Blessed Odoric of Pordenone was born of noble parents in the year 1265 at Pordenone in Friuli. He entered the Franciscan Order in the convent of Udine when he was only 15 years old. He felt himself called by God to be a missionary, and so prepared himself for his vocation by a strict life of penance, intimate union with God in solitude, and earnest application to study. Ordained a priest,...

The father of Berno is said to have been the French nobleman Odon, who provided a refuge for the Benedictine community of Glanfeuil after the monks had been driven from their monastery by the Normans. Berno, a teenager at the time, assisted his father in welcoming the exiled monks. Following his father's death, Berno gave away his inheritance and entered a Benedictine monastery, that of...

Bernard was a shoemaker by trade, and considered the greatest swordsman and duelist in Sicily in his day. After mortally wounding a man named Canino in a duel, he sought sanctuary from the law in the church of the Capuchin Friars Minor in Palermo. While hiding there, he had a true conversion, and became a Capuchin lay-brother in 1632, changing his name to Brother Bernardo. He was noted for his...

St Tommaso was born in Cori (Latina) on 4 June 1655.   He knew a childhood marked by the premature loss first of his mother and then of his father, thus being left alone at the age of 14 to look after his younger sister.   Shepherding sheep, he learned wisdom from the simplest things.   Once his sister was married, the youth was free to follow the inspiration that...

Saint Agatho, (born c. 577, Sicily—died Jan. 10, 681, Rome; feast day January 10), pope from 678 to 681. A cleric well-versed in Latin and Greek, he was elected pope in June 678. He judged that St. Wilfrid, bishop of York, had been unjustly deprived and ordered his restoration, and he received the submission of Exarch Theodore of Ravenna, whose predecessors had aspired to...