Saints’ feast days in October

A Breton Sister of Providence sent with five companions to the Indiana forest, where she found a log cabin and a mission: to do the works of God. Through fires, crop failures, and a bishop who briefly locked her up for independence, she built schools across the state and the motherhouse of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods.

Master of the cathedral school of Reims who walked away from certain preferment with six companions into the alpine desert of the Chartreuse — birthplace of the Carthusians, the one order never reformed ‘because never deformed.’ Called to Rome by a former pupil turned pope, he served, begged leave, and founded a second hermitage in Calabria, dying as he lived: in silence.

A maiden of Padua martyred by the sword under Diocletian, venerated by the Paduans from earliest times as their protomartyr and patroness beside Prosdocimus, their first bishop. The great basilica of Santa Giustina rose over her tomb, and the reforming Benedictine congregation born there carried her name across Europe.

The most celebrated actress and courtesan of Antioch, who overheard the bishop Nonnus preach — he had wept at her beauty, that a soul so adorned outward cared nothing for its God — sought baptism, gave her jewels to the poor, and vanished. Years later a holy hermit ‘Pelagius’ on the Mount of Olives was found in death to be Pelagia.

Duke of Gandía and great-grandson of a notorious pope, whose conversion deepened escorting the corpse of a beautiful empress, resolved never again to serve a master who could die. Widowed father of eight, he entered the Jesuits in secret, refused every honor, and as third general built the missions and colleges that made the Society worldwide.

A turbulent, magnificent Northumbrian who won the Synod of Whitby for Roman usage, built stone churches at Ripon and Hexham with singing schools and libraries, was exiled repeatedly by kings — evangelizing the pagan South Saxons meanwhile, and teaching them, first, to fish — and appealed twice to Rome, the first Englishman to do so.

The last Anglo-Saxon king of the old line, remembered as pious, peaceable, and open-handed — his surname ‘Confessor’ marking a sanctity of life rather than martyrdom. He rebuilt Westminster Abbey, where he lies enshrined behind the high altar to this day, the one royal shrine to survive the Reformation.

A slave, failed banker, and convict of the Sardinian mines who rose to administer the Church’s cemetery on the Appian Way — the catacomb that bears his name — and then to the papacy, where his mercy toward repentant sinners scandalized the rigorists. He governed five years and died a martyr in a popular riot.

A Ligurian merchant’s son who saw in vision a black habit with the sign of the Passion, fasted forty days writing his rule, and founded the Passionists — contemplatives who leave the cloister to preach Christ crucified. Fifty years of missions made him the most sought preacher in Italy; he kept to the end his watchword, that the Passion of Jesus be ever in our hearts.

A British princess martyred at Cologne with her virgin companions while returning from pilgrimage — so the ancient tradition, embroidered by legend into eleven thousand. Whatever their number, their veneration is early and deep: an inscription of the fourth century already honors virgins martyred at Cologne, and Angela Merici placed her teaching company under Ursula’s name.

A Catalan weaver’s son who preached ten thousand sermons across Spain and the Canaries, founded the Claretians and a publishing house that scattered millions of books, then endured seven years as archbishop of Santiago de Cuba — reforming, defending the enslaved, surviving assassination. He died in exile in France, days after the loss of Rome.

Forty men and women canonized together in 1970 from among the hundreds who died for the old faith between 1535 and 1679: Margaret Clitherow pressed to death for hiding priests, Edmund Campion the Oxford ornament, Cuthbert Mayne the proto-martyr of the seminaries, priests, mothers, schoolmasters — one cause, one crown.

A Northumbrian trained at Lindisfarne, missionary to the Middle Angles and then bishop of the East Saxons, founding monasteries at Tilbury and Lastingham; at the Synod of Whitby he served as interpreter between the parties, trusted by both. He died of the plague at Lastingham, and thirty of his Essex monks came north to die beside him.

A boy of Tyre shipwrecked on the Red Sea coast and raised at the Ethiopian court, who as regent opened the country to Christian merchants and then, sent by Athanasius as its first bishop, baptized the king. Ethiopia calls him Abba Salama, ‘father of peace,’ and its ancient church descends from his mission.

Bishop of Jerusalem said to have been over a hundred when he died — slandered in old age by perjurers, he withdrew to the desert until the truth outed, then returned to his see and served on with a coadjutor. Eusebius preserves the memory of his holiness and of the accusers’ fates.

A Segovian wool merchant who buried his wife and all three children, failed in business, and at nearly forty was accepted by the Jesuits only as a lay brother. For forty-six years he kept the door of the Majorca college — greeting every ring of the bell as if it were the Lord — and his hidden counsel formed the missionary saint Peter Claver.

A Swabian monk-schoolmaster who became bishop of Regensburg, reformed its monasteries, tutored the future emperor Henry II, and gladly gave away territory to create the new diocese of Prague. He died on journey in an open chapel; Austria’s lake and village of St. Wolfgang keep his name and pilgrimage.