Catholic Saint of the Day

Saint Paulinus of Nola (353-431) was a Roman Senator who converted to a severe monasticism in 394. He eventually became Bishop of Nola, and helped to resolve the disputed election of Pope Boniface I, and was canonized as a saint.

Saint Romuald, whose aim was to restore the primitive rule to the Order of Saint Benedict, succeeded in founding some hundred monasteries in both Italy and France, and he filled the solitudes with hermitages. The principal monastery was that at Camaldoli, a wild, deserted region, where he built a church, surrounded by a number of separate cells for the solitaries who lived under his rule; his disciples were thus called Camaldolese. For five years the fervent founder was tormented by furious attacks by the demon. He repulsed him, saying, “O enemy! Driven out of heaven, you come to the desert? Depart, ugly serpent, already you have what is due you.” And the shamed adversary would leave him. Saint Romuald’s father, Sergius, was moved by the examples of his son, and entered religion near Ravenna; there he, too, was attacked by hell and thought of abandoning his design. Romuald went to visit him; he showed him the error of the devil’s ruses, and his father died in the monastery, in the odor of sanctity.

Venerable Matt Talbot, born in Dublin, patron of those struggling with alcoholism, was an active alcoholic for nearly 15 years.

Saint Emily de Vialar, Virgin, Foundress of the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Apparition, secretly baptized and taught religion at home post-French Revolution.

Saint John Francis Regis was a French priest of the Society of Jesus. Making himself available to the poor, he spent the afternoon at prisons and hospitals.

Born in 1579 of humble parents at Pibrac, a village about ten miles from Toulouse; died in her native place in 1601. From her birth she seemed marked out for suffering; she came into the world with a deformed hand and the disease of scrofula, and, while yet an infant, lost her mother. Her father soon married again, but his second wife treated Germaine with much cruelty.

Saint Joseph the Hymnographer was the most prolific of the Greek hymn writers. St. Joseph is credited with the composition of about one thousand canons. A native of Sicily, he was forced to leave his island in 830 in the wake of an invasion by the Arabs, journeying to Thessalonica and then to Constantinople. He abandoned the Byzantine capital in 841 to escape the severe Iconoclast per secution, but on his way to Rome he was captured by pirates and held for several years in Crete as a slave.

Saint Anthony of Padua, Doctor of the Church, patron saint of lost and stolen articles, was a powerful Franciscan preacher and teacher.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus goes back at least to the 11th century, but through the 16th century, it remained a private devotion, often tied to devotion to the Five Wounds of Christ. The first feast of the Sacred Heart was celebrated on August 31, 1670, in Rennes, France, through the efforts of Fr. Jean Eudes (1602-1680). From Rennes, the devotion spread, but it took the visions of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690) for the devotion to become universal.

The 108 Polish Martyrs of World War II, known also as 108 Blessed Polish Martyrs, were Roman Catholics from Poland killed during World War II by the Nazis.