Bl. Pius IX’s Bull on the Immaculate Conception Ineffabilis Deus
The Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary was celebrated by the Church with a feast on December 8th for centuries before it was formally defined as a dogma of the Faith by Bl. Pope Pius IX in 1854. Up until that point, there were various version of the Divine Office and Mass for the feast […]
St Alypius, A Patron Saint Against Addiction
In the Roman Martyrology, a lists of Saints compiled for liturgical use, one of the entries on August 15th is St Alypius. He was a close friend of St Augustine from boyhood, and eventually became bishop of their native place, a town called Thagaste in North Africa. A few religious orders of the Augustinian tradition […]
St Helena, Evelyn Waugh, and the Finding of the Cross
In 1950, the English writer Evelyn Waugh published his only historical novel, Helena, a fictionalized account of the life of the Emperor Constantine’s mother, and her discovery of the relics of the True Cross. For well over a millennium, this event was celebrated with a feast day on May 3rd, the Finding of the Cross; […]
Pope St Leo the Great on the Passion
Pope St Leo I is one of only two Popes (alongside St Gregory I, 590-604) to be recognized as a Doctor of the Church, and one of only three (along with the same Gregory, and Nicholas I, 858-67), who are traditionally given the epithet “the Great.” Born in Tuscany sometime around the turn of the […]