Saint of the Day

St. Joseph Vaz (21 April 1651 – 16 January 1711) was an Oratorian priest and missionary in Sri Lanka (Ceylon), originally from Sancoale in Portuguese India. Vaz arrived in Ceylon during the Dutch occupation, when the Dutch were imposing Calvinism as the official religion after taking over from the Portuguese Empire. He travelled throughout the […]

St. Paul of Thebes (c. 227 – c. 341), commonly known as Paul the First Hermit or Paul the Anchorite, was an Egyptian saint regarded as the first Christian hermit, who lived alone in the desert of Thebes, Roman Egypt from the age of sixteen to the age of one hundred and thirteen years old.

St. Felix of Nola, sometimes also called St. Felix martyr, (died ca. 260) was a Christian presbyter at Nola near Naples in Italy. He sold off his possessions to give to the poor, but was arrested and tortured for his Christian faith during the persecution of Roman Emperor Decius (r. 249–51). He was believed to

St. Hilary of Poitiers (c. 310 – c. 367) was Bishop of Poitiers and a Doctor of the Church. He was sometimes referred to as the “Hammer of the Arians” (Malleus Arianorum) and the “Athanasius of the West”. His name comes from the Latin word for happy or cheerful. In addition to his important work as bishop,

St. Tatiana was a martyr in 3rd century Rome during the reign of Emperor Severus Alexander. She was the daughter of a Roman civil servant who was secretly Christian, and raised his daughter in the faith. This was dangerous, and one day the jurist Ulpian captured Tatiana and attempted to force her to make a

St Peter of Caesarea, called “Apselamus” or “Balsamus”, suffered martyrdom in Caesarea, in Palestine, during the persecution under the Emperor Maximinus. Despite his youth, he was condemned to death, and was burned alive when he refused to deny his faith. He was martyred in the third century.

St. Pope Agatho (died January 681) served as the bishop of Rome from 27 June 678 until his death. He heard the appeal of Wilfrid of York, who had been displaced from his see by the division of the archdiocese ordered by Theodore of Canterbury. During Agatho’s tenure, the Sixth Ecumenical Council was convened to

St. Adrian, also spelled Hadrian (born before 637, died 710), was a North African scholar in Anglo-Saxon England and the abbot of Saint Peter’s and Saint Paul’s in Canterbury. He was a noted teacher and commentator of the Bible. Adrian was born between 630 and 637. According to Bede, he was “by nation an African”,

St Lawrence Giustiani, also known as St. Lawrence Justinian (July 1 1381 – January 8 1456), was a Venetian priest and bishop who became the first Patriarch of Venice. His works, consisting of sermons, letters and ascetic treatises, have been frequently reprinted. He was proclaimed saint on October 16, 1690 by Pope Alexander VIII.

St. Raymond of Penafort OP (c. 1175 – 6 January 1275) was a Catalan Dominican friar in the 13th century, who compiled the Decretals of Gregory IX, a collection of canonical laws that remained a major part of Church law until the 1917 Code of Canon Law abrogated it. He is the patron saint of