The eldest son of José Martínez Polo and Juana Miquélez, Ángel was baptized at the age of one day; his aunt and godmother, Magdalena Martínez, consecrated him to the Virgin Mary. To get work, the family moved to Argentina when Ángel was five years old, but they were forced to return to Spain two years later when things didn’t work out. The boy‘s mother died when Ángel was seven...

Today the Church remembers one of the companions of St. Paul, St. Epaphras.  Epaphras was an observer of the Apostle Paul mentioned twice in the New Testament epistle of Colossians and once in the New Testament letter to Philemon. In the first instance he is described as a "fellow servant" (Colossians 1:7) of Paul in his ministry. At the end of the same letter to the Church...

Szymon (Simon) was born to a poor but pious family, the son of Grzegorz and Anna. In 1454, at age 17, he moved from his small town to Kraków to study at the Uniwersytetu Jagiellonskiego. While there, he heard a sermon by Saint John Capistran which led him to consider a call to religious life and the priesthood. He earned a bachelor’s degree in 1457, and joined the Franciscan Friars...

St. Colman may have been of noble or royal birth. He was monk. While on a pilgrimage to the Holy Lands, Colman was stopped by the Viennese on suspicion of being a Moravian spy; there was continual fighting between Austria, Moravia and Bohemia, and a stranger who spoke no German was immediately suspect. With no evidence other than being a stranger, he was convicted of espionage, tortured, and...

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, or Virgin of Carmel, is the title given to the Blessed Virgin Mary in her role as patroness of the Carmelite Order, particularly within the Catholic Church. The first Carmelites were Christian hermits living on Mount Carmel in the Holy Land during the late 12th and early to mid-13th century. They built in the midst of their hermitages a chapel which they dedicated to...