Mariana Navarro de Guevara Romero of Jesus was born in Madrid, Spain, in 1565. She was the oldest of six children and the only girl. After her mother died, it became Mariana’s responsibility to care for her brothers. She loved them all very much and tried her best to be like a second mother to them.
Can you imagine what it would be like if it were a crime for children to go school? That was the law in Ireland when Edmund Rice, who was born in 1762, grew up. The people of Ireland were harshly ruled at that time by the British, who believed that if the Irish were uneducated, they would be easier to rule.
In the 14th century, a number of English men and women withdrew from the world. They lived alone as hermits or anchorites. Their hermitage, or cell, was a small room attached to a local church. Each room had two windows. One pierced the church wall. Through this window, the anchorite received communion. Through the second window, the anchorite received food brought to him or her by village people.
Margaret Pole was born in England in 1473 and was the niece of two English kings. Another king arranged for Margaret to marry Sir Reginald Pole, a friend of the royal family. They had a happy marriage.
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.
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 and lived it to the fullest.
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 first Catholics in the country.
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 always to live with love.
Carlos Manuel Cecilio Rodriguez Santiago was born in Caguas, Puerto Rico, in 1918. He is the first Puerto Rican to be declared “Blessed” by the Church.
Jesuit missionaries came to Andrew’s Vietnam village to preach the Gospel in 1640, when he was 15 or 16. Andrew began to study with the priests so that he could understand what it meant to be a follower of Christ. He was baptized later that year and was eager to begin sharing his faith.