This is the feast, not only of all saints who have been canonized, but of all saints who have not been canonized and are in Heaven. It is, in a generous way, the feast of all those who are still on earth and are trying to be saints. No one can be a saint, without love for and protection by and devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. She is Queen of All Saints. She is abundantly called so in the Litany of Loreto, where she is greeted as Queen of Angels, Queen of Patriarchs, Queen of Prophets, Queen of Apostles, Queen of Martyrs, Queen of Confessors, Queen of Virgins, Queen of All Saints, Queen Conceived without Original Sin, Queen Assumed into Heaven, Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, Queen of Peace.

Saint Paul tells us, that the will of God is not merely for our salvation, but also for our sanctification. Everyone is called to be a saint. Anyone who does not become a saint has no one but himself to blame. Our Lady holds her greatest bounties and generosities in store for those who are starting to be saints.

On this day every priest in the Catholic Church is allowed to say three Masses for the souls in Purgatory. The first saint who started the celebration on this day of the feast of All Souls was Saint Odilo, whose feast day is January 1. This was in 998. All prayers for the souls in Purgatory are most efficacious when put under the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Saturday is Our Lady's special day during the week. Our Lady visits Purgatory every Saturday to release the souls there who have died during the week and who have worn the brown scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. When Our Lady was assumed into Heaven on August 15, she undoubtedly took countless souls from Purgatory with her, perhaps all of them that were then there. Our Lady's promise to those who wear the brown scapular is this: "Whosoever dies in this scapular shall not suffer eternal fire. On Saturday, as many as I shall find in Purgatory, I shall free." Blessed Claude de la Colombiere says that "of all the forms of our love for the Blessed Virgin and its various modes of expression, the scapular is the most favored." The prophecy of Ezechiel declares, "The gate of the inner court that looks toward the east shall be shut for six days, but on the sabbath day it shall be opened." The Church has applied this prophecy to Our Lady of Mount Carmel. The "inner court" means Purgatory, and the "sabbath day" means Saturday, the day when Our Lady abundantly releases souls from Purgatory and brings them to Heaven.

He was a South American, born of a Spanish father and an Indian mother. He lived at Lima in Peru. He became a lay brother in the Dominican Order. So great was his holiness that his light shone all through the New World. His memory will never be forgotten. So great was his power of prayer that he raised a dead man to life. He was seventy years old when he died. Pope John XXIII canonized him on May 6, 1962.

He was a noble Irish saint who was born at Armagh in the year 1095. He was the Primate of Armagh in his day. Armagh was the first see established in Ireland by Saint Patrick. On a pilgrimage he made to Rome, Saint Malachy stopped at the Abbey of Clairvaux, and died in the arms of Saint Bernard, its abbot. Saint Bernard wrote the life of Saint Malachy. Saint Bernard and Saint Malachy were buried in the same grave. Saint Malachy O'More is well known for his famous prophecies concerning the nearness of the end of the world.

Saint Sylvia was the mother of Saint Gregory the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Universal Church. She was one of the most beautiful widows Rome has ever known. Saint Gregory's sanctity and intellectual brilliance are in no small way due to this precious mother. A chapel has been built on the Caelian Hill in Rome on the spot where her house was when she lived there.

She was a niece of Saint Beuno, a bishop of Wales. She was murdered and her head cut off by Caradog of Hawarden who wanted to violate her purity. The spot where her head fell on the ground caused the rising of a holy well, called Saint Winifred's Well. It still pours forth nine and one-half million gallons of water every day, and miracles still occur there. Saint Beuno wrapped Saint Winifred's body and severed head in his cloak, and laid them at the foot of the altar where he was to say Mass. When the Mass was ended, Saint Winifred was restored to life again, with her head rejoined to her body. She is perhaps the greatest glory of Wales. She is certainly the clearest remembrance there of the truth Wales once had when it was a Catholic country.

He was a French saint and a nobleman who, when his wife died, became a cleric. He is the patron saint of hunters.

He was the nephew of Pope Pius IV. He was "the soul of the Council of Trent," which protected the Catholic Faith in the sixteenth century against the inroads of the Protestant Reformation. Saint Charles Borromeo wrote the following prayer to his Guardian Angel: "O beloved angel, who has been given me as a protector by the Divine Majesty, I desire to die in the Faith which the Holy, Roman and Apostolic Church adheres to and defends, in which all the saints of the New Testament have died, and outside of which there is no salvation." Saint Charles Borromeo gave Saint Aloysius his first Holy Communion.

Charles was the second son of Count Giberto Borromeo and his wife Margherita de Medici, sister of Pope Pius IV. He was born Oct. 2, 1538 at Roca d'Arona, on Lake Maggiore in Italy, during a period of great abuse and decadence in the Church. Charles was dedicated to the service of the Church from the beginning. He studied Latin in Milan and law at the University of Pavia, Italy. Charles was pius, prudent and methodical in his behavior. At the age of 12 he received the clerical tonsure and was bequeathed the Abbey of SS. Gratinian and Felinus at Arona by his uncle Julius Caesar Borromeo. This was a common practice in the 15th century and Charles saw to it that the revenue that wasn't absolutely needed for his education was given to the poor. Care for the poor would always be a major concern in his life. In 1559 his mother's brother was elected pope and came to be known as Pius IV. In 1560 the pope made Charles a cardinal deacon, though he was not yet a priest, and was soon entrusted with multiple duties which he conscientiously fulfilled, as well as looking after family affairs following the death of his parents. It was through Charles' efforts that Pius IV was able to reconvene the Council of Trent in 1562. Charles' continued attention and support prevented several break-ups of the Council, and after nine sessions it was able to pass many needed reform measures. It was during this time that Charles older brother died and many expected Charles to marry and take over the family estate. Instead he resigned his position to his uncle Julius and in 1563 was ordained to the priesthood. Two months later Charles was consecrated bishop of Milan. It wasn't until the death of his uncle that he was able to be relieved of his many duties in Rome and return to his diocese where he successfully implemented the reforms of the Council of Trent. The training of clergy, administration of the Sacraments, celebration of the Liturgy and teaching of the catechism were of first priority in his reforms. His own example of simplicity, deep commitment to prayer and the Sacraments, charity and love for the poor, led to a great reform of his diocese not only among the clergy, but also the laity. Charles was especially known for his reverence for the Liturgy. He never prayed or carried out any religious rite in haste. Charles suffered much from the opponents of reform, even an attempted assassination by the Humiliati, an order that was abolished the following year because of its dissolute living. In spite of these oppositions, Charles persisted, and he was successful in reforming clergy, monasteries and convents. His effect was felt throughout his diocese. He was responsible for founding the "Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (popularly known today as 'CCD')," whose responsibility was catechizing the people, especially children. Charles work of reform took him outside of his diocese where once again he faced opposition and danger though never giving up. He is one of the most prominent figures of the Tridentine Reform also known as the Counter-Reformation. In 1584 while making his yearly retreat, Charles fell ill and returned to Milan and died during the night between November 3rd and 4th. He was canonized by Pope Paul V on Nov. 1, 1610. There is much more that could be said about this saint, but even this brief biography shows us the deep spirit of love for God which was his burning force and brought him to a life of holiness that is an example to all of us.

Saint Zachary and Saint Elizabeth were the father and the mother of Saint John the Baptist, the last and the greatest of the prophets and the precursor of Our Lord. Saint Zachary's story is beautifully told in the first chapter of Saint Luke. Saint Zachary spoke one of the three canticles of the New Testament, which is known as the Benedictus. It is recited in the prayers of priests as part of their liturgical worship. Saint Zachary was inspired by God through an angel to give Saint John the Baptist his name. Saint Zachary was martyred in the Temple of Jerusalem by the Jews. The martyrs of the Old Testament run from A to Z, from Abel, the son of Adam and the first martyr that ever was, to Zachary, the father of John the Baptist and the last martyr of the Old Testament.

Saint Elizabeth was the cousin of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was to her that Mary went in haste after she had conceived her Child, and after she learned that Elizabeth had conceived hers. The second phrase in the Hail Mary, "Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb," was given us by Saint Elizabeth. And so, her memory is beautifully kept in the Rosary, where this phrase is mentioned fifty-three times. Saint Elizabeth's first greeting to Our Lady, when she saw her standing in her doorway was: "Whence is this to me that the Mother of my Lord should come to me!" This was a sheer and unequivocal way of proclaiming Mary, her own cousin, to be the Mother of God.

With Elizabeth's as the central greeting, the Angel Gabriel's as the first and that of the Council of Ephesus as the last, this is the full Hail Mary:

Hail, Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

The Catholic Church, having celebrated in November the feast of All Saints and the feast of All Souls, on this day honors all the holy relics of their bodies, which will remain on earth until the day of the last resurrection of the body. Veneration for the bodies of the saints are precious to every Catholic because all Catholics believe that these bodies will one day rise in glory and be with the souls of the saints to whom they belong, in complete personality, for all eternity. Irreverence shown to the bodies of the saints is a sacrilege. Destruction or dishonor shown to the bodies of the Faithful Departed is a sin.

According to unreliable sources, he was a Frank courtier who was converted by St. Remigius, refused the offer of a See from his godfather, King Clovis I, and became a monk at Micy. He lived as a hermit at Limoges and was rewarded by the king with all the land he could ride around on a donkey in a day for his prayers, which were believed to have brought the Queen through a difficult delivery safely. He founded Noblac monastery on the land so granted him, and it grew into the town of Saint-Leonard. He remained there evangelizing the surrounding area until his death. He is invoked by women in labor and by prisoners of war because of the legend that Clovis promised to release every captive Leonard visited. His feast day is November 6.

He was an English saint who fought gloriously in the crusades to take the Holy Land away from the Mohammedans. He was imprisoned by them, but escaped miraculously and returned to his home in Yorkshire. Leonard is a noted English, a noted French, and a noted Italian name.

He was born in England. He was trained in Ireland to be a missionary. He then went to what is now Holland, and Belgium and Denmark. He was made Bishop of Utrecht.

He was a Benedictine abbot from Germany who joined the second crusade. He was tortured and killed at Mecca for refusing to embrace Islam.

He was a French saint who became a monk when he was five years old. He spent nearly all of his time, night and day, in prayer. He was a Benedictine. When made a bishop, he lived in his palace just like a monk. He fed people with his own hands. He constantly visited the hospitals where the sick, and even the lepers were kept. He was a great opponent of the greed and laxity of the clergy of his day.

This marks the day, in 324, when the great Pope Sylvester consecrated this church to Our Lord. It is one of the seven great churches of Rome. Since the twelfth century it has been called the Basilica of Saint John Lateran because it has been also especially dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, under whose patronage the baptistery of this church was placed. It is the major church of the Holy Father, the Pope. The heads of Saint Peter and Saint Paul are kept in it. It is called in an inscription on its walls, "The Mother and the Head of All Churches of this City and the World."

He was a member of the Theatines, or Clerks Regular of Saint Paul at Naples. On account of his great devotion to the Cross, he took the name in religion of Andrew because he so lovingly remembered the crucifixion of Saint Andrew the Apostle, who hung for two days on the cross, preaching to his enemies. Saint Andrew Avellino's name in the world was Lancelot. He was born in Sicily. Saint Andrew was a great friend of Saint Charles Borromeo. He was eighty-eight years old when he died. He dropped dead at the foot of the altar just as he was about to say Mass.

Saint Martin of Tours was a great saint whose life was written by Saint Gregory of Tours. Saint Martin was born in Hungary. He was educated in Italy. He became a Christian in France. He was the uncle of Saint Patrick, the great apostle of Ireland. He was the staunch friend and ally of Saint Hilary of Poitiers, the first Doctor of the Church to die. In France there are four thousand churches and five hundred villages named for Saint Martin of Tours.

Saint Martin of Tours worked many miracles while on earth, including the raising of the dead. Among other saints who have raised the dead to life, we may mention:

• Saint Abundantius),  
• Saint Abundius (and Saint Abundius of Como),  
• Saint Agnes of Montepulciano,.
• Saint Anthony of Padua,  
• Saint Benedict,  
• Saint Beuno,  
• Saint Catherine of Siena,  
• Saint Dominic,  
• Saint Eleutherius,  
• Saint Francis Xavier,  
• Saint Francis of Paula,  
• Saint Germanus of Auxerre,  
• Saint Hilary,  
• Saint Hyacinth,  
• Saint Joan of Arc,  
• Saint John Bosco,  
• Saint John of the Cross,  
• Saint John,
• Saint Julian of Antioch,  
• Saint Linus,  
• Saint Macarius the Elder,  
• Saint Martin de Porres,  
• Saint Matthew,  
• Saint Nicholas of Bari,  
• Saint Patrick,  
• Saint Paul,  
• Saint Peter Claver,  
• Saint Peter,
• Saint Philip Neri,  
• Saint Philip of Benizi,  
• Saint Rose of Viterbo, and  
• Saint Stanislaus of Cracow,  
• Saint Teresa of Avila,  
• Saint Vincent Ferrer

Saint Martin I was Pope for six years. He was the great opponent of the heretics known as the Monothelites. These heretics tried to destroy the full human nature of Jesus by denying Him a human will. In Jesus, there is one Person, a Divine Person; and there are two natures--the nature of God and the nature of man. Jesus has a full human nature, body and soul; He has human blood, a human mind and a human will. He has the same Divine nature as His Father and the Holy Ghost. In Jesus, there is only one Person, the same Person Who proceeds from the Eternal Father. And from the Father and the Son proceeds the Holy Ghost. Saint Martin was imprisoned by the cruel enemies of the Faith. He was taken to the Island of the Chersonese, and left there to die.

The name Roy is a form of Rufus. Saint Roy was the first bishop of Avignon in the south of France. That was the place where the Popes were exiled, seven of them, from the year 1309 to 1377.

He was a poor shepherd of Spain. He became a hermit and then was ordained a priest. He gathered around him a large number of disciples and became their abbot. He is called the first Spanish Benedictine.

He was born in Poland. He entered the Society of Jesus when he was eighteen years old. He died within ten months, famous for his angelic innocence and sanctity. He died on the feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, as he had predicted. His great friends in the Society of Jesus were Saint Peter Canisius, who sent him to Rome, and Saint Francis Borgia, who received him into the Order of Saint Ignatius. The Blessed Eucharist was the center of his life. Every morning he heard two Masses. Before his entrance into the Society of Jesus, twice the angels brought him Holy Communion, when he was being persecuted by his own family. Our Lady appeared to him and placed the Infant Jesus in his arms. It was Our Lady who told him to become a member of the Society of Jesus.

Maria Francesca was the first American Citizen to be canonized. Born the youngest of thirteen children on July 15, 1850 at Sant' Angelo Lodigiano, in the Lombard region of Italy. Her parents, Agostino Cabrini and Stella Oldini Cabrini were upper middle class landowner farmers. Her primary education was given by her older sister Rosa who was the village school teacher.

At the age of thirteen Francesca went to Arluno to study for a teacher's certificate. She finished school at eighteen and at that time made a vow of perpetual virginity. She sought to enter the Daughters of the Sacred Heart where she had studied, but was refused entrance because of poor health subsequent to having small pox. She was greatly disappointed because she had dreamed of being a missionary in China every since primary school.

She taught school at Vidardo and the pastor there, after being appointed to the collegiate parish at Codogno, requested her help with an orphanage in his new parish. She suffered much abuse from the foundress of the orphanage, Antonia Tondini, who was considered insane, but she persevered and with seven young women established the first convent of the, "Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart," and took the added name "Xavier." The Countess Tondini's behavior became more abusive to the point of public scandal, and the Bishop of the diocese closed the orphanage.

The small community moved to an old, abandoned Franciscan friary. The constitutions of the community were soon approved by the bishop and the focus of the community was the Christian education of young girls. It wasn't long before she had opened houses in Grumello and Milan. Two years later she also opened two houses in Rome, one a free school and the other a children's home. The community was formally approved in 1888.

"Mother" Cabrini continued in her desire to become a missionary in China, but she was invited by Msgr. Corrigan of New York to come to the aid of the 50,000 Italian people around New York City, most of whom lived very decadent lives. Mother Cabrini took her dilemma to Pope Leo XIII who encouraged her to go west not east. She, who was terrified of water since falling into a river as a child, took herself in hand and with six sisters embarked for New York.

Despite a difficult beginning with little of the promised support, she opened several foundations not only in the U.S. but also through out the Western Hemisphere. The sisters taught school, ran orphanages, held adult education classes, ran hospitals and provided for the needs of the people where ever they were asked to come. Despite her fear of water, Frances would cross the ocean thirty times during her life.

Frances became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1909. Although she continued frail in body she gave herself totally to whatever work awaited her. By the time of her death from malaria, on December 22, 1917, she had founded 67 houses throughout the United States, Europe, Central and South America. She was canonized by Pope Pius XII on July 7, 1946. She was the first saint of the United States and leaves us a legacy of a spirit of dedication and determination to spread the Catholic faith.

He was a Basilian monk of the Ruthenian rite who became Archbishop of Polotsk, after the Orthodox Ruthenian Church was officially united to Rome. He fought vigorously in support of the primacy of the Pope. In a sermon he cried out, ''Please God I will give my life for the holy union, for the supremacy of Peter and of the Holy Father, his successor." Soon after a mob of Orthodox invaded Saint Josaphat's episcopal residence and killed him.

Saint Laurence O'Toole was born in Leinster in Ireland. He became an Augustinian when he was a little boy of twelve. He was made Abbot of Glendalough when he was twenty-five. Eight years later he was made Archbishop of Dublin. At the tomb of Saint Laurence O'Toole seven dead persons were raised to life. He was canonized in 1226, the year Saint Francis of Assisi died.

Saint Albertus Magnus (Albert the Great) was a Dominican. He was a teacher of Saint Thomas Aquinas. He is one of the greatest theologians of the Catholic Church. He studied all the sciences, and knew and saw and declared how shallow they were for all purposes of eternal wisdom. His great devotion was to the Blessed Sacrament and to Our Blessed Lady. He was seventy-four years old when he died. Saint Albert the Great is one of the Doctors of the Catholic Church.

Saint Gertrude, who is called the Great, was a brilliant and holy little German girl who entered religion at the age of five. She was born in the town of Eisleben, which later gave the world the heretic, Martin Luther. The Order she joined was the Benedictines. She was so brilliant in her earliest years that all the simple and clear truths of Divine Revelation became part of her thoughts and her speech. Though she was capable of learning all secular sciences, Our Lord appeared to her and told her to love no other books but the Bible and the works of the Fathers of the Church. Saint Gertrude was the first great apostle of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. On the feast of Saint John the Evangelist, she was taken by him to Jesus and permitted to rest her head on His Sacred Heart. Saint Gertrude was forty-six years old when she died. Two saints especially devoted to Saint Gertrude were Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint Francis de Sales.

Saint Hugh of Lincoln, though born in France, became a Carthusian monk at the age of twenty and went to England. He was sixty years old when a he died. So great was his holiness that kings and nobles carried his coffin to the grave. He was canonized twenty years after his death.

She was a French girl born at Grenoble who became a Visitation nun. After her Order had been violently attacked and dispersed during the French Revolution, under the guidance of Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat she incorporated her community into the Madams of the Sacred Heart. Blessed Rose Philippine's great desire was to go and labor in foreign missions. When she was forty-nine years old, she set sail for America. She landed at New Orleans, and then went north to Saint Charles, not far from Saint Louis, Missouri. She later worked among the Indians at Sugar Creek. The Indians called her "the woman who prays always." It is one of the glories of the United States that the body of this saintly nun is still kept in our country. She died when she was eighty-three years old. She is buried at Saint Charles, Missouri.

She was an English nun, a Benedictine abbess and one of the greatest women of her land. She was a relative of a king, Saint Edwin.

The Basilica of Saint Peter, the Apostle and first Pope, was built at the foot of Vatican Hill in Rome by Pope Saint Cletus. It has since grown to be the greatest and most impressive church in the world. Fifty thousand people can be accommodated in it. The feast of November 18 commemorates the solemn consecration of the new basilica there by Pope Urban VIII, in 1626. It is on the spot where Saint Peter was crucified upside down in the year 67.

Pope Saint Cletus also built a church over the tomb of Saint Paul-outside-the-walls, on the road to Ostia. This church has been made larger and larger through the years. A great fire destroyed it in 1823. It was rebuilt, and its final structure, as we see it today, was consecrated by Pope Pius IX in 1854, two days after he had defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Saint Paul's great devotion, after his conversion, was to the Blessed Virgin Mary. His disciple, Saint Luke, wrote the Gospel of the Blessed of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the third Gospel. It was the Blessed Virgin Mary who saw to it that Saint Paul's name was placed immediately after Saint Peter's in all the litanies where the Apostles are mentioned. Whenever Saint Paul made a journey he always wanted to return to Jerusalem to see the Blessed Virgin Mary. He spent his whole life in sorrow over the persecution he had inflicted upon Christians in the early days. Saint Paul loved Mary, the Mother of God, with all the ardor of his heart once he had been converted to the true Faith. It was her inspiration which made him the Apostle of the Gentiles, the people who would love her, and took him away from the Jews, the people who would not love her.

Saint Elizabeth was a princess of Hungary. She married Louis of Thuringia, and had three children. After his death, she became a Franciscan. She is the patron saint of the Third Order of Saint Francis. She died when only twenty-four years old, the same age as the Little Flower of Jesus, Saint Casimir of Poland and Gabriel of the Most Sorrowful Virgin. Four years after her death, Saint Elizabeth of Hungary was canonized. The dead have been raised to life when brought to her tomb.

She was a Benedictine nun at Helfta in Germany and was a teacher of Saint Gertrude the Great. She received revelations from God, which Saint Gertrude recorded.

Saint Pontian was Pope from 230 to 235. He was exiled to Sardinia where he died.

Saint Felix of Valois, when seventy years old, along with Saint John of Matha, founded in France, in 1197, a Religious Order known as the Trinitarians. The purpose of this Order was to take captive Christian slaves away from the Mohammedans in Spain and in North Africa. So pleased was the Blessed Virgin Mary with this Order of Trinitarians, that when Saint Felix was dying, she appeared to him wearing the habit of his Order. Saint Felix of Valois was eighty-five years old when he died.

Saint Joachim and Saint Anne, the father and the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary, presented her to God in the Temple, to live there and to belong to God forever, when she was three years, two months and thirteen days old. Saint Joachim and Saint Anne sensed in the Blessed Virgin Mary from the moment of her birth that she was divinely great, and belonged to God and not to them. When her father and her mother brought Mary to the Temple of Jerusalem and presented her there, Saint Zachary, a priest of the Temple and the father of Saint John the Baptist and the husband of Saint Elizabeth, received her. He took her by the hand and led her into the cloister of virgins who dwelt in the Temple. There she stayed, adored God and prayed until she was fourteen years old. Then her first espousals to Saint Joseph were miraculously arranged by God, so as to give her a virginal husband to protect her in her virginal motherhood when she conceived her Divine Child and brought God into this world.

Saint Cecilia is one of the most venerated virgin martyrs of the Church. Her name is mentioned in the Roman Canon of the Mass and always in the Litany of the Saints. She belonged to a noble family of Rome. Her father was a pagan and her mother a Christian. From her early youth she consecrated her virginity to Christ. Her father insisted on her marrying a young pagan nobleman named Valerian. On the evening of her wedding day, she told Valerian that she had an angel guarding her virginity. Valerian said that if he could see the angel, he too would believe in Jesus Christ. Cecilia told Valerian that if he were baptized a Christian he could see the angel. He went and was baptized by Pope Urban I--he and his brother Tiburtius. They returned to Cecilia, and both of them saw a most beautiful angel standing beside her. These two brothers, Valerian and Tiburtius, proclaimed themselves Christians, and were martyred in the year 229, along with their jailer whose name was Maximus. Cecilia buried them. Less than a year later the Roman soldiers broke into Cecilia's house. They tried to suffocate Cecilia in a bath, and when they could not, one soldier struck her three times on the neck with a sword. She lay on the ground for three days before she died. She was buried in the Catacomb of Saint Callistus. She was eighteen years old when she was martyred. There is a church built to Saint Cecilia in Rome, and dedicated to her. At the end of the sixteenth century, her body was found to be incorrupt and as beautiful as the day she died, preserving, after thirteen centuries, all its virginal loveliness and modesty.

Saint Clement was the fourth Pope. He reigned in the Catholic Church from the year 90 to 100. There were four Popes in the first century. Saint Peter was the first, Saint Linus was the second, Saint Cletus was the third and Saint Clement was the fourth. These four Popes are mentioned every day in the Canon of the Mass, which is one of the greatest honors that ever can be bestowed on a saint. Catholic churches are dedicated to Saint Clement everywhere throughout the world. Saint Clement, as did all the early Popes, shed his blood for the Faith. He died the same year as Saint John the Evangelist.

Saint John of the Cross, Doctor of the Church, was a Spanish Carmelite priest. He died when he was only forty-nine years old. He was the great friend and supporter of Saint Teresa of Avila. He has been called the "mystic of mystics." His brilliant works, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, The Dark Night of the Soul, The Spiritual Canticle, and The Living Flame of Love, are beautiful inspirations for those who wish to be detached from all worldly things and dedicate themselves wholly to God. Saint John suffered great persecutions, even from his own Order. He was once kept in prison for nine months and slandered by everyone. But his motto and his prayer was "to suffer and to be despised." He gloriously lived up to his title, "of the Cross."

He was martyred for the Faith at Aquilea in northern Italy during the persecution of Diocletian. His name is mentioned in the Roman Canon of the Mass. He consoled and encouraged the martyr, Saint Anastasia, during her imprisonment.

Saint Flora was the companion of a beautiful Spanish girl named Mary, and their feasts are celebrated together. They were beheaded by the Mohammedans for refusing to deny their Catholic Faith.

The first and foremost of all the Catherines among the saints is the beautiful, young, eighteen-year-old girl of Alexandria in Egypt who was martyred for her Faith. The intellectuals of her time and place were so upset by the brilliance of her mind that she was called to defend the Catholic truths before fifty pagan philosophers. She completely confounded them with her arguments and her eloquence. They tortured her by means of an engine fitted with a spiked wheel. On this wheel she was rolled, but before it could do harm to her it miraculously fell apart. She was then scourged and thrown into prison and at last beheaded. She is the patroness of philosophers. She is one of the fourteen Holy Helpers, and is invoked in lawsuits. Saint Catherine's body was carried by angels to Mount Sinai, where God gave Moses the Ten Commandments. There, on the top of this sacred hill, her virginal remains await the resurrection on the last day.

She was a beautiful little Italian virgin, a spiritual daughter of Saint Prosper.

Saint Leonard of Port Maurice was a most holy Franciscan friar. He lived at the monastery of Saint Bonaventure in Rome. He was one of the greatest missioners in the history of the Church. He used to preach to thousands in the open square of every city and town where the churches could not hold his listeners. The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and the veneration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus were his crusades. He was in no small way responsible for the definition of the Immaculate Conception made a little more than a hundred years after his death. But Saint Leonard's most famous work was his devotion to the Stations of the Cross. He is sometimes called the Saint of the Stations of the Cross. So brilliant and holy was his eloquence that once when he gave a two weeks' mission in Rome, the Pope and the College of Cardinals came to hear him. Saint Leonard of Port Maurice also gave us the Divine Praises, which are said at the end of Benediction. He died a most holy death in his seventy-fifth year, after twenty-f our years of uninterrupted preaching.

This is the feast of the lovely medal designed by the Mother of God herself and given to a beautiful nun, Sister Catherine Laboure, now a canonized saint, a Sister of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul. Our Lady appeared three times to Saint Catherine Laboure in the year 1830. Our lady told Saint Catherine just how the medals in her honor should be made and designed. On one side of each medal is an image of Mary, with the words, "O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee." On the other side is the first letter of the name Mary, placed in the center with twelve stars around it, a cross just above it, and the hearts of Jesus and Mary engraved just below it. These miraculous medals are now called, in simplicity, "Mary medals." By holding them, wearing them, kissing them or showing them to others, countless favors and miracles have been worked everywhere by the power of the intercession of the Mother of God.

Blessed Leonard Kimura of the Society of Jesus was a descendant of a noble Kimura who was the first Japanese baptized by Saint Francis Xavier. Blessed Leonard Kimura, through humility, became a lay brother in the Society of Jesus. He joined the Society of Jesus at the age of thirteen, and was a catechist for thirty years. Along with thirteen other brave Japanese Catholics, he spent three years in prison. Right in the prison itself--which he turned into a religious house, with regular hours for prayer--he converted ninety-six Japanese to the Catholic Faith. He was burned to death on the hill of Nagasaki. He was forty-three years old when he went to God.

He was born at Saragossa in Spain. When the Society of Jesus was banished from Spain, he followed his religious brethren into exile. It was in no small part due to him that the Society of Jesus, suppressed in 1773, was restored again, three years after his death, in 1814. His feast is also celebrated on November 11, and is now specially commemorated in the Society of Jesus on November 15, the day he died.

He was an Italian Franciscan priest and missionary who preached in many countries in Europe. He was a friend of Saint John of Capistrano. He had the gift of miracles and made countless conversions. For forty years he never let a day go by without giving a sermon or an exhortation.

He was an aged priest from Carthage in Africa, who fled to Rome with his deacon, Sisinius. He was arrested there and sentenced to hard labor in the building of huge baths for the pagans of Rome. In the midst of his hard work and toil, and despite his age, the light of his Faith was seen by all who met him. Many Roman pagans began to be converted by Saint Saturninus, attracted by the holiness of his looks and encouraged by what he taught and said. He and his deacon were beheaded by order of the pagan Emperor Diocletian.

Saint Andrew was the older brother of Saint Peter. He was the first of the Apostles to be called by Our Lord. He was a disciple of Saint John the Baptist, who pointed out Jesus to him as the Messias. Saint Andrew summoned his brother, Peter, and both became glorious Apostles of Our Lord. Saint Andrew preached the Gospel, after Our Lord's death, in Asia Minor and to the people of Scythia. He then went to Macedonia and to Greece. He was martyred at Patras, in Achaia, by being tied to a cross shaped like the letter X, and ever since called the "Saint Andrew's cross." Saint Andrew made his cross a pulpit. On it, while he bled and bled from scourgings he had received, he preached to the faithful for two days until he died. Part of his body is now the town of Amalfi in southern Italy. He is the patron saint of Russia and also of Scotland.

Saint Maura was a young Catholic virgin of Constantinople, cruelly martyred for the Faith. Her memory haunted the haters of the Catholic Faith for years after her death. Even Julian the Apostate, the Roman Emperor who died in 363, was worried about the way in which Saint Maura was venerated. One of the Ionian Islands, between Greece and Italy, was named after her. Her name is a beautiful variant of Mary, the name of the Mother of God.