St. Gertrude the Great (1256-1302), also known as Gertrude of Helfta, was born on the feast of Epiphany in Thuringia (modern Germany). She was sent to be educated at the Benedictine monastery in Helfta at the age of four or five, possibly as an orphan or as a child dedicated to God by her parents. She proved to be an extremely bright and determined student who became engrossed in her secular...

Lucy Brocadelli (also known as the Blessed Lucy of Narni), (13 December 1476 in Narni – 15 November 1544 in Ferrara) was a Dominican tertiary who was famed as a mystic and a stigmatic. She has been venerated by the Roman Catholic Church since 1710. She is known for being the counselor of the Duke of Ferrara, for founding convents in two different and hostile city-states and for her...

St. Lawrence, it appears, was born about the year 1125. When only ten years old, his father delivered him up as a hostage to Dermod Mac Murehad, King of Leinster, who treated the child with great inhumanity, until his father obliged the tyrant to put him in the hands of the Bishop of Glendalough, in the county of Wicklow. The holy youth, by his fidelity in corresponding with the divine grace,...

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini (1850–1917) was the thirteenth child of a modest farming family born near Milan, Italy. Her father would often gather his children in the kitchen to hear him read from a book on the lives of the saints. St. Frances was endeared to the stories of missionaries working in the Orient and desired to become one herself, which in her day was a man's role. Turned...

Machar was a 6th-century Irish Saint active in Scotland. A Bishop of Irish origin, Machar is said to have been a former nobleman, baptized by St Colman. He came to Iona with Columba and preached in Mull and later ministered to the Picts around Aberdeen. Much of what is claimed to be known about St. Machar derives from the Aberdeen Breviary, a work compiled in the late fifteenth to early...