Daughter of Giuseppe and Francesca Cambiagio, she grew up in Pavia, Italy. At the age of 20 she had a profound mystical experience that left her devoted to prayer and desiring a religious life. However, to go along with her family’s wishes, she married Giovanni Battista Frassinella on 7 February 1816. The couple had a normal married life for two years, but Giovanni, impressed with...
St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne (634-687 A.D.) was born in present day Scotland to a lowly family, and worked as a shepherd near the Melrose Abbey monastery. A child playmate prophesied that he would one day become a bishop. One day, while tending to his sheep, St. Cuthbert saw in a vision the soul of St. Aidan, the Bishop of Lindisfarne, carried to heaven by angels. This mystical experience...
In the sixteenth century when the Faith, especially in Germany, was so mightily shaken by the so-called reformers, when the Sign of the Cross was abolished as a superstitious practice, almighty God permitted this very Sign of the Cross to shine with special power and radiance, in order to strengthen the Faith in another country. This was Spain, and it was through the great miracle worker of...
Gertrude of Nivelles, OSB (c. 628 – 17 March 659) was a seventh-century abbess who, with her mother Itta, founded the Abbey of Nivelles, now in Belgium. She was born into a noble family who lived at King Dagobert's court in Belgium. Her father served as mayor of Dagobert's palace. When Gertrude was 10 years old, King Dagobert tried to arrange a marriage between her and the son of...
In the history of Dr. Champney we read: “This year on March 16, John Amias and Robert Dalby, priests of the College of Douai, suffered in York as in cases of high treason, for no other cause but that they were priests ordained by the authority of the See of Rome, and had returned into England and exercised there their priestly functions for the benefit of the souls of their...