Saints of the Day & More

Bishop, Doctor of the Church, and the founder of the Redemptorist Congregation. He was born Alphonsus Marie Antony John Cosmos Damien Michael Gaspard de Liguori on September 27,1696, at Marianella, near Naples, Italy. Raised in a pious home, Alphonsus went on retreats with his father, Don Joseph, who was a naval officer and a captain of the Royal Galleys. Alphonsus was the oldest of seven children, raised by a devout mother of Spanish descent. Educated at the University of Naples, Alphonsus received his doctorate at the age of sixteen. By age nineteen he was practicing law, but he saw the transitory nature of the secular world, and after a brief time, retreated from the law courts and his fame. Visiting the local Hospital for Incurables on August 28, 1723, he had a vision and was told to consecrate his life solely to God. In response, Alphonsus dedicated himself to the religious life, even while suffering persecution from his family. He finally agreed to become a priest but to live at ...

Born in Abruzzo ( Italy) in 1550. He followed a military career like his father . He appeared a sore on his foot, he did leave the profession of arms and go to the Hospital of Santiago in Rome to get healed. At the hospital in Rome was dedicated to helping and caring for other patients, while seeking their own healing . But at that time became the vice of gambling . He was expelled from Naples hospital and lost all their life savings in the game , leaving in poverty. Long ago, in a shipwreck , had made to God 's promise to become a Franciscan monk , but had not met. While in absolute poverty is offered as a worker and a messenger in a convent of the Capuchin Fathers , where he heard a talk spiritual father made them superior to the workers, and felt strongly the call of God to his conversion. He began to mourn and asked forgiveness for their sins, with firm resolve to change their ways completely. He was 25. Asked to be admitted as a Franciscan convent but he reopened the wound in ...

St. Bernardino Realino was born into a noble family of Capri, Italy in 1530. After receiving a thorough and devout Christian education at the hands of his mother, he went on to study medicine at the University of Bologna, but after three years he switched to law and received his doctorate in 1563. Word of his learning, dedication, and legal brilliance spread rapidly, and in 1554 he was summoned to Naples to assume the position of auditor and lieutenant general. Shortly afterward, his exemplary young man came to the realization that he had a religious vocation and, aided by our Lady's appearance to him, joined the Society of Jesus, being ordained in 1567. For three years he labored unstintingly at Naples, devoting himself wholeheartedly to the service of the poor and the youth, and then he was sent to Lecce where he remained for the last forty-two years of his life. St. Bernardino won widespread recognition as a result of his ceaseless apostolic labors. He was a model confessor, a p...

During the V century the Western Roman Empire was gradually invaded by the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Franks, etc.. In the devastation only the authorities and Christian structures were a strong point for survival. This is the historical context in which it presents the figure and work of San Severino, who was born of a noble Roman family around the year 410. After a stay in the East, to 454 was established near the Danube, where he built monasteries to house and threatened the residents at the same time points of irradiation were the Gospel among the barbarian tribes. Therefore inclined to the contemplative life as a hermit and missionary activity, and helped with the charism of prophecy, San Severino also made estimates of the temporal human level. It realized that the youth movement was unstoppable barbarians and the decadent Roman society regain its strength thanks to these new forces. But it was necessary that those minds were enlightened by the truths of the Gospel, and guid...