Blog

    Stories of saints, biblical events, angels, and sacred places.

    A 15th-century Novgorod icon of Saint Basil the Great, shown haloed and bearded in bishop's vestments holding a scroll — the grandson Macrina the Elder personally raised in the faith.
    Saint Macrina the Elder
    A grandmother survived Diocletian's persecution hiding seven years in the wilderness, then taught her grandsons the faith — two became giants of Christian theology.
    A weathered stone statue of a haloed young woman with her hand pressed to her chest, gazing upward, on the colonnade of Saint Peter's Square in Rome.
    Saint Macrina the Younger
    At twelve, her fiancé died before their wedding. She called herself already married — then spent her deathbed dictating philosophy to Gregory of Nyssa.
    An 18th-century oil painting of a kneeling nun in black and white habit, hands folded in prayer, haloed by golden rays, with the Sacred Heart resting on an altar before her.
    Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque
    An obscure French nun reported that Christ showed her his own wounded heart in prayer. That private vision became the Sacred Heart devotion millions know today.
    A somber 1700 portrait of an elderly nun in a white wimple and black habit, wearing a crucifix, her hands clasped in prayer.
    Saint Marguerite Bourgeoys
    She crossed the Atlantic to a frontier fort and built a teaching order of unwalled, unveiled sisters — becoming the first female Canadian Catholic saint.
    A 19th-century portrait of a nun in a grey wimple and dark habit, wearing a crucifix, looking downward in quiet contemplation.
    Saint Marguerite d'Youville
    Widowed at 29 with crushing debt, she opened her door to Montreal's poorest. Neighbors mocked her with an insulting nickname — the Grey Nuns kept it forever.
    A Baroque ceiling fresco showing Christ above two haloed medieval nuns seated with open books, one of them Mechtild of Hackeborn recording a vision.
    Saint Mechtild of Hackeborn
    For years, two fellow nuns secretly wrote down everything she said about her visions. When she found out, she reported being distressed, not flattered.
    A black-and-white Art Nouveau illustration of a haloed woman standing over a crouching hare, while a mounted hunter and his hound watch from the trees.
    Saint Melangell
    A prince chasing a hare found it sheltering in a hermit's cloak — and gave her the whole valley. The tale is charming; it's also almost entirely unverifiable.
    A devotional icon of a haloed woman in green and orange robes holding a small gold cross.
    Saint Olympias of Constantinople
    She inherited one of the largest fortunes in the Eastern Roman Empire, gave nearly all of it away, and was exiled for refusing to abandon John Chrysostom.
    An 18th-century oil painting of a grieving Roman widow in blue robes standing on a harbor dock surrounded by companions, gazing upward as angels appear overhead and a sailing ship marked SPQR waits behind her.
    Saint Paula of Rome
    A Roman senator's daughter left the Aventine Hill for a cave town in Judea, funding the priest she had recruited there to translate the Bible into Latin.
    An 11th-century Byzantine illuminated manuscript miniature showing the martyrdom of Perpetua, Felicity, and their three companions, depicted with gold halos against a gold background.
    Saints Perpetua and Felicity
    A 22-year-old noblewoman kept a prison diary before her 203 AD execution, and it survives — among the earliest surviving writing by a Christian woman.
    A hand-colored 1845 lithograph of a young woman with a rose wreath and golden halo, holding a palm branch, flanked by four angels among clouds, with an anchor and flowers below.
    Saint Philomena
    In 1802, workers found a sealed Roman tomb with broken tiles spelling a name — her entire life story came decades later, from one nun's reported visions.
    An 18th-century engraving showing a dying nun lying on the ground supported by a fellow sister holding a crucifix, while another nun approaches through a doorway, with a skull and hourglass resting on a pedestal nearby.
    Saint Scholastica
    When her brother Benedict refused to stay one more night, she put her head down and prayed — and the clear sky broke into a storm too violent to leave in.
    An 11th-century Byzantine illuminated manuscript miniature showing a haloed woman in dark monastic robes standing with raised hands before a colonnaded building, gold background.
    Saint Syncletica of Alexandria
    A wealthy, beautiful young woman gave away her fortune and walled herself into a tomb with her blind sister — then found students showing up at her door.
    A 19th-century engraving depicting a young woman with a water jug at a well, speaking with an elderly beggar leaning on a staff, a Tuscan hill town visible in the background.
    Saint Zita of Lucca
    At twelve, she took a job as a maid in a Tuscan household — and stayed forty-eight years, giving away a third of her pay, until Lucca called her a saint.
    The parish church of Balazar, Portugal, associated with Blessed Alexandrina Maria da Costa, photographed in daylight.
    Blessed Alexandrina of Balazar
    A fourteen-year-old jumped from a window to escape assault, paralyzed for life — then spent thirteen years under Church watch, living on only the Eucharist.
    The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Divine Love near Rome, site of the 2010 beatification ceremony for Chiara "Luce" Badano.
    Blessed Chiara "Luce" Badano
    An Italian teenager who loved tennis and pop music was diagnosed with bone cancer at sixteen, and refused painkillers that would dull the mind she offered God.
    A devotional painting of Elisabetta Canori Mora, hooded in dark robes and a white lace bonnet, kneeling in prayer before an altar with a monstrance and an image of the Sacred Heart.
    Blessed Elisabetta Canori Mora
    A Roman bride watched her husband's ambition curdle into control, infidelity, and ruin — she answered it by scrubbing floors to feed her daughters, not leaving.
    A sepia-toned period photograph of Laura Vicuña as a young girl, wearing a light pinafore-style dress with a dark sash, looking directly at the camera.
    Blessed Laura Vicuña
    A Salesian schoolgirl learned her mother was trapped in a coercive relationship, and around age ten decided to offer her own life for her mother's freedom.
    A bronze memorial plaque in Poznań bearing a sculpted relief portrait of Natalia Tułasiewicz's face, her name, dates, and a quotation from her own writing.
    Blessed Natalia Tułasiewicz
    A Polish literature graduate volunteered for Nazi forced labor to secretly minister to deported women, and was gassed at Ravensbrück on Easter Sunday, 1945.
    A black-and-white oval studio photograph of a young Bernadette Soubirous, wearing a patterned headscarf and a dark shawl, hands folded, looking calmly to one side.
    Saint Bernadette Soubirous
    A sickly fourteen-year-old gathering firewood saw "something white in the shape of a woman" in a rock niche, and kept returning despite threats of the asylum.