Chapdelaine was born on a farm in La Rochelle-Normande, France. By the age of twenty, he had entered the seminary at Coutances. He was ordained a priest in 1843 and in 1851 joined the Institute of Foreign Missions in Paris. He left from Antwerp in April 1852 to join the Catholic mission in the Guangxi province of China. The Taiping Rebellion led to suspicion of Christians and foreigners were...

Grigor Narekatsi, anglicized: Gregory of Narek was an Armenian mystical and lyrical poet, monk, and theologian. He is a saint of the Armenian Apostolic Church and was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Francis in 2015. The son of a bishop, Narekatsi was educated by a relative based at the Narekavank, the monastery of Narek, on the southern shores of Lake Van (modern Turkey). He was based...

Victor was born in northern France and exhibited remarkable piety at a very early age.  His greatest loves, even as a youth were prayer, fasting, and serving the poor. He was ordained a priest but knew that God was calling him to a life of solitary devotion, and accordingly retired to a lonely outpost in the region of his birth, where he passed the rest of his life (no one knows exactly...

Lawrence Bai Xiaoman was a Roman Catholic saint from China. He was born in Guizhou to a poor family and became an orphan at a young age. He married in his 30s and had a daughter. Augustus Chapdelaine, a French missionary went to Guangxi in the 1850s to preach the gospel. At this time, Christian missionaries were forbidden to enter the interior of China away from the treaty ports. Bai was...

Ethelbert was the son of Eormenric; great-grandson of Hengist, Saxon conqueror of Britain. He was raised as a pagan worshipper of Odin. He ruled as King of Kent in 560, but was defeated by Ceawlin of Wessex at the battle of Wimbledon in 568, ending his attempt to rule all of Britain. He married the Christian Bertha, daughter of Charibert, King of the Franks; they had three children, including...