Today is the traditional beginning of the Novena of Grace in honor of St. Francis Xavier, a nine-day devotion that has been popular for centuries. The first Novena of Grace dates back to 1634, when the intercession of St. Francis obtained the miraculous cure of another Jesuit. The novena ends on March 12, the date [...]
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Francis Xavier,
prayers
Last month America Magazine awarded its 2009 Campion Award to Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury– a remarkable move, since the award is named after St. Edmund Campion, one of the English martyrs. Williams writes movingly of “martyrial ecumenism,” which I take to mean the shared witness (Greek marturion) to faith in Christ, even [...]
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Campion,
reconciliation,
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December 21 is the feast of another great Jesuit saint, Peter Canisius. Let this post represent a shout-out to Buffalo’s Canisius College and Canisius High School; Jakarta’s Canisius College (secondary school); and Berlin’s Canisius Kolleg (secondary school).
The Dutch-born Canisius (1521-1597) was one of the early first-generation Jesuits. He met Pierre Favre, one of [...]
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St. Francis Xavier (Indonesia, c. 16th century)
December 3 is the feast of Saint Francis Xavier. Francis is the patron of foreign missions because of his evangelization in India, Indonesia, and Japan (he died off the coast of China, and the site is a pilgrimage destination for Chinese Catholics). Many Asian Catholics to this day recognize [...]
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The Congregation for the Causes of Saints has announced that Mary Ward (1585-1645), the English woman who founded an order modeled directly after the Jesuits, will be declared Venerable.
See the CathAsia news story here.
See the bio of Mary at the website of the order she founded, the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, here.
Like Ignatius, [...]
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At his People for Others blog, my friend Paul Campbell has trouble coming up with “five fun facts” about Ignatius Loyola. One of them is the fact that Ignatius was hauled up several times before the Spanish Inquisition.
This got me thinking about the personalities of saints. There aren’t many “fun” facts about Ignatius because Ignatius [...]
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Chris Hoyt,
Ignatius Loyola,
Paul Campbell,
Philip Neri