Saint of the day

Saint of the day

May 28: Saint Emilio, martyr

Emilio - martyred like St. Stephen

There is no certain information about the life of Emilio. Tradition places him as having lived around the 1st century and having been Bishop of Cagliari on the island of Sardinia.

Saint Emilio, together with Saints Felix, Priamo and Feliciano, is celebrated today and is most likely one of the four Sardinian martyrs who are commemorated in the Martyrology of St. Jerome. In Sardinia he is venerated in various places, especially in the town Sestu.

May 27: Saint Augustine of Canterbury

Apostle to England

A Benedictine monk sent by Pope Gregory the Great to be a missionary among pagans. He became the great re-evangelizer of ancient Britannia, but also the first Archbishop and Primate of England. He is Saint Augustine of Canterbury, known throughout the world by the name of the abbey he founded and where he was buried.

May 26: Saint Philip Neri

“Brothers, be cheerful, laugh, joke as much as you want, but do not sin!”

He was known and loved by the populace of Rome for his cheerful and peaceful character, able to involve the entire city in his spiritual journey, beseeching charity towards the weakest and most neglected of society. He is Philip Neri, born in Florence on July 21, 1515, to Francesco and Lucrezia da Mosciano Neri. His father was a notary when he lost his wife in 1520. He remarried Alessandra di Michele Lensi, who took care of little Philip, who attended public school and was educated by the Dominicans of the convent of San Marco.

May 25: Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi

The mysticism of the love of God

Perhaps they took her for a madwoman when she pealed the bells of the monastery to call her Sisters and all creatures to the love of God. She shouted: “Come, souls to love love!” It was May 3rd, 1592, when Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi, running through the corridors of the monastery, invited people to love Christ.

Impressed by her “excesses of love for God”, the religious authorities of the time asked the nuns of the Carmelite monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence to faithfully transcribe the words she pronounced during her ecstasies and to document what she saw and felt.

May 24: Blessed Virgin Mary Help of Christians

A Mother close to her children 

To invoke Mary, with the title of Help of Christians or Help of Christians, means to recognize her as Mother and Queen. It expresses, in particular, the filial affection of the faithful towards She, who was the first Disciple of the Son.

May 23: Saint Giovanni Battista de’ Rossi

Charity towards the poor and proclamation of the Gospel

He visited the sick in Roman hospitals, managed a night shelter for the homeless, devoted himself to listening to penitents who crowded his confessional. He is Father Giovanni Battista de' Rossi, born on February 22, 1698, in Voltaggio (Genoa). At about thirteen years of age, he moved to Rome to study literature and philosophy at the Roman College and lived with a cousin who was a priest, a canon in Santa Maria in Cosmedin.