portraitsofsaints

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Happy Feast Day

Our Lady of LaVang

The Saint of Vietnam

Feast Day: November 22

The Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to a small group of persecuted Catholics living their faith in a jungle in Vietnam. They suffered privations, dangers, and illnesses. They recited the rosary daily and on one evening, the Blessed Mother appeared to them telling them that she fully understood their hardships. She told them, among other things, to gather the leaves from a plant that grew by them and boil their water with them to purify it. She also providently told them “From this day on prayers said on this spot will be heard and answered.” That was in 1798 and pilgrims have had answered prayers since.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary was celebrated first in Jerusalem in the sixth century.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

Saint Felix of Valois

Cofounder of the Trinitarians

1127-1212

Feast Day: November 20

Saint Felix of Valois was a member of the French royal family. He was ordained a priest and wanting to live a solitary life he became a hermit. St John of Malta joined him as a hermit. One day in devout discourse, a stag, bearing a blue and red cross between its antlers, burst from the bushes. St. Felix, greatly amazed, didn’t know what to say, but St. John recalled this same vision while saying his first holy Mass. When they requested to form the Trinitarian order to ransom captives from the Moors, Pope Innocent III had the same vision during his Mass and approved the order. St Felix died of natural causes at 85.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

Venerable Bruno Lanteri

1759-1830

Founder of the Oblates of Mary

Father Bruno Lanteri was born in Italy and suffered through the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. He’s known for his intellectual and spiritual direction of many of Europe's great saints and thinkers including Sts. Joseph Cafasso, John Bosco, and Pier Giorgio Frassati. He promoted mercy and hope, never letting discouragement stop your spiritual progress by saying “Begin Again."

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne

1769-1852

Feast Day: November 18

Patronage: perseverance amid adversity, Dioceses of Springfield-Cape Girardeau, MO.

Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne was born in France and lived through the French Revolution. In 1804 Rose befriended St. Madeleine Sophie Barat and entered the Society of the Sacred Heart. She dreamed of serving the Native Americans and at age 49 she and four sisters were sent as missionaries to the Louisiana Territory to establish the Society’s presence in America. With Divine grace, courage, an iron will and a lot of faith she started free schools for girls and Native Americans in Missouri and Kansas. The Native Americans called her "Woman Who Prays Always.” St. Rose is the first canonized female saint west of the Mississippi.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

Saint Elizabeth of Hungary

1207-1231

Feast Day: November 17 (New), November 19 (Trad)

Patronage: hospitals, nurses, bakers, brides, countesses, dying children, exiles, homeless people, lace-makers, widows

Elizabeth of Hungary, T.O.S.F., was a princess of the Kingdom of Hungary, Countess of Thuringia, Germany, and a greatly venerated Catholic saint. Elizabeth was married at the age of 14 and widowed at 20.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

Saint Roque Gonzalez

1576-1628

Feast Day: November 17

Patronage: native traditions; Posadas, Argentina; Encarnacion, Paraguay

Saint Roque was born as Roque González y de Santa Cruz in 1576 in Asunsion, Paraguay to noble Spanish parents. Although he felt unworthy, he became a Jesuit priest and was the first missionary to preach among the Guarani people of Paraguay, helping them to become self-sufficient and free by founding “reductions” missions for the natives. When the local chief became hostile to the Jesuits, St. Roque was martyred and burned at the stake, but his heart was left intact and the natives claimed that they heard the voice of the saint from it. This enraged the chief, who then had St. Roque’s heart pierced with an arrow. He was canonized in 1988 by Pope Saint John Paul II.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

Saint Hilda of Whitby

614-680

Feast Day: November 17

Patronage: learning, culture, and poetry due to her patronage of Caedmon. The National Cathedral School for girls in Washington D.C.

Saint Hilda was an English princess, who at 33, consecrated her life to God as a nun. St. Bede chronicled her life of virtue and intellectual brilliance. She was the Abbess of a double monastery of monks and nuns that was a religious center that revered Scripture studies in Whitby. The last 7 years of her life she suffered from a high fever that didn’t stop her from doing her work. She died peacefully in 680.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

Saint Margaret of Scotland

1045 - 1093

Feast Day: November 16 (New), June 10 (Trad)

Patronage: Scotland; parents of large families; against the death of children

St. Margaret of Scotland was an English princess of the House of Wessex. Margaret was born in exile in Hungary. Around 1070 she married Malcolm III of Scotland, becoming his queen consort. In her position as queen, all Margaret's great influence was thrown into the cause of religion. Her private life was given up to constant prayer and practices of piety. Margaret was the mother of three kings of Scotland and a queen consort of England.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

Saint Gertrude the Great

1256-1302

Feast day: November 16

Patronage: West Indies, travelers

St. Gertrude was a Benedictine nun and mystic writer. The characteristic of St. Gertrude's piety was her devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She showed sympathy towards the souls in purgatory and urged prayers for them. She is therefore invoked for souls in purgatory.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

Saint Giuseppe Moscati

1880 - 1927

Feast Day: November 16

Patronage: bachelors, people rejected by religious orders, physicians

St. Giuseppe Moscati received his doctorate from the University of Naples in 1903 and eventually ran a hospital for the wounded where he personally treated almost 3,000 soldiers. He healed (sometimes miraculously), taught at numerous universities and hospitals, and supported the poor and outcast. Sometimes he could diagnose a patient‘s illness and prescribe for it without having seen the patient and knew when and how to use a patient‘s faith and the sacraments to effect a cure. He was the first modern physician to be canonized.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

St. Albert the Great

Bishop and Doctor of the Church

1206-1280

Feast day: November 15

Patronage: Scientists and Philosophers

Saint Albert heralded from a wealthy and powerful German family. In 1223, he was ordained a Dominican Friar. He was a man of great intellect, teaching and writing about science, philosophy, and theology, to name a few, at the University of Paris and Cologne. One of his famous students was St. Thomas Aquinas. They both probed how faith, reason, and science could coexist. He worked to unite the East and West at the Council of Lyons. He suffered a slow slide into dementia till he died in 1280.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

Saint John Licci

1400-1511

Feast Day: November 14

Patronage: head injuries, Caccamo, Italy

Saint John Licci is the longest living saint, living to 111 years old. His life was one of miracles and good works. He was saying the daily office at 10 years old and at 15 he entered the Dominicans and wore their habit for 96 years. In 1415 he founded the convent of St. Zita, which was constructed with the help of many miracles, like building materials dropped off when they had run out by an oxen driver who promptly disappeared and mistakes in construction being fixed after St John blessed it. St. John died of natural causes.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini

1850 - 1917

Feast day: November 13 (New), December 22 (Trad)

Patronage: immigrants, hospital administrators

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, M.S.C., also called Mother Cabrini, was an Italian Religious Sister, who founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. This Catholic religious institute was a major support to the Italian immigrants to the United States. She was the first citizen of the United States to be canonized by the Catholic Church.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

Saint Artemide Zatti

October 12,1880 - March 15,1951

Feast Day: November 13

Patronage: Pharmacists, Immigrants

Canonized by Pope Francis October 9, 2022

Saint Artemide Zatti was born to a poor farming family in Italy that immigrated to Argentina. He joined a Salesian parish and became a helper to the priest, desiring also to become a Salesian.

While in the Salesian community, he contracted tuberculosis. He was healed through the intercession of Our Lady and promised to serve the sick. He made a perpetual profession as a Salesian Coadjutor, then ran the hospital pharmacy in Viedma and eventually got his nursing degree. He traveled day and night to care for the sick of the country for 40 years and died of cancer in 1951.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

Saint Stanislaus Kostka

1550-1568

Feast Day: November 13

Patronage: Poland, Jesuit novices, students, broken bones, heart palpitations, Strake Jesuit College Preparatory, aspirants to the Oblates of St. Joseph, last sacraments

Saint Stanislaus Kostka was born in Poland into a large noble family. At 14, Stanislaus attended a Jesuit prep school, where he exemplified an iron will to live a life of holiness. Once when ill, angels brought him Holy Communion, which prompted his desire to enter the Jesuits. He walked over 350 miles to Rome, where St. Francis Borgia welcomed him into the novitiate. After 10 months, he predicted his own death and died 2 days later on the Feast of the Assumption of a fever.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

Saint Josaphat Kuntsevych of Polotsk

1580-1623

Feast Day: November 12 (New), November 14 (Trad)

Patronage: Ukraine

Saint Josaphat, born in Ukraine, became a monk for the Ukrainian Order of St. Basil and 5 years later a priest for the Byzantine Church. He worked for unity and peace between the Eastern Orthodox and Latin Roman Churches, which were divided since 1054. Josaphat was made the first Bishop of Vitebsky in 1617 during an intense level of unrest between the two groups. Being the holy man that he was, he started building and reforming his diocese. In 1623, a mob of Orthodox citizens was incensed to riot and murdered Bishop Josaphat. He was canonized as the first Eastern Church saint in 1867.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)