SAINTS OF THE MONTH: LISTING

Feast Day: July 1
Beatified: September 25, 1988
Venerated: May 9, 1985

Born on the island of Mallorca near Spain in 1713, Miguel Jose Serra wanted to be a monk. He joined the order of St. Francis Assisi when he was 15 and called himself Junípero. He studied philosophy and became a teacher of the same subject, but his heart longed to be a missionary.

Across…

Feast Day: July 3
Canonized: Pre-Congregation

Can you imagine an apostle, the closest followers of Christ, having doubts about Jesus? St. Thomas did, and his disbelief helps us to understand how important the gift of faith is.

On the evening of Jesus’ Resurrection, Thomas was not with the other apostles in the Upper Room in Jerusalem, so he was not present when Jesus…

Feast Day: July 4
Beatified: May 20, 1990
Venerated: October 23, 1987

Some people have called Pier, or Peter, Frassati a saint for today’s young people. He was handsome and athletic. He hiked, climbed mountains, rode horses, and skied with his many friends. He loved to laugh, and he was famous for his practical jokes. He loved life…

Feast Day: July 6
Canonized: June 24, 1950
Beatified: April 27, 1947
Venerated: March 25, 1945

Maria Goretti was only twelve years old when she died in 1902, but the story of this young Italian girl has touched the hearts of Catholics everywhere for over 100 years. Maria’s parents were hard-working tenant farmers who raised crops on land they rented. When she was…

Feast Day: July 7
Beatified: January 17, 1995
Venerated: April 2, 1993

Peter To Rot was born in 1912 in a village named Rakunai in what is today Papua New Guinea. The region had for some time been visited by Christian missionaries, but Peter's father, Angelo To Puia, who was chief of the village, and his mother, Maria la Tumul, were baptized as adults and were among the…

Feast Day: July 9
Canonized: October 1, 2000

Martyrs are people who die for their faith. In China, where Christian faiths were not allowed to be practiced for many centuries, there were many martyrs.

In the 1600s, Jesuit Fathers Matteo Ricci, Andrew Xavier, and Johann Adam Schall von Bell were killed, as were Dominican Fathers Domingo Coronado and Francisco…

Feast Day: July 9
Canonized: May 19, 2002
Beatified: October 18, 1991
Venerated: February 8, 1988

Amabile Visintainer was born in a poor section of Italy in 1865. When she was 10 years old, her family and many of their neighbors sailed to South America. They were looking for a better life. The immigrants traveled to Brazil and started a new town…

Feast Day: July 11 (Roman) March 14 (Byzantine)
Canonized: 1220

Benedict was born to a noble family in Nursia, Italy, about 480 AD. When he grew up, he studied in Rome. Then, wanting to pray alone, Benedict lived for three years in a cave near Subiaco.

During that time, people began to talk about the holiness of the Subiaco hermit. So men…

Feast Day: July 12
Canonized: Pre-Congregation

We hear the story of Veronica when we pray the Stations of the Cross. At the Sixth Station, Jesus stopped to allow Veronica to wipe the blood, sweat, and dirt from his face. This simple act of kindness is all we know about Veronica, a woman in Jerusalem. She is not mentioned in the Gospels, but…

Feast Day: July 12
Canonized: October 18, 2015
Beatified: October 19, 2008

When Louis Martin and his bride, Zelie, were married in 1858, they promised that they would “serve God first” together. They knew that putting God first in their lives would help them to always live with love.

Louis was a watchmaker. Zelie made…