Conrad spent most of his life as porter in Altoetting, Bavaria, letting people into the friary and indirectly encouraging them to let God into their lives. His parents, Bartholomew and Gertrude Birndorfer, lived near Parzham, Bavaria. In those days, this region was recovering from the Napoleonic wars. A lover of solitary prayer and a peacemaker as a young man, Conrad joined the Capuchins as...

St. Anicetus was the pope from 155-166.  He succeeded Pius and was a Syrian from Edessa. Anicetus was a notable enemy of the heresies of his era, and during his reign a controversy arose between the Eastern and Western Churches. St. Polycarp, then rather advanced in age, came to confer with Anicetus, and spent two years, from 160-162, discussing a difference of opinion about the date of...

Labre was born in 1748 in the village of Amettes, near Arras, in the former Province of Artois in the north of France. He was the eldest of fifteen children of a prosperous shopkeeper, Jean-Baptiste Labre, and his wife, Anne Grandsire. Labre had an uncle, a parish priest, living some distance from his family home; this uncle gladly received him, and undertook his early education for the...

St. Ruadhan was first to put Lorrha on the map coming here in the middle of the 6th century. He was educated in Clonard Co. Westmeath by St. Finian and was known as one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland. He is said to have replaced St. Brendan (the navigator) at Lorrha who preceded to cross the Shannon and set up his monastery at Clonfert Co. Galway. Ruadhan founded a monastic settlement...

At age 15, Lidwina was ice skating when she fell and broke a rib. She never recovered and became progressively disabled for the rest of her life. Her biographers state that she became paralyzed except for her left hand and that great pieces of her body fell off, and that blood poured from her mouth, ears, and nose. Today some posit that Saint Lidwina is one of the first known multiple...