Born to the Roman nobility, the daughter of Antigonus, senator of Constantinople, Euphrasia was related to Roman Emperor Theodosius I who finished the conversion of Rome to a Christian state. Her father died soon after Euphrasia was born; she and her mother became wards of the emperor. When Euphrasia was only five years old, the emperor arranged a marriage for her to the son of a senator....

St. Cunegunda (or Kinga) was daughter of King Bela IV of Hungary and Mary Lascaris, and sister of St. Margaret of Hungary and Bl. Jolenta. Reluctantly married to Boleslas II of Krakow, who was subsequently King of Poland, they both made a commitment of personal continence. Their special concern was for the poor and the sick. After her husband’s death in 1279, Cunegunda sold her personal...

St. Gualtero was the only child of Aliprando and Adelazia, pious parents who were childless so long that they promised God they would devote any child of theirs to the Church. They kept their pledge, giving the boy a good education, and by age fifteen Gualtero was working as a Hospitaller friar in the San Raimondo il Palmerio hospital in Piacenza, Italy, beginning his lifelong devotion to care...

St. Praxedes' father was Saint Pudens, a Roman senator who was a Christian convert of St. Peter, mentioned in the New Testament by St. Paul in 2 Timothy 4:21. She was the sister of Saint Pudentiana. Sabine Baring-Gould, in the entry for Saint Novatus, states that Praxedes' brothers were Saint Novatus and Saint Timothy. After her father's conversion to Christianity, Praxedes'...

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...