, the cloister of religious, celibacy and holiness of life of priests, bishops’ pastoral visits, the increase of missions, and the correction of liturgical books.

Pope Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I in 1570, an act which heightened the persecution of Catholics in England, but it also did much to strengthen Catholics.

A man of great austerity and prayer, Pope Pius V died on May 1, 1572.  He suffered much, his prayer was: “Lord increase my pains, but increase my patience too.”

He was canonized in 1712.  On his feast day, May 5, Romans still gather at his shrine to venerate a great pope and a holy man.

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The value Saint Catherine of Siena makes central in her short life and which sounds clearly and consistently through her experience is complete surrender to Christ. What is most impressive about her is that she learns to view her surrender to her Lord as a goal to be reached through time.

She was the 23rd child of Jacopo and Lapa Benincasa and grew up as an intelligent, cheerful and intensely religious person. Catherine disappointed her mother by cutting off her hair as a protest against being overly encouraged to improve her appearance in order to attract a husband. Her father ordered her to be left in peace and she was given a room of her own for prayer and meditation.

She entered the Dominican Third Order at 18 and spent the next three years in seclusion, prayer and austerity. Gradually a group of followers gathered around her—men and women, priests and religious. An active public apostolate grew out of her contemplative life. Her letters, mostly for spiritual instruction and encouragement of her followers, began to take more and more note of public affairs. Opposition and slander resulted from her mixing fearlessly with the world and speaking with the candor and authority of one completely committed to Christ. She was cleared of all charges at the Dominican General Chapter of 1374.

Her public influence reached great heights because of her evident holiness, her membership in the Dominican Third Order, and the deep impression she made on the pope. She worked tirelessly for the crusade against the Turks and for peace between Florence and the pope

In 1378, the Great Schism began, splitting the allegiance of Christendom between two, then three, popes and putting even saints on opposing sides. Catherine spent the last two years of her life in Rome, in prayer and pleading on behalf of the cause of Urban VI and the unity of the Church. She offered herself as a victim for the Church in its agony. She died surrounded by her “children.”

Catherine ranks high among the mystics and spiritual writers of the Church. In 1939, she and Francis of Assisi were declared co-patrons of Italy. Paul VI named her and Teresa of Avila doctors of the Church in 1970. Her spiritual testament is found in The Dialogue.

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Saint Peter Chanel the protomartyr of the South Seas. St. Peter Chanel was born in 1803 at Clet in the diocese of Belley, France. His intelligence and simple piety brought him to the attention of the local priest, Father Trompier, who saw to his elementary education. Entering the diocesan Seminary, Peter won the affection and the esteem of both students and professors. After his ordination he found himself in a rundown country parish and completely revitalized it in the three year span that he remained there.

However, his mind was set on missionary work; so, in 1831, he joined the newly formed Society of Mary (Marists) which concentrated on missionary work at home and abroad. To his dismay, he was appointed to teach at the seminary at Belley and remained there for the next five years, diligently performing his duties.

In 1836, the Society was given the New Hebrides in the Pacific as a field for evangelization, and the jubilant St. Peter was appointed Superior of a little band of missionaries sent to proclaim the Faith to its inhabitants. On reaching their destination after an arduous ten month journey, the band split up and St. Peter went to the Island of Futuna accompanied by a laybrother and an English layman, Thomas Boog.

They were at first well received by the pagans and their king Niuliki who had only recently forbidden canabalism. However, the kings jealousy and fear were aroused when the missionaries learned the language and gained the people’s confidence; he realized the adoption of the Christian Faith would lead to the abolition of some of the prerogatives he enjoyed as both highpriest and sovereign.

Finally, when his own son expressed a desire to be baptized, the king’s hatred erupted and he dispatched a group of his warriors to set upon the saintly head of the missionaries. Thus, on April 28, 1841, three years after his arrival, St. Peter was seized and clubbed to death by those he had come to save. And his death brought his work to completion – within five months the entire island was converted to Christianity.
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Model and heavenly patroness of domestic servants, born early in the thirteenth century of a poor family at Montsegradi, a little village near Lucca, in Tuscany; died at Lucca, 27 April, 1271.

A naturally happy disposition and the teaching of a virtuous mother, aided by Divine grace, developed in the child’s soul that sweetness and modesty of character and continual and conscientious application to work which constituted her especial virtues. At the age of twelve she entered the service of the Fatinelli family of Lucca. Her piety and the exactitude with which she discharged her domestic duties, in which she regarded herself as serving God rather than man, even supplying the deficiencies of her fellow servants, far from gaining for her their love and esteem and that of her employers rather brought upon her every manner of ill-treatment of both the former and, through their accusations, of the latter. The incessant ill-usage, however, was powerless to deprive her of her inward peace, her love of those who wronged her, and her respect for her employers. By this meek and humble self-restraint she at last succeeded in overcoming the malice of her fellow-servants and her employers, so much so that she was placed in charge of all the affairs of the house.

In her position of command over all the servants she treated all with kindness, not exacting from them any reckoning for the wrongs she had for so many years suffered from them. She was always circumspect, and only severe when there was a question of checking the introduction of vice among the servants. On the other hand, if any of them had been guilty of shortcomings, she took upon herself to excuse or defend them to their employers. Using the ample authority given her by her employers, she was generous in almsgiving, but careful to assist only those really in need. After her death numerous miracles were wrought at her intercession, so that she came to be venerated as a saint in the neighbourhood of Lucca, and the poets Fazio degli Uberti (Dittamonde, III, 6) and Dante (Inferno, XI, 38) both designate the city of Lucca simply as “Santa Zita”. The office in her honour was approved by Leo X.

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