CALENDAR for PEACE, JUSTICE, & LIFE
JANUARY
1 •World Day of Prayer for Peace
•Mauricio López, rector of the Universidad de Mendoza, Argentina, committed Protestant
layman, member of the World Council of Churches, disappeared, 1976.
•Francisco Jentel, defender of the indigenous and campesinos in the diocese of São Felix do
Araguaia, victim of National Security, Brazil, 1979.
•Sr. Maureen Courtney, CSA, US missionary Sister of St. Agnes, & Sr. Teresa de Jesús
Rosales, Nicaraguan, killed in an ambush by the contras, near Ojo de Agua, Nicaragua,
1990.
•Fr. Miguel Angel Urusa Nicolau, detained and disappeared, Rosario, Argentina, 1976
2 •St. Basil the Great, Bishop, Doctor of the Church (330-379: died 1January 379) and St.
Gregory Nazianzen, Bishop and Doctor (330-389/390: died January 25, 389/390)
“What is a miser? One who is not content with what is needful. What is a thief? One who takes what belongs to
others. Why do you not consider yourself a miser and a thief when you claim as your own what you received in
trust? If one who takes the clothing off another is called a thief, why give any other name to one who can clothe the
naked and refuses to do so?
“The bread which you do not use is the bread of the hungry. The garment hanging in your wardrobe is the
garment of the one who is naked. The shoes that you do not wear are the shoes of the one who is barefoot. The
money you keep locked away is the money of the poor. The acts of charity you do not perform are so many injustices
you commit.”
St. Basil
•Abel, the first to be killed
•St. Seraphim of Sarov, Russian monk (1759-1833)
“God is fire that warms and kindles the heart and inward parts. And so, if we feel in our hearts coldness, which is
from the devil— for the devil is cold— then let us call upon the Lord and he will come and warm our hearts with
perfect love not only for him but for our neighbor as well. And from the presence of warmth, the coldness of the hater
of good will be driven away.”
St. Seraphim of Sarov, “Spiritual Instruction for Lay People and Monks”
3
•Holy Name of Jesus
•St. Genevieve of Paris
•Diego Quic Apuchan, Mayan Indian catechist, disappeared and killed, Santiago Atitlán,
Guatemala, 1981.
“I have never stolen, have never hurt anyone, have never eaten someone else’s food. Why, then, do they want to hurt
me and kill me?”
from a letter of his pastor, Fr. Stanley Rother
•The prophet Malachi (Byzantine calendar)
4 •St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, first US born saint, widow, mother, founder of the Sisters of
Charity, 1774 - 1821.
“Never be hurried by anything whatever — nothing can be more pressing than the necessity for your peace before
God. You will help others more by the peace and tranquillity of your heart than by any eagerness or care you can
bestow upon them.”
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton
•Albert Camus, French/Algerian author and philosopher, died in a car crash, 1960.
“What the world expects of Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and clear, and that they should voice
their condemnation in such a way that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could rise in the heart of the simplest
[person]. That they should get away from abstraction and confront the bloodstained face history has taken on today.”
Albert Camus, “The Unbeliever and the Christian,”
a speech at the Dominican monastery of Latour-Marbourg, France,
1948.
•José Patricio León “Pato”, animator of the Young Christian Students and political activist,
disappeared in Chile, 1975.
•Bishop Antulio Parrilla-Bonilla, S.J., Puerto Rican bishop, advocate of peace and social
justice, died, 1995.
“The cross which crowns the dome of the sanctuary, above the tower, reminds us that we go to heaven through the
cross and without it there is no salvation.”
Bishop Antulio Parrilla
“There’s oppression in the whole world: two-thirds of humanity is oppressed by the white axis of nations. The poor,
nonwhite population is being oppressed, I would say, by maybe 15 or 20 percent of the people of the whole world. And
anybody who will just cross his arms before a situation like that should not call himself a true Christian.
“It’s about time that we realized what true religion is – seeing that when Christ was trying to explain who was going to
be rewarded and who was not, he didn’t refer to a catechism, he didn’t refer to daily communion, he didn’t refer to
externals – he referred to good deeds and good works. And it’s not good works ot one person individually, it’s good
works to change structures now, this moment in the history of humanity.”
Bishop Antulio Parrilla, comments at a Mass
in the First Spanish Methodist Church being occupied by the Young Lords
•Blessed Angela of Foligno (1248-1309), widow, lay Franciscan mystic and writer.
“Let us go and look for Christ our Lord. We will go the hospital and perhaps among the sick and suffering we shall
find Him.”
Bl. Angela of Foligno, Holy Thursday exhortation
5 •St. John Nepomucene Neumann, Bohemian Redemptorist missionary to the US, bishop of
Philadelphia, 1811-1860.
“But whilst the general increase of wealth on every side, the accumulation of all comforts and luxuries of life, attest the
prosperity to which this favored country has already attained, let us beware lest the reproach of the prophet should prove
well founded in our regard: ‘This people saith the time has not yet come to build the house of the Lord.’”
St. John Nepomucene Neumann
•Guarocuya “Enriquillo”, Christian leader of La Española (the Dominican Republic), first to
rebel for human rights, 1534.
•Kaj Munk, Danish Lutheran pastor, playwright and poet, opponent of the Nazis, active in
the Danish Resistance, 1944.
“When fire and murder are unleashed upon the people of the earth, it is our task to denounce, in the name of the God of
love, everything which we know to be the work of the devil. When the deck is loaded, when cowardice heaps praises
upon that which before was recognized as despicable, then it is the task of the church to realize that the signs of the
church have always been the dove, the lamb, the lion, and the fish, but never the chameleon.”
“For what we as pastors lack is not psychology or literature. We lack a holy rage.”
Kaj Munk
•Lanza del Vasto (“Shantidas” - servant of peace), disciple of Gandhi, founder of the
Community of the Ark, died, 1981.
“Learn that virile charity that has severe words for those who flatter, serene words for those who fight you, warm
[words] for the weary, strong for the suffering, clear for the blind, measured for the proud, and a bucketful of water and
a stick for the sleepers.”
Lanza del Vasto, Principles and Precepts of a Return to the Obvious
“Science can lend itself to any use; the conscience cannot. Intelligence can lower itself to any scheme; wisdom
cannot. Power can stoop to anything; self control cannot. Money can be put to all kinds of uses; honesty cannot.
Courage can defend any cause; charity cannot. Power can be used to any purpose, but nonviolence or the Power of
Justice can serve only Justice.”
Lanza del Vasto
6 •Epiphany of the Lord
•Blessed André Bessette, Holy Cross brother, doorkeeper and healer of the sick, founder of
St. Joseph’s shrine, Montreal, Québec, Canada , 1845-1937.
•Sr. Victoria de la Roca, taken from her convent in Esquipulas, and disappeared in
Guatemala, 1982.
•Julio Gonzalez, bishop of El Puno, Perú, killed in a suspicious accident, dafter receiving
death threats, 1986.
•Rev. Amando Añosa, United Church of Christ in the Philippines pastor and human rights
advocate, killed in Tacloban City, Leyte, Philippines, 1989.
7 •St. Raymond of Peñafort, Dominican priest, confessor, Archbishop of Tarragona, Aragon
(1175-1275)
•Sebastian Mearin, rural leader in Para, Brazil, assassinated by “grileiros”, 1981.
•Felipe & Mery Barreda, delegates of the Word, Estelí, Nicaragua, killed by the contras,
1983.
“We discovered that faith is not expecting that the Lord will miraculously give us whatever we ask, or feeling the
security that we will not be killed and that everything will turn out as we want. We learned that faith is putting
ourselves in His hands, whatever happens, good or bad. He will help us somehow.”
Felipe and Mery Barreda
8 •Domingo Cahuec Sic, Achí Indian, catechist, delegate of the Word, campesino, Rabinal,
Baja Verapaz, Guatemala, 1982.
•Five Sisters from the community of the Daughters of the Resurrection, Hutus, were killed,
Busasamana, Ruanda, 1998.
9 •Rigoberta Menchú, Guatemalan indigenous leader, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, born in
Chimel, El Quiché, Guatemala, 1959.
[F]or us the Bible is our main weapon. It has shown us the way. Perhaps those who call themselves Christians but
who are really only Christians in theory, won’t understand why we give the Bible the meaning we do. But that’s
because they haven’t lived as we have.... I can assure you that any one of my community, even though he’s illiterate
and has to have it read to him and translated into his language, can learn many lessons from it, because he has no
difficulty understanding what reality is and what the difference is between the paradise up above, in Heaven, and the
reality of our people here on Earth.
-Rigoberta Menchu
I, Rigoberta: An Indian Woman in Guatemala.
•Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, journalist, killed in Nicaragua, 1978.
•St. Philip of Moscow, bishop, martyr (1507-1569) Died December 23, 1569 murdered in
Ivan the Terrible’s prison.
10 •Dora Azmitma “Menchy”, activist, 23 year old teacher, martyr of Juventud Estudiantil
Católica (Young Christian Students), Guatemala, 1982.
•Fr. Narciso Pico, priest of the Philippine Independent Church in Antipolo, Negros
Occidental, assassinated, 1991.
“My God, have pity. Enough of this”
-dying words of Fr. Narciso Pico
11 •
12 •Mev Puleo, photojournalist. advocate of the poor, 1996.
“I’d rather die young, having lived a life crammed with meaning, than to die old, even in security, but without
meaning.”
Mev Puleo
•St. Marguerite Bourgeoys, French missionary to Québec, founder of the Congregation of
Nôtre Dame of Montreal, 1620-1700.
• Zilda Arns, Brazilian pediatrician, founder of the International Pastoral da Criança, killed
during the Haitian earthquake, Porto Principe, 2010.
13 •St. Hilary of Poitiers, bishop and doctor, 315?-367.
•George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends (Quakers), died 1691.
•Francisco Chinchilla, Caritas refugee worker, killed in Honduras, 1982.
14 •Albert Schweitzer born, 1875.
•Miguel Angel Pavón, director of the Human Rights Commission, and Moisés Landaverde,
killed in Honduras, 1988.
•Ammon Hennacy (1893-1970), “One Man Revolution,” pacifist, Catholic Worker, died, Salt
Lake City, Utah, after collapsing on a picket line.
“Love without courage and wisdom is sentimentality, as with the ordinary church member. Courage without love and
wisdom is foolhardiness, as with the ordinary soldier. Wisdom without love and courage is cowardice, as with the
ordinary intellectual. The one who has love, courage, and wisdom is one in a million, who moves the world, as with
Jesus, Buddha, and Gandhi.”
Ammon Hennacy
15 •Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929.
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands
at times of challenge and controversy. The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige, and even his life for the
welfare of others. In dangerous valleys and hazardous pathways, he will lift some bruised and beaten brother to a
higher and more noble life.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
•St. Paul the hermit (died 342).
•Prophet Habakkuk
16 •Saints Berard, Peter, Accursius, Adjutus, and Otho, Franciscan protomartyrs, Morocco,
1219.
•Signing of the Salvadoran peace accords, 1992.
•Cardinal Juan Landaruzi Ricketts, O.F.M., archbishop of Lime, died, 1997.
17 •St. Anthony, Abbot, 250-356.
“Our life and our death are with our neighbor. If we gain our brother, we have gained God, but if we scandalize our
brother, we have sinned against Christ.”
St. Anthony the Great
in Sayings of the Desert Fathers
•Ana María Castillo, Christian activist in Juventud Estudiantil Cristiana and Acción Católica
Universitaria Salvadoreña, member of the FPL guerrilla, killed in an ambush, El Salvador,
1981.
•Hermana Silvia Maribel Arriola, sister of La Pequeña Comunidad, nurse with the FMLN
guerrillas, killed near Cutamay Camiones, El Salvador, 1981.
“In a society whose ideals are power, possession, and pleasure, I pray that I may be a sign of what it really means to
love.”
Hermana Silvia
•Fr. Jaime Restrepo, pastor of San José del Nus, Antioquía, Colombia, killed, 1988.
“I want to be a witness, and fundamentally a witness of hope.”
“To be converted is to go out of oneself, to walk toward the other, to be a pilgrim.”
“If we want to live forever, we must give our lives forever.”
Jaime Restrepo
•Fr. Antonio de Rocha, killed by RENAMO, Mozambique, 1989.
•Fr. Juan Luís Segundo, S.J., Uruguayan liberation theologian died, 1996.
“One suffers because one must pay the price of the humanization of the human being in a conflict-ridden history.”
Juan Luís Segundo
18 •Death of Tom Dooley (1927-1961), doctor and medical missionary to South East Asia, died
of cancer, 1961.
“But yet a milder storm of peace gathers in my heart. What seems unpossessable, I can possess. What seems
unfathomable, I fathom. What is unutterable, I can utter. Because I can pray, I communicate. How do people endure
anything on earth if they cannot have God?”
Tom Dooley to Father Hesburgh
•German Cortés, Christian activist and political activist, Chile, 1978.
•José Eduardo, labor leader in Acre, Brazil, assassinated by a grileiro, 1981.
•Sergio Bertén, CICM, Belgian religious who worked clandestinely, killed Guatemala, 1982.
19 •St. Macarius of Egypt (Orthodox calendar)
•Blessed Richard Rolle, poet (c. 1300-1349)
•St. Henry of Uppsala, patron of Finland (died about 1156)
20 •St. Fabian, Pope, martyr (c. 250)
•St. Sebastian, martyr (257? - 288?)
•Fr. Octavio Ortiz, and young companions — Angel Morales, Jorge Alberto Gomez, Roberto
Orellano, and David Alberto Caballeros — killed during retreat in El Despertar, San
Antonio Abad, El Salvador, 1979.
“Octavio [Ortiz] found a treasure; he was sharing it with those youths. This is the great message of Octavio and those
who died: the form of this world is passing away and the only thing left is the joy of having worked for the Reign of
God in this world. All the pomp, all the victories, all the egoistical capitalism, all the successes in life shall pass away.
“What is not passing is love, the conversion into service of money, goods, and professional talents and the act of
sharing and making all people feel like brothers and sisters. At the end of life, you shall be judged by your love. In this,
God has judged Octavio and the deceased youths: in their love.”
Archbishop Oscar Romero, January 21, 1979
•Fr. Carlos Morales López, O.P., killed in Guatemala, 1982.
21 •St. Agnes, Virgin and Martyr, died 258?.
•Bishop Gerardo Valencia Cano, bishop of Buenaventura, Colombia, prophet of the
liberation of the poor, died, 1972.
“Never in the history of humanity have events demanded so much of women.”
Bishop Gerardo Valencia
•María Ercilia and Ana Coralia Martínez, native of Palo Grande, students, Red Cross
volunteers, catechists, martyred, El Salvador, 1980.
•Ibrahim Rugova (1944-2006), president of Kosova, father of the nation, nonviolent activist,
died, 2006.
22 •St. Vincent of Saragossa, deacon and martyr, Valencia, Spain, died 304.
•Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision, legalizing abortion, 1973.
“As we continue to teach clearly and forcefully the moral evil of abortion, we must also . . . speak to them a word of
understanding and encouragement, a work of solidarity and support. Both in word and deed we must inspire the entire
community to help carry the burdens of all our sisters in need.”
U.S. Catholic Bishops, “Resolution on Abortion,” November 7, 1989
•“Tata” Vasco de Quiroga, bishop of Michoacan, precursor of the indigenous reducciones,
died, 1565.
•Abbe Pierre (1912-2007), born Henri Groues in Lyon, saved thousands of lives of both Jews
and the politically persecuted, helping them to escape to Switzerland or Algeria, founder of
the Emmaus community, the “ragpickers’ community;” died, 2007.
"If, for the war against extreme poverty, we're not able to ask youth as much sacrifice and heroism - if we have to - than
we had asked it for the war against tyranny, then it's not worth it to ask so much sacrifice, because the victory for justice
will soon be more than moribund."
Abbé Pierre to President Eisenhower, 1955
23 •St. John the Almsgiver, died 619.
“If, with the object of giving to the poor, anyone were able, without ill will, to strip the rich right down to their shirts,
he would do no wrong, more especially if they were heartless skinflints.”
St. John the Almsgiver
•St. Vincent Palloti, 1795-1850.
•Blessed Nikolaus Gross, 1898-1945, husband, worker, member of the St. Anthony’s Miners
Association, opponent of Nazism, from Niederwenigern, Germany, hung for opposition to
Nazism.
“If we do not risk our life today, how do we then want one day to justify ourselves before God and our people?”
Nikolaus Gross
24 •St. Francis De Sales, bishop and doctor, 1567-1622.
“There is nothing so strong as gentleness and there is nothing so gentle as real strength.”
“Practice poverty of spirit in the midst of riches; practice richness of spirit in real poverty.”
St. Francis de Sales
•Sister Dorothy Marie Hennessey, OSF, 1913 – 2008. Peace activist, agitator, Dubuque
Franciscan sister.
25 •Conversion of St. Paul.
•Luís Perez Aguirre, S.J., died, 2001. Jesuit priest, nonviolent activist in Uruguay.
“I think that humanity depends on the capacity we have for compassion, the capacity we have for sensitivity for
those who suffer, for those who are oppressed, and also for those who fight for justice, who fight for peace as the
consequence of justice. I would like to see you all engaged in this kind of work. I think it is the only way to be really
human.”
Fr. Luís Perez Aguirre, S.J., December 1988 to high school students in NYC
26 •St. Timothy, companion of St. Paul, bishop of Ephesus (d. 97?)
•St. Titus, companion of St. Paul, bishop of Crete (died 94?)
•The liberation of Auschwitz, 1945
•José Gabriel, "Cura Brochero", priest and prophet of the campesinos, pastor of San Alberto
in Córdoba, Argentina, died, 1914.
27 •St. Angela Merici, founder of the Ursuline nuns, 1470?-1540.
•Liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp, 1945.
•Pablo de Torres, bishop of Panama, exiled for defending the Indians, died, 1554.
•Miguel Angel Nicolau, Salesian priest, martyr for his commitment to youth, disappeared in
the city of Rosario, Argentina, tortured, and killed, 1977.
•Howard Zinn (1922 -2009), author of A People’s History of the United States, political
activist, Boston University professor of history.
“No matter what we’re told, no matter what tyrant exists, what border has been crossed, what aggression has taken
place, it’s not that we’re going to be passive in the face of tyranny or aggression, no, but we’ll find ways other than war
to deal with whatever problems we have, because war is inevitably—inevitably—the indiscriminant massive killing of
huge numbers of people. And children are a good part of those people. Every war is a war against children.
Howard Zinn, November 2009, Boston University
28 •St. Thomas Aquinas, Dominican, philosopher and theologian, 1225-1274.
“He [Thomas Aquinas] had from the first that full and final test of truly orthodox Catholicity: the impetuous,
impatient, intolerable passion for the poor; and even that readiness to be rather a nuisance to the rich, out of a hunger to
feed the hungry.”
G. K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas
•María Ercilia Martínez y Ana Coralia Martínez, students, volunteers and catechist, martyred,
El Salvador, 1980.
30 •Mohandas K. Gandhi (“Mahatma”), assassinated, India, 1948.
“Just as one must learn the art of killing in the training for violence, so one must learn the art of dying in the training
for nonviolence. Violence does not mean emancipation from fear, but discovering the means of combatting the cause for
fear. The votary of nonviolence has to cultivate the capacity for sacrifice of the highest type in order to be free from fear.
He reckons not if he should lose his land, his wealth, his life. [Whoever] has not overcome all fear cannot practice
nonviolence to perfection. The votary of nonviolence has only one fear, that is of God.”
Mohandas K. Gandhi
•Fr. Michael Lutsky, killed in the Western Ukraine, 1975.
31 •St. John Bosco, founder of the Salesians, 1815-1888.
•Thomas Merton, Trappist monk, writer, born, 1915.
“I believe sometimes that God is sick of the rich people and the powerful and wise men of the world and that He is
going to look elsewhere and find the underprivileged, those who are poor and have things very hard; even those who find
it most difficult to avoid sin; and God is going to come down and walk among the poor people of the earth, among those
who are unhappy and sinful and distressed and raise them up and make them the greatest saints and send them walking all
over the universe with the steps of angels and the voices of prophets to bring his light back into the world again.”
Thomas Merton, to Sister Marialein Lorenz’s class, 6/2/49,The Road to Joy, p. 317
•Spanish Embassy massacre, forty Quichés killed, including María Ramírez, Gaspar Viví and
Vicente Menchú, Guatemala City, 1981.
“I am a Christian and the duty of a Christian is to fight all the injustices committed against our people. It is not right
that our people give their blood, their pure lives, for the few who are in power....
“Some people give their blood and some people give their strength. So while we can, we must give our strength. In
this hour of need, we must look after our little lives very well so that they provide a source of strength for our people....
We want no more dead, we want no more martyrs, because we already have too many in our land, in our fields, through
too many massacres. What we must do is protect our lives as much as we can and carry on our struggle...”
Vicente Menchú
•Fr. Vjeko Curic, Franciscan priest, Croatian missionary, minister to victims during the
1994 civil war, “Father Courage” and “Oscar Shindler of Rwanda,” killed near Holy
Family Church, Kigali, Rwanda, during the evening of January 31-February 1, 1998.
“I have chosen to come to Rwanda to work for the Kingdom of God, living among these people: I want to share
with them their joys, sufferings, and risks.”
Fr. Vjeko Curic
FEBRUARY
1 •St. Bridget of Ireland, c. 450 - c. 525
I should like a great lake of beer for the King of Kings. I should like the angels of Heaven to be drinking it through time
eternal. I should like excellent meats of belief and pure piety. I should like flails of penance at my house. I should like the
men of Heaven at my house; I should like barrels of peace at their disposal; I should like vessels of charity for
distribution; I should like cheerfulness to be in their drinking. I should like Jesus to be there among them. I should like the
three Marys of illustrious renown to be with us. I should like the people of Heaven, the poor, to be gathered around us
from all parts.
St. Bridget
•Daniel Esquivel, Paraguayan worker, martyr, member of the pastoral team for Paraguayan
immigrants in Argentina, 1977.
•Bishop Maurice Dingman, bishop of Des Moines, Iowa, champion of peace and of the
family farmer, died, 1992.
“You are to look forward to the future. Make the work of the future your task. It is an immense task, and you do this in
three ways: be a spark of light, a center of love, and a leaven in the world in which you live. We can’t do everything,
but we can do something. All we really have to do is to open ourselves to these possibilities. I ask you to continue to
search for truth. I urge you to continue your lives in a fashion so you can hear the word of God, put it into your own
idiom, and then live it out.”
Bishop Maurice Dingman
2 •Presentation of the Lord - Candlemas Day
•Fr. José Tedeschi, priest and worker, martyr of the immigrants and “villeros” in Argentina,
kidnapped and killed, Viukka Itatí [Bernal], Argentina, 1976.
•Fr. Alfred Delp, S.J.,(1907-1945), executed by the Nazis in the Plotenzee prison, Germany,
1945.
“What use are all the lessons learned through our suffering and misery if no bridge can be thrown from our side to the
other shore? What is the point of our revulsion from error and fear if it brings no enlightenment, does not penetrate the
darkness and dispel it? What use is it shuddering at the world’s coldness, which all the time grows more intense, if we
cannot discover the grace to conjure up visions of better conditions?”
Alfred Delp, S.J.
•St. Theophane Venard, missionary to VietNam
3 •St. Blase, bishop and martyr, died 316
•St. Ansgar, bishop of Hamburg, missionary from France, apostle of Scandinavia, 801-865.
•St. Aelred of Rievaulx, (1110-1167), English Cistercian abbot, died January 12, 1167.
4 •Kim Chi Ha, Korean Catholic writer and activist born, 1941.
“LEPER: What can be done to free you, Jesus, make you alive again so that you can come to us?
“JESUS: My power alone is not enough. People like you must help to liberate me. Those who seek only the
comforts, wealth, honor, and power of this world, who wish entry to the kingdom of heaven for themselves only and
ignore the poor and less fortunate, cannot give me life again. . . . Only those, though very poor and suffering like
yourself, who are generous in spirit and seek to help the poor and the wretched can give me life again. You removed
the gold crown from my head and so freed my lips to speak. People like you will be my liberators.”
Kim Chi Ha, The Gold-Crowned Jesus
•Ham Sok Han, “Teacher Han,” Korean Quaker activist, died, 1988.
“I believe in God. We should not be pessimistic. One of the great truths is that of desire and hope. We must cherish
unconditionally an optimistic future. Intellectually, I don’t know what the world will be like in the future but I have
tried through my faith to follow the right road and the righteous way. When we climb the mountain, we at times must
descend in order to be able to climb the next mountain. Our problem is, how do we establish a strong and abiding faith
in God.”
Ham Sok Han
•Bishop Benjamin de Jesús, supporter of peace with Muslims, killed, Jolo, Philippines, 1997
5 •St. Agatha, virgin and martyr (died 251?)
•Fr. Pedro Arrupe, S.J., superior general of the Jesuits, died, 1991.
“More than ever I find myself in the hands of God. This is what I have wanted all my life from my youth. But now there
is a difference; the initiative is entirely with God. It is indeed a profound spiritual experience to know and feel myself so
totally in God’s hands.”
Fr. Pedro Arrupe, S.J.
•Fr. Andrea Santoro, Italian priest, killed in the church of St. Mary, Trabzon, Turkey, 2006
6 •Sts. Paul Miki, S.J., Peter Baptist, O.F.M., and companions — Jesuits, Franciscans, secular
Franciscans; catechists, doctors, artisans, servants; old and young — the 26 martyrs of
Nagasaki, Japan, crucified February 5, 1597.
“The only reason for my being killed is that I have taught the doctrine of Christ. I thank God it is for this reason I die. I
believe that I am telling only the truth before I die. I know you believe me and I want to say to you all once again: Ask
Christ to help you become happy, I obey Christ. After Christ’s example I forgive my persecutors. I do not hate them. I
ask God to have pity on all, and I hope my blood will fall on my fellow humans as a fruitful rain.”
Brother Paul Miki, S.J., to his companions from the cross
•Monseñor Sergio Mendez Arceo, bishop of Cuernevaca, Mexico, “the red bishop,”
champion of liberation for the poor, died, 1992.
“Blessed are those who suffer persecution, those who for justice suffer persecution. . . . Thus we can call blessed all our
people, beaten down and oppressed: when they take consciousness of oppression and struggle to be liberated, when
they really long for justice; thus, in those moments, those who have already passed the ultimate test of giving their live
for their desire [for justice], would be the ones who give us joy, the joy of so many brothers [and sisters] who form,
with Jesus, heaven, the heaven we seek, the fullness of the Kingdom.”
Sergio Mendez Arceo, 30 November 1984
7 •Dom Helder Câmara, archbishop of Recife, Brazil, defender of the poor, apostle of
nonviolence, born, in Fortaleza, Brazil, 1909-1999.
“I used to think when I was a child, that Christ might have been exaggerating when He warned about the dangers of
wealth. Today I know better. I know how very hard it is to be rich and still keep the milk of human kindness. Money
has a dangerous way of putting scales on one’s eyes, a dangerous way of freezing people’s hands, eyes, lips, and hearts.
That is the source of my conviction that it is both democratic and Christian to bolster human frailty with a balanced,
firm, and just moral pressure based on nonviolent action.”
Dom Helder Câmara, Revolution through Peace
•Dominique Barbé, O.P., French missionary to Brazil, peacemaker, died, 1988.
“A missionary, an evangelist, is a person sent to destroy the structures of selfishness and to build the structures of sharing.
This happens on three levels: the level of the individual, the community, and the society. It is like three intersecting
wheels: the circle of personal life, the circle of community of the followers of Christ, and the circle of society.”
Dominique Barbé
8 •St. Jerome Emiliani (1481-1537), founder of a congregation devoted to the care of orphans
and the education of youth.
•Saint Josephine Bakhita (1869-1947), Sudanese ex-slave, Sister of Charity, died in Schio,
Italy.
“Seeing the sun, the moon, and the stars, I said to myself: Who could be the maker of these beautiful things? And I felt
a great desire to see him, to know him, and to pay him homage.”
Saint Josephine Bakhita
•Martin Buber, Jewish philosopher, born, 1878.
“We make peace, we bring about world peace, if we make peace wherever we are destined and summoned to do so: in
the active life of our own community and in that aspect of it which can actively help us determine its relationship to
another community. The prophecy of peace addressed to Israel is not valid only for the days of the coming of the
Messiah.... Fulfillment in a ‘then’ is inextricably bound up with fulfillment in the ‘now.’”
Martin Buber, 1932
•The prophet Zechariah (Byzantine calendar)
9 •Felipe Balam Tomas, Missionary of Charity, servant of the poor, captured in Las Escobas,
San Martín Jilotepeque, Chimaltenango, Guatemala. 1985.
•Alberto Koenigsknecht, U.S. Maryknoll missionary, bishop of the prelature of Juli, Peru,
killed, in a suspicious accident, after receiving a death threat because of his option for the
poor, 1986.
•St. Miguel Febres Cordero (1854-1910), Christian Brother, Ecuador, professor, poet,
catechist.
10 •St. Scholastica, virgin, foundress of western monasticism for women (480-542?)
11 •Our Lady of Lourdes. Mary Immaculate appears to Bernadette Soubirous, in the cave of
Massabielle, Lourdes, France, 1858.
•A. J. Muste, U.S. pacifist leader died, 1967.
“One has to be both a resister and a reconciler to be an effective pacifist. You have to be sure that when you’re
reconciling you’re also resisting any tendency to gloss things over; and when you’re primarily resisting, you have to be
careful not to hate, not to win victories over human beings. You want to change people, but you don’t want to defeat
them.”
A.J. Muste
12 •Fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany, 1945.
“Instead of feeding the hungry, we destroy the fields that produce the food; instead of clothing the naked, we bomb
factories that produce clothing; instead of giving drink to the thirsty, we bomb reservoirs. In war, the enemy is
dehumanized and is no longer seen as a child of God. As Christians, we must penetrate the disguise and see Jesus in the
enemy. Then, we would not kill and destroy.”
Eileen Egan
•Elias Acosta, delegate of the Word of the parish of Santa Lucia of Suchitoto, killed in
Aguilares, 1980.
•Sister Dorothy Stang, US missionary, member of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur,
defender of peasants and small farmers, killed in a remote settlement in the state of Para,
Brazil, 2005.
“I don’t want to flee, nor do I want to abandon the battle of these farmers who live without any protection in the forest.
They have the sacrosanct right to aspire to a better life on land where they can live and work with dignity while
respecting the environment.”
Sister Dorothy Stang, SSNDdeN.
13 •Brother James Miller, FSC, Christian Brother U.S. missionary, killed in Huehuetenango,
Guatemala, 1982.
•Fr. Francisco Soares, priest, martyr for justice for the poor, Carupé [Tigre], Argentina,
1976.
14 •Saints Cyril, monk, (d. 869) and Methodius, bishop, (died 884), apostles to the Slavic
peoples.
•Rick Julio Medrano, Franciscan, and his companion, martyrs, killed in the parish of San
Ildefonso, Ipala, Depto. Chiquimula, Guatemala, 1992.
15 •Susan B. Anthony born, 1826.
•Ben Salmon (1889-1932), Catholic pacifist, World War I conscientious objector, husband
and father, 1932.
“I believe it is clear that, if we are going to show our love for our neighbor, we must adopt some other means besides
tattooing his body with a Lewis machine gun. If you love me, I really prefer that you show your love in some other way
besides massaging me with a bayonet. . . .
“Love, of course, is like everything else, relative. Christ does not expect me to love a stranger as much as I love my
mother. But even though love is relative, it never reaches a level so low as to warrant an injury. The opposite of love is
hate, and the amount of hate that finds an expression in every war, of which we found an appalling example in the
recent conflict, warrants the conclusion that war is hate [and] peace is love.”
Ben Salmon
•Fr. Camilo Torres, guerrilla, priest, killed in Colombia, 1966.
“I am a revolutionary as a Colombian, as a sociologist, as a Christian, and as a priest.
“As a Colombian, because I cannot be a stranger to my people’s battles.
“As a Sociologist, because, thanks to the scientific knowledge which I have of reality, I have arrived at the realizations
that technical and effective solutions will not be obtained without a revolution.
“As a Christian, because the essence of Christianity is love of neighbor and only through the revolution can the welfare
of the majority be obtained.
“As a Priest, because the surrender of oneself to [one’s] neighbor, which the revolution demands, is a requisite of
fraternal charity; it is indispensable for offering the sacrifice of the Mass, which is not an individual offering, but
that of the entire people of God through the intercession of Christ.
Camilo Torres
•Fr. Juan Alonso Fernández, MSC, Spanish priest, Missionary of the Sacred Heart, killed, in
La Barranca, between Uspantán and Cunén, El Quiché, Guatemala, 1981.
“In no way do I want anyone to kill me; but I am not at all ready, out of fear, to shrink from being present among
these people. Once again I now think: ‘Who can separate us from the love of Christ?’”
Fr. Juan Alonso Fernández to a brother, 1/28/81
“One of the attitudes which most impresses me about the personality of Jesus Christ is his total availability to his
Father and to all people. After that, his freedom in the face of the formalities, the ideologies of his time, the persons,
the powers, the interests.”
Fr. Juan Alonso Fernández
•Maria Elena Moyano, vice-mayor of Villa El Salvador, Lima, Peru, killed by Sendero
Luminoso, 1992.
“Friends, revolution means affirmation of life, of the individual and collective dignity; it means a new ethic.
Revolution does not mean death or imposition, nor submission or fanaticism. The revolution is new life. It means to
fight for a just society based on dignity and solidarity on the side of organizations created by our own people,
respecting their internal democracy and generating new seeds of power for a new Peru.
“I will continue on the side of my people, of the women, the youth and the children. I will continue to fight for
peace with social justice. Viva la Vida! Long live life!”
Maria Elena Moyano
16 •Janani Luwum, Anglican bishop of Uganda, martyred by Idi Amin, 1977.
“I do not know for how long I will occupy this chair [of archbishop]. While the opportunity is there, I preach the
Gospel with all my might, and my conscience is clear before God that I have not sided with the present government,
which is utterly self-seeking. I have been threatened many times. Whenever possible I have told the President [Idi
Amin] the things the Churches disapprove of. God is my witness.”
Archbishop Janani Luwum
•Albino Amarilla, campesino leader and catechist, killed by the army, martyr of the
Paraguayan people, 1981.
•Mauricio Demierre, Swiss volunteer, and five campesina companions, killed by
counterrevolutionaries (contras) after having returned from the Way of the Cross for Peace,
Nicaragua, 1986.
•Kinshasa, Zaire, massacre, 1992.
•Fr. Walter Brughardt, S.J. (1914-2008), theologian, preacher, initiator of “Preaching the Just
Word.”
“Keenly I am aware that although I am losing my eyesight, I am not losing my vision…. There must be times, will be
times, when you, too, are afraid -- afraid to love, afraid to give or forgive, afraid to cry out against injustice, afraid to
face an incurable illness. Recognize a basic reality: Courage is not the absence of fear. It is feeling afraid to do
something but finding the strength to do it,”
Fr. Walter Burghardt, S.J., July 14, 2006 National Catholic Reporter
17 •Seven Founders of the Order of Servites, servants of Mary, founded in Florence, Italy, about
1226.
18 •Death of Martin Luther, 1483 - 1546.
19 •Blessed Robert Southwell, S.J. (1561-1595), English Jesuit poet, martyr.
•St. Conrad Confalonieri of Piacenza (1290-1354), husband, lay Franciscan hermit.
20 •Frederick Douglas (1817-1895), escaped slave, abolitionist, author, died, 1895.
“Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the
ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The
struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes
nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.
- Frederick Douglass
I am not trying to abolish conflict. There is great value in healthy conflict. And the dangers of group-think are real.
Conflict can inspire creative leadership. Where there are fundamental conflicts over values, they should not be ignored in
a sentimental yearning for consensus. The problem in our communities today is not that we have conflict, but that we
manufacture conflict and exaggerate differences to the point where it is very difficult to make meaningful change. Too
often we abandon basic civility and cannot disagree without questioning the motives of our adversaries. Our standard as
we debate should be similar to doctors’ Hippocratic Oath: “Do no harm.” Disagree, but don’t tear the community apart as
you do.
Frederick Douglas in a speech in 1857
•Bishop Francis X. Ford, M.M, Maryknoll missionary to China, died in prison, in Canton,
China, 1952.
“We are going to prison in honor of Christ. It is no disgrace.”
Bishop Francis X. Ford, MM
•Occupation of Wounded Knee reservation, South Dakota, 1973.
•Domingo Laín, priest, from Aragon, martyr of the liberation struggles, Colombia, 1974.
21 •St. Peter Damian, (Camaldolese) monk, bishop of Ostia and doctor (1007-1072), died
February 22, 1072.
•Augosto Cesar Sandino, revolutionary leader, assassinated by Somoza, Nicaragua, 1934.
•Malcolm X assassinated, Harlem, NY, 1965.
•Campesinos crucified in Xeatzan, Guatemala, 1985.
22 •Chair of St. Peter.
“God builds on nothing. It was by his death that Jesus saved the world; it was on the nothingness of the apostles that he
founded His Church; it is by the sanctity and in the nothingness of human means that heaven is gained and the faith
propagated.’
Charles de Foucauld
•Sophie and Hans Scholl, Cristoph Probst, members of “The White Rose,” executed by the
Nazis, 1943.
“I never knew dying is so easy… I die without any feeling of hatred… Never forget that life is nothing but a growing in
love and a preparation for eternity.”
Christopher Probst, farewell letter to his sister
•Massacre of San José de Apartado, Colombia, 2005. Eight members of this peace
community were killed, including Luis Eduardo Guerra, co-founder of the community.
23 •St. Polycarp, bishop and martyr died c. 155.
“Stand firm, then, in these things, and follow the example of the Lord, strong in faith and immovable, affectionate to
the brotherhood, devoted to one another, united in the truth, serving one another with the gentleness of the Lord,
despising no one.”
Saint Polycarp of Smyrna
24 •Premysl Coufal, monk, worker in the Bratislava agricultural institute, found dead, 1980?
•Ignatius Nambondi, Catholic youth worker at Oskikuki mission, Namibia, died in detention,
1988.
•Sister Marie Augusta Neal, died, 2004.
25 •Feliz Varela (1788-1853), Cuban priest, philosopher, legislator, journalist, patriot,
abolitionist, pastor of Cubans in the US, died in St. Augustine, Florida, U.S., 1853.
•Sister Rani Maria, Clarist sister working with women and tribal people in Madhya Pradesh
State, India, killed, 1995.
•3 sisters and 8 priests, Ruandans, Hutus, killed in Kalima, Zaire, 1997.
26 •Bishop Antonio de Valdivieso, defender of indigenous peoples, martyred in Leon,
Nicaragua, 1550.
27
28 •Archbishop Thomas Roberts, S.J., English bishop in India, died, 1976.
“What we must do here [at the Second Vatican Council] is to give clear testimony that the Church affirms the right of
the individual conscience to refuse unjust military service and assure those of the Faithful, who bear such witness, that
they will always have her full support. Once this has been done, martyrs like [Franz] Jägerstatter will never again have to
feel that they take their stand alone. . . . Perhaps the major scandal of Christianity for too many centuries now has been
precisely that almost every war has allowed itself to become the moral arms of its own government, even in war later
recognized as palpably unjust. Let us break with this tragic past by making a clear and unambiguous affirmation of the
right and obligation of each Christian to obey the voice of his or her informed conscience before and during a time of
war.”
Archbishop Roberts, S.J., written intervention at Vatican Council II
•Sr. Teresita Ramírez, sister of the Company of Mary, killed, Cristales, Colombia, 1989.
•Fr. Miguel Angel Benítez killed, Colombia, 1989.
MARCH
1 •St. David, abbot, patron of Wales, c. 520-c. 589
•George Herbert (1593-1633), English Anglican priest and poet, died, 1633.
•Tenango and Guadalupe massacres, municipality of Suchitoto, El Salvador. March 1-2,
1983
2 •Death of John Wesley (1703-1791)
•Fr. Engelmar Unzeitig (1911-1945), Marianhill priest, jailed for defending Jews in a
sermon, died attending typhoid victims in Dachau, 1945.
•Death of William Stringfellow, lawyer, theologian, Episcopalian, 1985.
“...being holy, becoming and being a saint does not mean being perfect but being whole; it does not mean being
exceptionally religious, or being religious at all, it means begin liberated from religiosity and religious pietism of any
sort; it does not mean being morally better, it means being exemplary; it does not mean being godly, but rather being
truly human; it does not mean being otherworldly, but it means being deeply implicated in the practical existence of
this world without succumbing to this world or any aspect of this world, no matter how beguiling. Being holy means a
radical self-knowledge; a sense of who one is a consciousness of one’s identity so thorough that it is no longer confused
with the identities of others, of persons or of any creatures or of God or of any idols.”
William Stringfellow, The Politics of Spirituality
3 •Saint Katherine Drexel (1858-1955), virgin, founder of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament,
to work with African American and Native American peoples, died.
“If we live the Gospel, we will be people of justice and our lives will bring good news to the poor.”
Mother Katherine Drexel
•Hipólito Cervantes Arceo, Mexican priest, martyr in solidarity with refugees from
Guatemala, 1982.
•Emiliano Pérez Obando, delegate of the Word and District Judge, killed by the contras in
Paiwas, Nicaragua, 1982.
4 •St. Casimir, patron of Poland and Lithuania, 1458-1483.
5 •Fr. José Ma Sucilla, martyred in the Philippines, 1982.
6 •St. Colette of Corbie, reformer of the poor Clares, died, 1447.
“What I fear most is to spend a day without suffering.”
St. Colette
•Martin Niemöller, pacifist, Lutheran pastor, imprisoned by the Nazis, died, 1984.
“If we had recognized that in the communists who were thrown into concentration camps, the Lord Jesus Christ himself
lay imprisoned and looked for our love and help, if we had seen that at the beginning of the persecution of the Jews it
was the Lord Jesus Christ in the person of the least of our human brethren who was being persecuted, and beaten and
killed, if we had stood by him and identified ourselves with him, I do not know whether God would not then have stood
by us and whether the whole thing would not then have had to take a different course.”
Pastor Martin Niemöller
7 •St. Perpetua and Felicity, martyrs at Carthage, 203.
•St. Thomas Aquinas, Dominican priest, scholar, teacher, doctor of the church died, 1274.
8 •St. John of God, founders of the Brothers Hospitallers who care for the sick (1495-1550).
“I know of no bad person in this hospital except myself alone, who am indeed unworthy to eat the bread of the poor.”
St. John of God
•International Women’s Day
9 •St. Frances of Rome, married woman, founder of a religious order of women to care for the
poor, 1384-1440.
“It is most laudable in a married woman to be devout, but she must never forget that she is a housewife. And sometimes
she must leave God at the altar to find Him in her housekeeping.”
St. Frances of Rome
10 •Harriet Tubman, leader on the Underground Railroad, died, US, 1913.
•Tom Fox (2006), U S Quaker, member of the Christian Peacemaker Team in Baghdad, after
being kidnapped and held hostage for more than 100 days, his bullet-ridden body was
found on this day.
“We reject violence to punish anyone. We ask that there be no retaliation on relatives or property.
We forgive those who consider us their enemies. We hope that in loving both friends and enemies
and by intervening nonviolently to aid those who are systematically oppressed, we can contribute
in some small way to transforming this volatile situation.”
- Tom Fox, CPT in Iraq
•Gene Stoltzfus (1940-2010), founding director of Christian Peace Teams.
11 •St. Gregory of Nyssa (c.335 - c. 395)
"Do not think that everything is yours! There must also be something for the poor, the friends of God. The truth, in fact,
is that everything comes from God, the universal Father, and that we are brothers, and we belong to the same progeny"
(PG 46,465b).
And so the Christian must examine himself, Gregory insists: "What does it profit you to fast and abstain from meat, if
with your wickedness you bite your brother? What do you gain from it, in God's eyes, from not eating what is yours, if
you unjustly strip from the hands of a poor man what is his?" (PG 46,456a).
Gregory of Nyssa, cited by Pope Benedict XVI, September 5, 2007
12 •Fr. Rutilio Grande, S.J., martyred in El Salvador, between Aguilares and El Paisnal, with
companions, Manuel Solorzano and Nelson Rutilio Lemus, 1977.
“All of us have the same Father. We are all children of this Father, although we were born of different mothers. All
of us are brothers and sisters. We are equal. But Cain is an abortion in God’s plan, and groups of Cain do exist.
“The Lord God, in this plan, gave us a material world, like this material bread and this material cup which we lift up
in offering to Christ the Lord. It is a material world for everyone, without borders. This what Genesis tells us. It is not
something I make up.
“ ‘I bought half of El Salvador with my money and I have a right to it.’ There is no right to discuss this! It is a
negation of God! There are no rights for the majority!
“But the material world is for everyone, without borders. A common table with a tablecloth big enough for everyone,
like this Eucharist. Each one with a seat, so that each one comes to the table to eat.”
Padre Rutilio Grande, S.J., Apopa, 13 February 1977
•St. Maximilian, North African conscientious objector, martyr, 295.
“My army is the army of God, and I cannot fight for this world. I tell you, I am a Christian.”
from the passio of St. Maximilianus
13 •Marianela García Villas, lawyer, co-founder of the Non-Governmental Human Rights
Commission of El Salvador, killed near Las Bermudas, Cuscatlán, El Salvador, 1983.
“My disposition ought to be to give my life for God, whatever might be the end of my life. Unknown circumstances
will be lived out with the grace of God. He was present to the martyrs and if it is necessary I will feel Him very close,
handing over to Him my last breath. But more valiant than the moment of dying is the handing oneself over to Him
every day and living for Him.”
Archbishop Oscar Romero, Spiritual Exercises Notebook, 2/25/80
•José Antonio Echeverría, student, activist in Catholic Action, martyr of the revolution of the
Cuban people against dictator Batista, 1968.
•Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) , suffragette, died, 1906.
14 •Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977), black civil rights activist in Mississippi.
“Christianity is being concerned about your fellow man, not building a million-dollar church while people are starving
right around the corner. Christ was a revolutionary person, out there where it was happening. That’s what God is all
about, and that’s where I get my strength.”
Fannie Lou Hamer
15 •Fr. Ariel Granada, missionary from Colombia, killed by rebels in Mozambique, 1991.
•Fr. Nelio Rougier, Little Brother of the Gospel, disappeared, Tucumán, Argentina, 1975.
•Antonio Chaj Solís, pastor, Manuel de Jesús Recinos, and companions, evangelical activists,
martyrs for faith and service, Guatemala, 1986.
•Artemides Zatti, coworker with the Salesians, the “holy nurse of Patagonia,” died in
Viedma, Argentina, 1951.
•St. Louise de Marillac, 1590-1660, co-foundress of the Daughters of Charity.
“Love the poor. Honor them as you would Christ.”
St. Louise de Marillac
16 •My Lai Massacre of 347 civilian Vietnamese by US Charlie Company, Viet Nam, 1968.
CONDEMNATION - by Thich Nhat Hanh
Listen to this:
yesterday six Vietcong came through my village.
Because of this my village was bombed — completely destroyed.
Every soul was killed.
When I come back to the village now, the day after,
there is nothing to see but clouds of dust and the river, still flowing.
The pagoda has neither roof nor altar.
Only the foundations of houses are left.
The bamboo thickets have been burned away.
Here in the presence of the undisturbed stars,
in the invisible presence of all the people still alive on earth,
let me raise my voice to denounce this filthy war,
this murder of brothers by brothers!
I have question: Who pushed us into this killing of one another?
Whoever is listening, be my witness!
I cannot accept this war.
I never could, I never shall.
I must say this a thousand times before I am killed.
I feel I am like that bird which dies for the sake of its mate,
dripping blood from its broken beak and crying out:
Beware! Turn around to face your real enemies—
ambition, violence, hatred, greed.
Men cannot be our enemies — even men called ‘Vietcong!’
If we kill men, what brothers will we have left?
With whom shall we live then?
Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Buddhist monk
•Abraham, patriarch, our father in faith.
•Archbishop Isaías Duarte Cancino, Cali, Colombia, murdered, 2002.
17 •St. Patrick, bishop, apostle of Ireland, 389?-461?.
Christ, as a light, illumine and guide me!
Christ, as a shield, overshadow and cover me!
Christ, be under me!
Christ, be over me!
Christ, be beside me, on left hand and right!
Christ, this day, be within and without me!
Christ, the lowly and meek,
Christ, the all-powerful, be in the heart of each one to whom I speak,
in the mouth of each one who speaks to me,
in all who draw near me, or see me, or hear me.
St. Patrick
•Alexandre Vanucchi, student and Christian activist, killed by the police, Brazil, 1973.
•Jacobus Andreas Koster (“Koos”), and other Dutch journalists, killed in El Salvador,
1982.
“If you want to see Christ in the world, you must go to Latin America.”
“Of all the friends I have lost in Latin America, Monseñor Romero was the most mourned for. Jesus did what he
said and Romero was cut from the same cloth. Two weeks before his death, I heard him talking in the cathedral
about the politics of the Kingdom. This has completely worn me out in this dark hour....It seems as though the
God of history has removed his hands from El Salvador ... over us hangs a kind of darkness of God which from
time to time throws me into the abyss.”
Koos Koster
18 •St. Cyril of Jerusalem, bishop, doctor, 315?-386.
•Presentación Ponce, delegate of the Word and companions, martyrs of the Nicaraguan
revolution, 1981.
•Neptalí Liceta, indigenous priest, coordinator of SERPAJ-Peru (the Latin American
nonviolent action network), and Amparo Escobedo, Sister of Social Service, witnesses of
the God of life among the poor, died in an auto accident, Peru, 1989.
“In the struggle for liberation in Latin America today, and the painful search for peace with justice, by following the
option of Jesus Christ for the poor, we are making a definitive choice for the nonviolence of the cross that leads to
resurrection. We must not be ignorant of, nor hide, nor attempt to legitimate the situation in which we are living if we
are to be faithful disciples. To the contrary, we must denounce injustice constantly and clearly, and continually revise
our goals and objectives. Nonviolence in Latin America implies noncooperation, whether internal or external, with
every aspect of the existing unjust system.”
Fr. Neptali Liceta Ladera
19 •St. Joseph.
“Joseph is the man on the outskirts, standing in the shadows, silently waiting, there when wanted and always ready to
help. He is the man in whose life God is constantly intervening with warnings and visions. Without complaint he allows
his own plans to be set aside. . . .
“Willing, unquestioning service is the secret of his life. It is his message for us and his judgment of us. We have
crabbed and confined God within the pitiable limits of our obstinacy, our complacency, our mania for ‘self expression.’
We have given God only the minimum of recognition,”
Fr. Alfred Delp. S.J., The Prison Meditations
•Juan Morales Chávez (“Osmin”) and “Lencho,” delegates of the word of the parish of
Aguilares, El Salvador, who joined the guerrillas and died in combat, 1977.
•Jesus Tabuanda, liturgy leader and parish health coordinator, and Rosita Tabuanda, active
base community member, killed Himamaylan, Negros Occidental, the Philippines, 1989.
•Fr. Giuseppe Diana, 36, parish priest in Casal di Principe, north of Naples, Italy, killed for
opposition to the Mafia, 1994.
20 •St. Cuthbert, prior of Lindisfarne, England. (d. 687)
21 •St. Benedict, monk, founder of Western monasticism, died 547.
“Great care and concern are to be shown in receiving the poor and pilgrims, because in them more particularly Christ is
received; our very awe of the rich guarantees them special respect.”
Rule of St. Benedict, chapter 53
•Carlos Dormiak, Salesian priest, killed for his liberating style of education, martyr,
Argentina, 1975.
•Rodolfo Aguilar, parish priest, 29 years old, martyred, in the shantytown Nombre de Dios,
Chihuahua, Mexico, 1977.
“We invite those who are glad of his death to open the pages of the New Testament and ask themselves if they truly
believe in Christ, for two thousand years ago another Man was similarly criticized by those with economic and political
power. His intentions were also misunderstood: he, too, was accused of popular agitation and blasphemy for preaching
a God who wanted equality and fraternity among human beings, and, because of this, he was condemned as a political
leader opposed to the Roman Empire.”
communique of the Church’s social and pastoral departments of northern Mexico
•Fr. Luís Espinal, S.J., (1932-1980), Catalan missionary, print and television journalist, film
critic, abducted in the evening of March 21, 1980, tortured, and killed the following
morning, La Paz, Bolivia, 1980.
“Everyone speaks to us of prudence, Lord, but of a prudence that is not yours, that we search for in vain in your
Gospel. Jesus Christ, we give you thanks because You did not stay silent so as to avoid the cross, because You lashed
out at the powerful, knowing that You were gambling with Your life....You do not want a prudence that leads to
omission and that makes imprisonment impossible for us. The terrible prudence of stilling the shouts of the hungry and
the oppressed....It is not prudent to ‘sell all that you have and give it to the poor.’ It is imprudent to give one’s life for
one’s God and for one’s brothers and sisters.”
Luís Espinal, S.J.
•Fr. William Arsenault, Canadian missionary, killed in Zamoranito, Honduras, 1986.
•Luz Marina Valencia, Sister of the Immaculate Conception, Colombian missionary, killed,
Cuajincuilpa, Guerrero, Mexico, 1987.
•Fr. Declan O’Toole, Irish Mill Hill priest, critic of the army, killed in region of Kotido,
Uganda, 2002
22 •Sharpeville massacre, South Africa, 1960.
•Emmanuel Mounier (1905-1950), French philosopher, author of Personalism.
“I am very concerned that we discover a means of entering into the suffering and struggle of the workers. . . . We have
vainly tried to work for truth and justice, but we are not entirely with Christ so long as we do not take our place
alongside those outcasts.”
Emmanuel Mounier
•Bishop Leroy T. Matthiesen, retired bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Amarillo,
Texas, died, 1921 - 2010.
23 •Nicolas Berdyaev (1874-1948), Russian philosopher, died in exile, 1948.
“In every moral act, an act of love, compassion, sacrifice, begins the end of this world in which reign hatred, cruelty,
and avarice. In every creative act begins the end of this world in which reign necessity, inertia, and humiliation and
arises a new world, the ‘other world.’”
Nicolas Berdyaev Self-Knowledge
•St. Toribio de Mongrovejo, archbishop of Lima, 1538-1606.
“I would like to issue a special entreaty to the members of the National Guard, the police, and the military. Brothers,
you are our own people, you kill your own fellow peasants. Someone’s order to kill should not prevail; rather, what ought
to prevail is the law of God which says, ‘Do not kill.’ No soldier is obliged to obey an order against the law of God; no
one has to obey an immoral law....
“The Church, the defender of the rights of God, of God’s law, of the dignity of the human being, of the person, cannot
keep quiet before such abhorrent action. We want the government to take seriously the fact that its reforms are of no
service if they continue to leave the people so bloodied. In the Name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose
cries rise up to heaven each day in greater tumult: I implore you, I beg you, I order you, in the Name of God, stop the
repression!”
Archbishop Oscar Romero, 23 March, 1980
•María del Carmen Maggi, university professor, dean of the Faculty of Humanities of the
Catholic University of Mar del Plata, martyr for liberating education, Argentina, 1976.
24 •Monseñor Oscar Arnulfo Romero, martyred, 1980. Archbishop of San Salvador, El
Salvador, “voice of the voiceless,” killed while saying Mass in the chapel of the Divina
Providencia Hospital.
“Those who, in the biblical phrase, would save their lives — that is, those who don’t want to get into problems, who
want to stay outside whatever demands our involvement – they will lose their lives.
“What a terrible things to have lived well off, with no suffering, not getting into problems, quite tranquil, quite
settled, with good connections — politically, economically, socially — lacking nothing.
“To what good? They will lose their lives.
“‘But those who for love of me uproot themselves and accompany the people and go with the poor in their suffering
and become incarnate and feel as their own the pain and the abuse – they will secure their lives, because my Father
will reward them.’
“To each one of us Christ is saying: ‘If you want your life and mission to be fruitful like mine, do like me. Be
converted into a seed that lets itself be buried. Let yourself be killed. Do not be afraid. Those who shun suffering will
remain alone. No one is more alone than the selfish. But if you give your life out of love for others, as I give mine for
all, you will reap a great harvest. You will have the deepest satisfactions. Do not fear death or threats. The Lord goes
with you.’”
Archbishop Romero, April 1, 1979.
•NATO bombing of Yugoslavia begins, 1999.
25 •The Annunciation
“What good is it to me if Mary gave birth to the Son of God fourteen hundred years ago, and I do not also give birth to
the Son of God in my time and in my culture? We all need to be mothers of God. God is always needing to be born.”
Meister Eckhart
•Donato Mendoza, delegate of the Word, tortured and martyred by the contras, Siuna,
Nicaragua, 1986.
26 •María Gómez, teacher, catechist, possibly poisoned, in Sinutí, Dept. Bolivár, Colombia,
1989.
27 •Bishop Kenneth Untener, Bishop of Saginaw, Michigan, died, 2004.
•Archbishop Luís Chávez y González, Salvadoran archbishop, 1901-1987.
28
29
30 •Thirty six people, gathered “to hear the Word of God” in the Protestant church in Chupol,
Chichicastenango, Guatemala, killed, 1982.
•Death of Karl Rahner, S.J., theologian, 1984.
“Ultimately love alone is able to leave what is other...in its own reality. God...who is love, makes the creature a real being
which is different [from God] and which has its own independent reality, and so freely gives himself to it.”
Karl Rahner
•José Manuel Parada, sociologist of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, Santiago de Chile, 1985.
•Sr. Thea Bowman, FSPA, African-American sister, educator, musician, died, 1990.
“God is bread when you’re hungry, water when you’re thirsty, a harbor from the storm. God’s a father to the fatherless, a
mother to the motherless. God’s my sister, my leader, my guide, my teacher, my comforter... Some people see these
[images] as contradictory, but Christians see them as inadequate.”
----“I have tried to make a day-by-day decision that I want to live joyfully. I want to be good news to other people.... I’m
going home like a shooting star.”
Sr. Thea Bowman
•Maria Julia Hernández (1938-2007), director of Tutela Legal, the legal aid office of the
archdiocese of San Salvador , El Salvador.
“Our deep challenge and pledge, our reason for being, are the victims, who were mostly the poor of El Salvador.”
Maria Julia Hernández
31 •John Donne died.
“No man is an island, entire of itself; every main is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed
away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own
were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.”
John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
•Mother Maria Skobtsova (1891-1945), Russian Orthodox nun, protector of Jews in Paris,
killed in the Appel [Ravenbruck] concentration camp, by the Nazis, 1945.
“Open your gates to homeless thieves, let the outside world sweep in to demolish your magnificent liturgical system,
abase yourself, empty yourself, make yourself of no account... Accept the vow of poverty in all its devastating severity;
destroy all comfort, even the monastic kind.
“Our times are firmly in tune with Christianity, in that suffering is part of their character....They help us genuinely
and completely to accept the vow of poverty, to seek no rule, but rather anarchy, the anarchic life of Fools for Christ’s
sake, seeking no monastic enclosure but rather the complete absence of even the subtlest barrier which might separate
the heart from the world and its wounds.”
Mother Maria Skobtsova, 1938
31 •Fr. Jean Guth, 63 year old Spiritan missionary, kidnapped by “Ninja” guerrillas in Republic
of the Congo, 2002. He later died in captivity.
APRIL
1 •All Fools Day
•Blessed Anacleto Gonzáles Flores (1888-1927), the Mexican Gandhi, founder of the
Catholic Association of Mexican Youth of Guadalajara and the Popular Union, advocate of
nonviolence and pacifism, tortured and killed by Mexican government authorities.
2 •St. Francis of Paola, hermit (1416-1507)
•Pope John Paul II [Karol Wojtyla] (1920-2005), died, 2005.
“The poor of the United States and of the world are your brothers and sisters in Christ. You must never be content to leave
them just the crumbs from the feast. You must take of your substance and not just of your abundance in order to help
them. And you must treat them like guests at your family table.”
Pope John Paul II, at Yankee Stadium, New York, October 2, 1979
3 •Jean Goss, French pacifist leader and international teacher of nonviolence, died, 1991.
“Now get this straight: at first I spoke of love, of the power of love, and everybody agreed with me. There was no
problem there, they all knew about love: it’s in all novels and sermons. But everybody continued to approve of butcheries,
or even carry them out.
“Then I changed. I explained to my listeners that they had to believe in the truth and act according to the truth. Once
again I was met with total, placid agreement. That’s understandable, since nobody wants to admit to being a liar.
“I looked for something else: I spoke of the power of justice, of commitment to the service of justice. I was greeted
with unanimous agreement. Justice had to be reestablished, and everyone found an injustice of which he or she had been a
victim, but they very rarely felt concerned by injustices they themselves had committed.
“And then I found the word: nonviolence. I said ‘no’ to violence. Everybody was up in arms.
“It’s not that I set out to confuse my listeners just for the pleasure of it, but to say ‘no’ you must raise your head, you
must show yourself, you must be a man and not a slave. By saying non-violence, I begin by refusing a fatality: of
violence, that is, of evil. The evil in me, the evil around me is not inevitable.
“When I say ‘no’ to violence, I act as a free man, I give man all his human dimension, and, in addition, I give him his
divine dimension.
Jean Goss, A Non-Violent Lifestyle
4 •St. Isidore of Seville Bishop and Doctor (560?-636)
“The greater our love for the things we possess, the greater our pain when we lose them.
“Greed is insatiable. The person who is afflicted with it always needs something else; the more he has, the more he
wants.
“The powerful are nearly all so inflamed with a mad lust for possessions that they stay well clear of the poor. Small
wonder that when they come to die that are condemned to the flames of hell, since they did nothing to put out the
flames of greed during their lifetime.”
St. Isidore, quoted in Book of Sparkling Sayings
•St. Benedict the Black, son of African slaves brought to Italy, Franciscan lay brother,
illiterate, guardian of his priory, died 1589.
“Whatever is your life’s work, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn
could do it no better. If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, like
Shakespeare wrote poetry, like Beethoven composed music; sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth
will have to pause and say, “Here lived a great street sweeper, who swept his job well.”
Martin Luther King, Jr., 1956
•Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., U.S. civil rights leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and
champion of nonviolence, assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, 1968.
“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of a world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical
revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society.
When machines and computers are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism,
and materialism are incapable of being conquered.”
Martin Luther King, Jr., “Beyond Vietnam,” April 4, 1967
5 •St. Vincent Ferrer, Dominican priest, 1350?-1419.
•Booker T. Washington born, 1856.
“No race or society can prosper until it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.”
Booker T. Washington
•María Cristina Gómez, teacher, mother, Baptist deaconess, abducted from John F. Kennedy
School in Santa Lucía, San Salvador, El Salvador, and brutally killed, 1989.
6 •Rev. Dionisio Malalay and Rufino Rivera, church leader, killed in Dimataling Tabina,
Zamboanga del Sur, Philippines, 1989.
•Massacre of refugees in the church and parish house of Liquica, East Timor, 1999.
7 •St. John Baptist de la Salle, priest, founder of the Christian Brothers, 1651-1719.
•André Trocmé (1901-1971), pacifist, Reformed church pastor, rescuer of Jews with the
village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France, born, 1901.
•World Health Day.
•Fr. Carl Schmitz, C.P., U.S. Passionist priest, critic of illegal logging, killed in Koronadal,
South Cotabato, Philippines, 1988.
•19 Rwandan Catholics killed at Christus Centre, Kigali, Rwanda, including three Jesuits
(Chrysologus Mahame, Patrick Gahizi, Innocent Rutagambwa), nine sisters of the
congregation “Vita et Pax,” the cook, a social worker, and five diocesan priests, 1994.
“I know young people from the ‘Ingoro y’urukundo’ Community, a charismatic community in Kibirizi, near Butare.
Ordered by the militia to separate into two groups, Hutus and Tutsis, the young people (all under 25) refused. Holding
hands, they formed a tight circle to signify that they were members of one body: neither Jew nor Greek, Hutu or Tutsi.
Faced with this firm witness of unity, the soldiers left in a state of confusion . . . . There were many such heroic acts by
unknown people, . . . To build this future, Rwanda must publicize and praise these examples of goodness and
compassion. Thanks to them, wounded souls will again believe in humanity.”
Fr. Modeste Mungwarareba, Rwanda
8 •Fr. Carlos Bustos, OFM Cap., killed, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1977.
•On May 8, 1973, militant American Indians (from the American Indian Movement) who had
held the South Dakota hamlet of Wounded Knee for 10 weeks surrendered.
9 •Pastor Dietrich Bonhöffer, Lutheran pastor and theologian, executed by the Nazis, 1945.
“The Church confesses that she has taken in vain the name of Jesus Christ, for she has been ashamed of His name
before the world and she has not striven forcefully enough against the misuse of this name for an evil purpose, She has
stood by while violence and wrong were committed undercover in this name.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
•Cardinal Raúl Silva Henriquez, retired archbishop of Santiago, Chile, defender of the
oppressed during the Pinochet regime, died 1999.
“My word is a word of love for the poor. Since I was a child I have loved and admired them. The sorrow and the
misery in which so many of my brothers and sisters live in this land have moved me enormously. That misery is neither
human nor Christian. I humbly ask that all efforts, possible and impossible, be made to eradicate extreme poverty in
Chile. We can do it is a current of solidarity and generosity is promoted in all the inhabitants of this country. The poor
have honored me with their loving affection. Only God knows how grateful I am for the affection they have shown me
and their adherence to the Church.”
Spiritual Testimony of Cardinal Raúl Silva
10 •Emiliano Zapata, Mexican revolutionary hero, assassinated, 1919.
•Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., theologian, paleontologist died, 1955.
“In the name of our faith, we have the right and the duty to become passionate about the things of the earth.”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.
•Cesar Valle, worker with base communities in Cerro Guazapa, captured and killed by the
army, El Salvador, 1986.
11 •St. Stanislaus, bishop of Cracow, Poland, and martyr, 1030-1097.
•Pope John XXIII publishes his encyclical letter on peace, Pacem in Terris, 1963.
“Every believer in this world of ours must be a spark of light, a center of love, a vivifying leaven amidst [their] fellow
human beings; and [they] will be this all the more perfectly [they] live in communion with God and in the intimacy of
[their] soul[s].
“In fact, there can be no peace between human beings, unless there is peace within each of them, unless, that is, each
one builds up within [themselves] the order wished by God.”
Pope John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, 164 - 5
•Fr. Tullio Favalli martyred, Philippines, 1984.
•Fr. George Zabelka, chaplain of the Hiroshima bombing crew and peace advocate, died,
1992.
“I went through a crisis of faith. I’m a practical man and those words of Jesus — ‘Love your enemies, do good to those
that hate you . . . turn the other cheek when someone strikes you. . . .’ — were completely impractical and unworkable.
I couldn’t understand it. In many ways, I still don’t. Yet Jesus took this course of suffering and nonviolence and his
words were so clear. . . either I had to accept what he says as coming from God or else forget about Christianity. My
choice was a practical one. My choice was made on the basis of faith. . . .It is not enough to believe in Jesus; you’ve
got to believe Jesus.”
Fr. Zabelka in Pax Christi USA, Fall 1992
12 •Alan Paton (1903-1988), South African white novelist, author of Cry the Beloved Country,
advocate of racial justice.
“Love without justice is a Christian impossibility, and can only be practiced by those who have divorced religion from
life, who dismiss a concern for justice as politics and who fear social change much more than they fear God.”
Alan Paton
•Blessed Edel Quinn (1907-1944), Irish lay woman missionary, active in Legion of Mary,
died in Nairobi, Kenya
•William Sloane Coffin (1925-2006), US protestant pastor, writer, peace advocate.
It is one thing to say with the prophet Amos, “Let justice roll down like mighty waters,” and quite another to work out
the irrigation system. Clearly there is more certainty in the recognition of wrongs than there is in the prescription for
their cure.
William Sloane Coffin
13 •St. Martin I, pope and martyr, d. 655
•Fr. Godofredo Alingal, S.J., martyred, Kibawe, Philippines, 1981.
•Death of Graham Greene, British novelist, 1991.
•Death of Muriel Spark, British novelist, 2006
14 •Bishop Ernest Coba, Apostolic Administrator of Shköder, Albania, beaten and found dead,
Easter Monday, 1979.
15 •St. Isaac of Spoleto, died c. 550.
“Someone who speaks in defense of a person who suffers injustice will find an advocate in his Creator.”
St. Isaac of Spoleto
•Bd. Damien DeVeuster, SS.CC., of Molokai, Hawaii, Belgian missionary priest, missionary
to lepers, 1840-1889.
•Aldemar Rodríguez, catechist, 20 year old lay Franciscan, killed, Cali, Colombia, 1992.
16 •St. Benedict Joseph Labré, Cord-bearer, pilgrim, beggar, died in Rome, 1783. (1748-1783)
“I am only a poor, ignorant beggar.”
St. Benedict Joseph Labré
•Rev. Zenaido Ruelo, United Church of Christ in the Philippines pastor, killed in Pitogo,
Zamboango del Sur, Philippines, 1989.
•Iqbal Masih, Pakistani Christian, 12 year old, child labor advocate, former slave in the
Pakistani carpet industry, killed 1995.
17 •Death of Sor Juana de la Cruz (1651-1695), Mexican nun, poet, scholar.
•Servant of God Toussaint L’Ouverture, champion of Haitian independence, died in a French
jail, 1803. (check date - maybe 27 April)
•Fr. Max Josef Metzger, peacemaker, ecumenist, executed by the Nazis in Germany, 1944.
“The Peace Movement must make this radical activism its own with a holy conviction of conscience as Francis of
Assisi, with a holy reverence for God created life which was withdrawn from the grasp of [humans] by the unqualified
‘thou shalt not kill,’ with the conviction of the divine power of a holy nonviolence in the service of the Kingdom of
God, with the holy determination to realize this Kingdom of God all along the line. this is what will bring peace, this
spirit of the ultimate, personal self-offering even at the cost of one’s own life, as Christ paid it on the cross, the selfoffering for truth, justice, love, peace, for the Kingdom of God on earth.”
Max Josef Metzger, 1929 peace conference
•Tiberio de Jesús Fernández, priest in Trujillo, Colombia, advocate of the poor, disappeared
and martyred with at least 26 inhabitants of Trujillo, 1990.
18 •Brother Georges Gashungi, OFM, Tutsi Franciscan preparing for solemn vows, killed, in
Rwanda, 1990s.
•Cornelia Connelly (1809-1879), mother, wife, foundress of the Society of the Holy Child
Jesus, U.S.
“As you step through the muddy streets, love God with your feet; and when your hands toil, love Him with your hands;
and when you teach the little children, love Him in His little ones.”
Cornelia Connelly
19 •St. Alphege (953-1012), monk, defender of the poor, archbishop of Canterbury, martyr.
•Warsaw ghetto uprising, 1943.
•Juana Tum de Menchú and son Patrocinio, catechists, abducted and killed in Guatemala,
1980.
“...for us the Bible is our main weapon. It has shown us the way.... any one of my community, even though he’s
illiterate and has to have it read to him and translated into his language, can learn many lessons from it, because he has
no difficulty understanding what reality is, and what the difference is between the paradise up above, in Heaven, and
the reality of our people here on Earth. We do this because we feel it is the duty of Christians to create the Kingdom of
God on Earth among our brothers [and sisters]. The kingdom will exist only when we all have enough to eat, when our
children, brothers, [sisters], parents don’t have to die from hunger and malnutrition. That will be the ‘Glory,’ a
Kingdom for us who have never known it.”
Rigoberto Menchú Tum
20
21 •St. Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, doctor of the church (c. 1033-1109)
•Juan Sisay, painter, president of Catholic Action, martyred in his home, Santiago Atitlán,
Guatemala, 1989.
22 •Earth Day
•Kathe Kollwitz (1867-1945), German artist and sculptor, socialist and pacifist.
I do not want to die. . . until I have faithfully made the most of my talent and cultivated the seed that was placed in me
until the last small twig has grown.
Kathe Kollwiz
23 •St. George, martyr
•Blessed Giles of Assisi, Franciscan, one of the first followers of St. Francis, 1262.
•Cesar Chávez, organizer of farmworkers in the United Farm Workers, died, 1993.
“When we are really honest with ourselves we must admit that our lives are all that really belongs to us. So it is how we
use our lives that determines what kind of people we are. It is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives do we find
life.
“I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of manliness is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a
totally nonviolent struggle. To be a man is to suffer for others. God help us to be men!”
Cesar Chávez, ending a fast, 1968
“What do we want the Church to do? We don't ask for more cathedrals. We don't ask for bigger churches of fine gifts.
We ask for its presence with us, beside us, as Christ among us. We ask the Church to sacrifice with the people for
social change, for justice, and for love of brother. We don't ask for words. We ask for deeds. We don't ask for
paternalism. We ask for servanthood.”
Cesar Chavez
•Father Romain Kaindo, administrator of the diocse of Butembo, Democratic Republic of the
Congo, killed, 2002.
24 •St. Fidelis of Sigmaringen, Capuchin priest, martyr, 1577-1622.
•Laura López [Felipa Duran], catechist of Guazapa, killed by Salvadoran government troops,
near Valle Verde, Cuscatlán, El Salvador, 1985.
“We have gotten used to hating, to being afraid. We have to put an end to that. We have to confront ourselves, to kill
the false pride within our soul, so that a new person may arise, so that a new civilization may come into being — one
composed of love.”
Laura López
25 •St. Mark, Evangelist
•Blessed Pedro de Betancourt, OFM, apostle of the poor in Guatemala, 1667.
26 •Bishop Juan Gerardi, auxiliary bishop of Guatemala City, founder and director of the
Archdiocesan Human Rights Office, active in the Recovery of Historical Memory Project
(REMHI), assassinated, Guatemala City, 1998.
“We want to contribute to the building of a country different than the one we have now. For that reason we are
recovering the memory of our people. This path has been and continues to be full of risks, but the construction of the
Reign of God has risks and can only be built by those that have the strength to confront those risks.”
Monseñor Juan Gerardi, on presenting the findings
of the Recovery of Historical Memory Project, April 24, 1998
•The bombing of Guernica, Basque country, Spain, by Generalissimo Franco’s fascist troops,
1937.
“Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or of extensive areas along with their
population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.”
Vatican Council II, Pastoral Constitution
on the Church in the Modern World “Gaudium et Spes,” ¶80
•Honora “Nano” Nagle, 1718-1784, Irish sister, founder of the Presentation Sisters.
27 •Fr. Rodolfo Escamilla, worked with the slum poor in one of the “lost cities” on the outskirts
of Mexico City, martyred in Mexico, 1977.
28 •Sister Cleúsa Carolina Coelho, Augustinian recollect missionary, committed to defend the
indigenous in the Apostolic prefecture of Lábrea, Brazil, was disappeared April 28, and
founded murdered, May 3, 1985
• Niall O’Brien, (1939-2004) Irish, Columban priest, missionary to the Philippines, peace
advocate, co-founder of Pax Christi Philippines, died in Pisa, Italy.
When we touch the poor, we touch God in some way.
Fr. Niall O’Brien, Island of Tears, Island of Hope, p. 187
•St. Peter Chanel, Marist priest, missionary to the New Hebrides, martyr (1803 1841)
•Death of Jacques Maritain, husband, philosopher, 1973.
“They keep in their minds the settings of religion for the sake of appearances or outward show. . . but they deny the
Gospel and despise the poor, pass through the tragedy of their time only with resentment against anything that
endangers their interests and fear for their own prestige and possessions, contemplate without flinching every kind of
injustice if it does not threaten their own way of life. Only concerned with power and success, they are either anxious
to have means of external coercion enforce what they term the ‘moral order’ or else they turn with the wind and are
ready to comply with any requirement of the so-called historical necessity. They await the deceivers. They are
famished for deception because first they themselves are trying to deceive God.”
Jacques Maritain (cited by Thomas Merton in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander)
29 •Forty-one, including 34 seminarians, killed at the seminary in Buta, Burundi, by Hutu
rebels, the night of April 28-29, 1997.
•St. Catherine of Siena, Dominican tertiary, virgin, doctor of the Church, 1347-1380.
“The only thing we can offer to God of value is to give our love to people as unworthy of it as we are of God’s love.”
St. Catherine of Siena
•Brother Moises Cisneros Rodríguez, Marist, Spanish missionary, principal of the Marist
school, promoter of the cause of the indigenous peoples, killed in Guatemala City,
Guatemala, 1991.
•John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006), US economist
“Let there be a coalition of the concerned. The affluent would still be affluent, the comfortable still
comfortable, but the poor would be part of the political system.”
John Kenneth Galbraith
•Ron Hennessey, MM, Maryknoll missionary to Guatemala and El Salvador died in Iowa
30 •St. Pius V, Pope (1504-1572)
•Martyrdom of seminarians in the minor seminary of the diocese of Bururi at Butu, Burundi,
refusing to separate into Hutu and Tutsi groups, 1997
“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
Prayer as they were dying
MAY
1 •St. Joseph the Worker
•International Labor Day.
“All work has a threefold moral significance. First, it is a principal way that people exercise their distinctive human
capacity for self-expression and self realization. Second, it is the ordinary way for human beings to fulfill their material
needs. Finally, work enables people to contribute to the well-being of the larger community. Work is not only for one’s
self. It is for one’s family, for the nation, and indeed for the entire human family.”
U.S. Catholic Bishops, Economic Justice for All, 97
•Msgr. George Higgins, advocate of labor, died, 2002, at the age of 86.
•Catholic Worker founded, NYC, 1933
“As you come to know the seriousness of our situation — the war, the racism, the poverty in the world — you come to
realize it is not going to be changed just by words or demonstrations. It’s a question of risking your life. It’s a question of
living your life in drastically different ways.”
Dorothy Day
•Dr. Takashi Nagai (1908-1951) Catholic doctor, mystic of Nagasaki, died.
“Our lives are of great worth if we accept with good grace the situation Providence places us in, and go on living
lovingly.”
Takashi Nagai
2
•Fr. Conrado de la Cruz, CICM, Filipino missionary, and Herlindo Cifuentes, catechist of
Tiquisate, arrested and killed with about 44 others, in Escuintla, Guatemala, 1980.
•Rev. Vizminda and Lovino Gran, pastor in the United Church of Christ in the Philippines
and wife, killed in Calamba, Misamis Occidental, Philippines, 1989.
•Ade Bethune, artist for the Catholic Worker, died at the age of 88, 2002.
•Prophet Jeremiah (Byzantine calendar)
•St. Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, doctor (295?-373)
•Poor People’s March on Washington began, 1968.
•Paolo Freire, Brazilian educator, initiator of projects of liberating education with
conscientization by the poor and oppressed, author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, died,
1997.
“This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as
well. The oppressors, who oppress, exploit, and rape, by virtue of their power, cannot find in this power the strength to
liberate either the oppressed or themselves. Only the power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be
sufficiently strong to free both.”
Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
3
•Sts. Philip and James, Apostles
•Day of the Cross
•U.S. Catholic Bishops issue pastoral letter, The Challenge of Peace, 1983.
“In the words of our Holy Father, we need a ‘moral about-face.’ The whole world must summon the moral courage and
technical means to say ‘no’ to nuclear conflict; ‘no’ to weapons of mass destruction; ‘no’ to an arms race which robs the
poor and the vulnerable; and ‘no’ to the moral danger of a nuclear age which places before humankind indefensible
choices of constant terror or surrender. Peacemaking is not an optional commitment. It is a requirement of our faith. We
are called to be peacemakers, not by some movement of the moment, but by our Lord Jesus. The content and context of
our peacemaking is set, not by some political agenda or ideological program, but by the teaching of his Church.”
U.S. Catholic Bishops, The Challenge of Peace, 333.
•Felipe Huete, catechist, and 4 companions, martyrs of agrarian reform, killed in El Astillero,
Honduras, 1991.
“The biblical texts chosen by Felipe [Huete] for the celebration [for May 3, entitled ‘From Injustice to Justice’] touched
directly on his own situation. On the one hand he was inspired by the tremendous hope of owning land, not only for
himself (Gen. 15:18 and Matt. 5: 1-4). On the other hand, he experienced the strength Christians feel in the midst of
persecution and threats from the colonel’s bodyguards: ‘I say to you, my friends, don’t be afraid of those who kill the
body and can do no more. I tell you whom you should fear — fear the one who after killing has the power to cast you
into hell. Yes, I repeat, fear that one.’”
Document from Bishop Luís Santos of Copán and representatives to the national team
for the Celebration of the Word of God
4 •Four students killed at Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, 1970.
•Abbé Modeste Mungwarareba (1951-1999), Rwanda, advocate of reconciliation, member of
Service d’Animation Theologique (SAT) in Butare Secretary General of the Episcopal
Conference of Rwanda, 1999.
For me, you can't make reconciliation with God without first making reconciliation with your friends and
neighbors.
White missionaries, though they may have been preaching the Gospel, were largely seen as symbols of
power and privilege. The importance of Jesus' methods were hidden. What people saw in Jesus were the
symbols of power. It was not like St. Peter, a fisherman in Galilee. He had a new hope to give to people.
The situation in Rwanda is that the transference of Christianity was a transfer of power. [In that situation] you can't
produce real apostles.
Fr. Modeste Mungwarareba
5 •Rodolfo Vista, political science student and Student Christian Movement organizer at West
Negros College, killed in Sitio Cabug, Barrio Sum-ag, Bacolod City, Philippines, 1989.
6 •Two students killed at Jackson State University, Mississippi, 1970.
•Cardinal Leo Joseph Suenens, of Brussels, Belgium, died 1996.
“It is in each of us that the peace of the world is cast...from there it must spread out to the limits of the universe.”
Leo Cardinal Suenens
•Fr. Mauro Ortíz Carreño, parish priest, defender of the poor and indigenous, preacher
against narco-traffickers, killed, San Juan Ozolotepec, Miahuatlán, Diocese of Oaxaca,
Mexico, 1998.
•Job (Byzantine calendar)
7
8 •Peter Maurin, co-founder of the Catholic Worker, born, Languedoc, France, 1876.
People who are in need
and are not afraid to beg
give to people not in need
the occasion to do good
for goodness’ sake.
Modern society calls the beggar
bum and panhandler and gives him the bum’s rush.
But the Greeks used to say
that people in need
are ambassadors of the gods.
Although you may be called
bums and panhandlers
you are in fact the ambassadors of God.
As God’s ambassadors
you should be given
food, clothing and shelter
by those who are able to give it.
Mohammedan teachers tell us
that God commands hospitality.
And hospitality is still practiced
in Mohammedan countries.
But the duty of hospitality
is neither taught nor practiced
in Christian countries.
Peter Maurin, Easy Essays, in The Catholic Worker, October 1933
•Idalia López Salazar, catechist and member of the youth group of the parish of San
Francisco Mejicanos, El Salvador, killed, 1984.
•Fr. Vicente Cañas. S.J., missionary to the indigenous, assassinated, Mato Grosso, Brazil,
1987.
•Fr. Nicolás van Kleef, C.M., Dutch missionary, killed by a soldier, Santa María, Chiriquí,
Panamá, 1989.
•Fr. Henri-Barthelemy Verges, Marist brother, and Sister Paule-Hélène Saint Raymund,
Little Sister of the Assumption, killed in Algiers, Algeria, 1994.
“I was personally very close to Henri. His death seemed to be so natural, just part of a long life entirely given to the
small, ordinary duties. He seemed to me to belong to the category that I call ‘martyrs of hope,’ those who are never
spoken of because all their blood is poured out in patient endurance of day-to day life. I understand ‘monastic
martyrdom’ in the same sense. It is this instinct that leads us not to change anything here at present, except for an
ongoing effort at conversion. But there again, no change!”
Letter of Fr. Christian-de Chergé, OCSO, 5 July, 1994
•John Brown, abolitionist, born, 1800.
9 •Birth of Fr. Daniel Berrigan, S.J., poet, prophet, priest, 1921
Sometime in your life,
hope that you might see one starved man,
the look on his face when the bread finally arrives.
Hope that you might have baked it or bought it or even kneaded it yourself.
For that look on his face,
for your meeting his eyes across a piece of bread,
you might be willing to lose a lot,
or suffer a lot,
or die a little.
Daniel Berrigan, S.J.
•Nelson Mandela is sworn in as first black president of South Africa, 1994.
“It is not the kings and generals that make history....I have seen with my own eyes the masses of our people, the
workers, the peasants, the doctors, the lawyers, the clergy, all our people. I have seen them making history and that is
why all of us are here today.”
Nelson Mandela, 2/13/90
•The prophet Isaiah (Byzantine calendar)
10 •Fr. Josimo Morais Tavares (1953-1986), parish priest of São Sebastião, martyr of the
Pastoral of the Land, killed in Imperatriz, Brazil, 1986.
“I understand that this attempt on my life must be understood within the social context of the region and the struggle
for possession of the land....Large landowners and their vigilantes in the region, considering the real possibility of a
distribution of the land in favor of the squatters, led by the Federal Government, are arming themselves with high
calibre weapons and [are] trying to destroy the rural workers’ movement....so this is simply an attempt at carrying out
one of the numerous death threats I have received in the last several months. These threats have come from the large
landowners and politicians by word of mouth and even in magazine articles, meetings, and public speeches. in spite of
everything, I want to and will continue to struggle, trying to bring together the need for peace and the Christian mission
of creating a fraternal and just world, moving from the situation of the impoverished and oppressed. May my faith be
penetrated by political clarity and impregnated by that courage which is a witness of the resurrection of Jesus of
Nazareth, the Christ.”
Fr. Josimo Morais Tavares, after an April 1986 attempt on his life
•Walker Percy, U.S. novelist, died, 1990.
•Fr. Alfred Bernard Costa, Sri Lankan priest, voice of the poor, poet, lyricist, writer,
murdered, Negombo, Sri Lanka, 2001.
11 •Fr. Carlos Mujica, worked in the “villas miseria,” killed, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1974.
•Fr. Alfonso Navarro Oveida and Luís Torres Ovan, altar boy, killed in the parish house in
Miramonte, San Salvador, by the UGB (White Warrior Union) death squad, El Salvador,
1977.
“I know that I am dying for preaching the Gospel and teaching the truth.... I know who are the ones responsible for my
death. I want them to know that I forgive them.”
Fr. Alfonso Navarro’s last words
•Fr. Isaie Habakurama, pastor, Fr. Pascal Yiriwahandi, his assistant, and four workers in the
parish health clinic, killed in Cyahinda parish, diocese of Butare, Rwanda, 1997.
12 •Sts. Nereus and Achilleus, martyrs (first century)
•St. Pancras, martyr, 304?
•Fr. Walter Voordeckers, CICM, Belgian missionary, supporter of campesino rights,
martyred, Santa Lucía Cotzmalguapa, Escuintla, Guatemala, 1980.
13 •Blessed Julian of Norwich (1342-1416), anchoritess, mystic, author of “Shewings of Divine
Love”
“As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother. Our Father wills, our Mother works, our good Lord the
Holy Spirit confirms.”
Blessed Julian of Norwich
•Our Lady of Fatima, 1917.
•René Voillaume (1905-2003), priest, founder of the Little Brothers of Jesus, died, 2003.
14 •St. Matthias, apostle
•Monica Mignone, María Martha Vásquez de Lugones, César Lugones, Horacio Pérez Weiss,
Beatriz Carbonen de Pérez Weiss, María Esther Lorussa, young professionals active in the
villa miseria of Belen, detained and disappeared, Bajo Flores, Buenos Aires, Argentina,
1976.
•Rio Sumpul massacre, El Salvador, 1980.
•Fr. Carlos Galvez Galindo killed, Guatemala, 1981.
•Seminarian Isagani Valle, OFM, killed, the Philippines, 1983.
15 •St. Isidore the Farmer (1070-1130), and St. Maria, his wife.
“We belong to the earth (Gen 2:7) and it belongs to us because when the Lord created us, he charged us to till it and care
for it (Gen 2:15). Thus, work in agriculture appears the quintessential task by which we situate ourselves in the world and
before God.
“Many scriptural texts express joy at the fruit of our fatiguing labor on the land and our thanksgiving for God’s
blessing. When the land bears a crop, we know that God blesses us (Ps 67:7; 85:13)....
“The land does not belong to us, but to God, and what each calls property is in reality the portion needed to live. ‘The
land and all in it, the world and those who inhabit it, belong to God” (Ps 24:1)....
“In Recife, Brazil, [Pope] John Paul II told the farmers: ‘The land is a gift from God, a gift for all human beings, men
and women, who are called to be united in a single family and related to one another in a fraternal spirit. Therefore, it is
not legitimate, because it is not according to God’s design, to use this gift so that its fruits benefit only a few, excluding
others, who form the immense majority.’”
Bishops of Guatemala, The Cry of the Land
•Death of Peter Maurin, co-founder of the Catholic Worker, 1949.
The life of Christ was a life of sacrifice.
The life of a Christian must be a life of sacrifice.
We cannot imitate the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary by trying to get all we can.
We can only imitate the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary by trying to give all we can.
Peter Maurin, Easy Essays
16
17
18
19
•Nicolas Chuy Cumes, journalist, evangelical pastor of the Church of the New World,
assassinated, Guatemala City, Guatemala, 1986.
•Fr. Andreas Kindo, Fr. Raphael Paliakara, and a seminarian, Salesians, killed by armed
youth in combat uniforms, Imphal, India, 2001.
•St. Brendan
•St. Paschal Baylon, Franciscan brother (1540-1592).
•St. John I, pope and martyr, 526.
•Mary McLeod Bethune, died, Daytona Beach, Florida, 1955.
•Fr. Larry Rosebaugh, OMI (1935-2009), missionary killed in Guatemala, member of the
Milwaukee 14 (draft card burning); missionary in Brazil, El Salvador, and Guatemala.
•St. Celestine V (Peter Di Morone), hermit, monk, Pope, renounced the Papacy and died in
prison, c. 1215-1296.
•The Catonsville Nine (including Fr. Daniel Berrigan, S.J., Philip Berrigan, Br. David Darst,
Tom Lewis, Marjorie and Thomas Melville) burn draft files with home-made napalm in
Catonsville, Maryland, USA, to protest the draft and the Vietnam War, 1968.
“We believe that some property has no right to exist. Hitler’s gas ovens, Stalin’s concentration camps, atomicbacteriological-chemical weapons, files of conscription, and slum properties have no right to exist. When people starve
for bread and lack decent housing, it is usually because the rich debase themselves with abuse of property, causing
extravagance on their part and oppression and misery and others.”
Statement of the Catonsville 9
•Massacre of Aguilares, El Salvador, by the army, 1977. The church was desecrated, houses
were searched, three Jesuit priests arrested and expelled from the country, and at least 50
people were killed.
“In today’s first reading [Zechariah 12: 10-11], it is very expressive when a prophet speaks about the desolation of
Jerusalem but at the same time announces a flood of mercy and kindness from the Lord over the suffering people. You
are the image of God who has been pierced, which the first reading speaks of in prophetic words of mystery, but which
present to us Christ nailed to the cross and pierced through by a lance. He is the image of all the peoples who, like
Aguilares, will be pierced and insulted. But, if one suffers with faith and gives it a redemptive meaning, Aguilares is
singing the precious chorus of liberation, because when they look at Him whom they have pierced, they will repent and
see the heroism and the joy of those whom the Lord blesses in their sorrow.”
Archbishop Oscar Romero on the re-opening of the church in Aguilares, June 19, 1977.
•Jacques Ellul, theologian, lawyer, active in the French Resistance, member of the French
Reformed Church, died, 1994.
•Bishop Jaime Nevares, of Neuquén, Argentina, prophetic voice, died, 1995.
•Elsa Constanza Alvarado and Mario Calderón, human rights workers with Center for
Research and Popular Education [CINEP], assassinated, Bogotá, Colombia, 1997.
•Msgr. John J. Egan, social justice priest, died in Chicago, 2001
20 •St. Bernardine of Siena, Franciscan priest, missionary, preacher (1380-1444)
•Renato Castillo, Chilean exile, lay missionary, founder of the Secretariat of Aid to Refugees,
diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas, died, 1990.
21 •Feast of Blessed Franz Jägerstätter. (martyred August 9, 1943)
•Fr. Pedro Aguilar Santos, killed, El Quiché, Guatemala, 1981.
•Norma Coronoa Sapiens, president and founding member of the Committee for the Defense
of Human Rights, killed — death squad style — in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico, 1991.
•Sr. Irene McCormick, Australian missionary, Sister of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart, killed,
Lima, Perú, 1991.
•Seven kidnapped Trappists of the Monastry of Atlas, Tibhirine — Fr. Christian Marie de
Chergé, prior, Brothers Luc Dochier, Michel Fleury, and Paul Favre Miville, and Frs.
Celestine Ringeard, Bruno Lemarchand, and Christophe Lebreton, killed by The Armed
Islamic Group, Algeria, 1996. (Kidnapped March 27; death announced May 23)
“If it were ever to happen — and it could happen any day — that I should be the victim of the terrorism which seems
to be engulfing all the foreigners now living in Algeria, I would like my community, my church, my family to
remember that my life was given to God and to this country.
“That they accept that the unique Master of all life will be no stranger to such a brutal departure.
“That they pray for me: for how should I prove worthy of such an offering?
“That they understand that such a death should be linked to so many others, equally violent, but which remain
masked by the anonymity of indifference.
“My life has no greater worth than that of another. Nor is it worth any less. . . .
“I have lived long enough to recognize that I am caught up as an accomplice in the evil which, alas, seems to
prevail in the world, even which might strike me blindly.
“At such a moment, I would like to have enough lucidity left to beg God’s pardon and that of all my fellow human
beings, while pardoning with all my heart anyone who might have hurt me.”
December 1993 letter of Fr. Christian-Marie de Chergé, OCSO,
prior of the Monastery of Notre Dame de l’Atlas
•Fr. Carlos Domiak, killed, Bahia Blanca, Argentina, 1975.
22 •St. Rita of Cascia, 1381-1457.
•Fr. David Kirk, Orthodox priest (OCA), founder of Emmaus House, a house of hospitality in
New York City (first in East Harlem and later in Harlem), died 2007.
The revelation of Jesus , the word of Jesus, comes to us through the experience of love, which is the experience of
Jesus. We know that Jesus wrote nothing. Even the gospel, written by the first followers of Jesus, is only part of the
rich meaning of Jesus Christ. Through the Fathers, the saints, the martyrs, the councils, through every human meeting,
the words of Jesus come alive, grow, and celebrate. The words of Jesus are always being written. It is always an
unfinished work.
Fr. David Kirk, Quotations from Chairman Jesus.
23 •Girolamo Savonarola, O.P. (1452-1498), Dominican priest, radical reformer, tortured and
hanged, Florence, Italy.
•Elisabeth Käseman (1947-1977), German, member of the Lutheran Church, lived in a "villa
miseria" of Buenos Aires, tortured and killed, 1977.
24 •Ambrosio Mogorran, Spanish nurse in San José de Bocay, Nicaragua, killed by a mine in a
contra ambush, 1986.
25 •Venerable Bede, English monk, priest and doctor of the church, 672? - 735.
By the frequent occurrence of his bodily manifestations our Lord wished to show that he is present by his divinity in
every place to the desires of those who are good…. He appeared in the breaking of bread to those who, supposing that
he was a stranger, invited him to share their table; he will also be present to us when we willingly bestow whatever
goods we have on strangers and poor people; and he will be present to us itn the breaking of the bread, when we
partake with a chaste and simple conscience, of the sacrament of his body, namely, the living bread.
Venerable Bede, from Homilies of the Gospels. Book Two: Lent to the Dedication of the Church
•St. Gregory VII, pope (1020-1085)
•St. Mary Magdalene De Pazzi, Carmelite nun, Florence, Italy (1566-1607)
•Fr. Bernardo “Nano” López Arroyave, priest, killed by paramilitaries, Sincé, Colombia,
1987.
"I know they are going to kill me. . . . Thus I keep myself ready to appear before the Lord Jesus."
Fr. Bernardo López
•Fr. Clement Ozi Bello, 43, killed by Muslim rebels, priest of the diocese of Kaduna, Nigeria,
2000.
26 •St. Philip Neri, priest, founder of the Oratory, the second “Apostle of Rome,” practical joker
(1515-1595)
“Perfection does not consists in such outward things as shedding tears and the like, but in true and solid virtues, Tears
are not a sign that a man is in the grace of God, neither must we infer that one who weeps when he speaks of holy and
devout things necessarily lives a holy life. Cheerfulness strengthens the heart and makes us persevere in a good life;
therefore the servant of God ought always to be in good spirits. When a man is freed from a temptation or any other
distress, let him take great care to show fitting gratitude to God for the benefit he has received.”
St. Philip Neri, from If God Be With Us; The Maxims of St. Philip Neri
“Not everyone has a sense of humor. That calls for an altruistic detachment from oneself and a mysterious sympathy
with others which is felt even before they open their mouths. . . . A good laugh is a sign of love; it may be said to give
us a glimpse of, or a first lesson in, the love that God bears for every one of us. . . . God laughs, says the Bible. When
the last piece of human folly makes the last burst of human laughter ring out crisp and clear in a doomed world, is it too
much to imagine that this laugh will resemble that of God . . . and seem to convey that, in spite of everything, all’s
well?”
Karl Rahner
•Fr. Enrique Pereira Neto, co-worker with Dom Helder Câmara, killed, Recife, Brazil, 1969.
Come, Lord,
do not smile and say you are already with us.
Millions do not know you,
and to us who do,
what is the difference?
What is the point of your presence
if our lives do not alter?
Change our lives,
shatter our complacency.
Make your word our life’s purpose.
Take away the quietness of a clear conscience.
Press us uncomfortably.
For only thus
that other peace is made,
your peace.
Archbishop Helder Câmara
27 •St. Augustine of Canterbury, monk, missionary to England, bishop (d. 605?)
•Father Gerard Jean-Just (1947-2009), Haitian priest, liberation theologian, director of
Miami’s Haitian Refugee Center.
28 •Javier Cirujano, Spanish missionary, pastor of San Jacinto, Dept. Bolivár, Colombia, killed
by guerrillas, martyr of peace and solidarity, 1993.
29 •Panzós, Guatemala, massacre of Quiché campesinos, 1978.
•Raimundo Ferreira Lima, “Gringo,” labor leader and pastoral worker, martyred in
Conceição, Brazil, 1980.
30 •St. Joan of Arc (1412-1431), the Maid of Orleans, burned at the stake, 1431
•Death of Emmanuel Cardinal Suhard, Archbishop of Paris, 1949
“To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda nor even in stirring up people, but in being a living
mystery. It means to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist.”
Emmanuel Cardinal Suhard
•Boris Pasternak, Russian author of Doctor Zhivago and other works, winner of Nobel Prize
for Literature, died, 1960.
•NATO bombing of the bridge at Krusevac, Serbia, 1999. At least nine civilians killed,
including the Orthodox parish priest, Father Milivoje Ciric.
31 •Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth.
•Barmen declaration, 1934. Representatives of Lutheran, Reform, and United Churches met
together in Barmen, Germany, and formulated a confession of faith in the face of a German
Church which was accommodating to the Hitler regime.
“As Jesus Christ is God’s assurance of the forgiveness of all our sins, so in the same way and with the same seriousness
he is also God’s mighty claim upon our whole life. Through him befalls us a joyful deliverance from the godless fetters
of this world for a free, grateful service to his creatures.
“We reject the false doctrine, as though there were areas of our life in which we do not belong to Jesus Christ, but to
other lords — areas in which we would not need justification and sanctification through him.”
Barmen Declaration
•Fr. Pedro Aguilar killed, Guatemala, 1981.
•Barbara Ward died, 1981.
“The first foundation of Western freedom is one that has the support of every great civilization until our day — of
Chinese and Indian, of Egyptian and Roman — the belief that underlying the ebb and flow of historical events and human
happenings there exists a moral order of right and wrong, and good and evil, which transcends every particular interest
and which, far from being created by man and events, is the yardstick by which they are judged. The justice of laws is
judged by it, as well as the goodness and rightness of men’s actions; and it is precisely because it is beyond the reach of
human interests and cravings that it is the guarantee of an objective system of law and, at the same time, of the rights of
individual men and women.”
Barbara Ward, The West at Bay
JUNE
1 •Saint Justin, philosopher, martyr, c. 100 - 165.
“Those who once rejoiced in fornication now delight in continence alone; . . . we who once took pleasure in the means of
increasing our wealth and property now bring what we have into a common fund and share with everyone in need; we
who hated and killed one another and would not associate with people of different tribes because of [their different]
customs, now after the manifestation of Christ live together and pray for our enemies and try to persuade those who
unjustly hate us, so that they, living according to the fair commands of Christ, may share with us the good hope of
receiving the same things [that we will] from God, the master of all.”
The First Apology of Saint Justin
•Mary Dyer (c. 1611-1660), Quaker, hanged in the Boston Commons, Massachusetts
“Nay, I cannot, for in obedience to the will of the Lord I came, and in His will I abide, faithful to death.”
Mary Dyer, at the scaffold, in response to an offer to spare her life if she promised never to return to Massachusetts.
•Helen Keller dies, 1968.
•Fr. Sergio Restrepo, S.J., killed working with the campesinos of the parish of Tierralta,
Colombia, 1989.
He was a navigator,
beached on solid ground.
He always searched for love
along the unknown paths
of the ineffable rose of the winds.
He believed in life.
He made friendship his motto.
His existence was a dream.
And, at his death,
he returned his soul to God
and returned to the earth
what the earth had given him:
an ephemeral name.
And a handful of bones.
Sergio Restrepo, from his final retreat
2 •Sts. Marcellinus (priest) and Peter (exorcist), martyrs (304)
•Pope Paul II issues a papal bull condemning slavery, 1537.
•Père Jacques (Lucien-Louis Bunel) (1900-1945), French Carmelite priest, rescuer of Jewish
boys in the Petit-Collège of Avon, died in Linz, Austria, after release from Mauthausen
concentration camp, 1945.
“To see Christ, we must do as Zaccheus did. We must become poor. Formerly, the weight of wealth overpowered him
and prevented him from rising. Riches drag down the soul. One has to become small in stature, that is, detached from
the goods of the world, for such riches foster earthly desires. As you are well aware, St. John of the Cross warns,
‘Whether one is attached by a silken thread or a golden cable, the result is the same: one cannot soar to the heights.’”
Père Jacques, retreat conference, September 1943
•Sister Anna Hlova, member of the Sisters Servants of the Immaculate Heart, Ukrainian
sister, disappeared, June 2, 2002, in Vinnytsia, Ukraine; body found June 7.
3 •Juan de Zumárraga, Franciscan missionary, bishop of Mexico, protector of the Indians,
1548,
•Sts. Charles Lwanga, Joseph Balikuddembe, and companions, martyrs of Uganda, 18851886. (Twenty-two Catholics and twelve Anglicans were killed.)
“Those early disciples in Uganda were young men set on fire by the message of the cross... When the Gospel reached
Uganda the message penetrated Ugandans; they caught the vision. They said: ‘Yes, there is a God who is not ... a big
mountain, who is not a big snake, but One who loved and died for all men in Jesus Christ.’ When the early believers
were filled with that, they could die for their faith.”
Anglican Bishop Festo Kivengere
•Pope John XXIII died, 1963.
“Every day is a good day to be born. Every day is a good day to die.”
Pope John XXIII
4 •Fr. José Maria Gran Cirera, Spanish priest, Missionary of the Sacred Heart, and Domingo
Bats, sacristan, killed near Xiexojbitz, in the municipality of Chajul, El Quiche, Guatemala,
1980.
“I am finding out what Christmas is. It is that God came among human beings to give meaning to all of them,
principally the poorest and those disillusioned with life, to give them hope. This is what I am coming to understand
more and more every year that I am in contact with the peoples of Quiché. They help me live the hope and joy which
Jesus brings.”
Fr. José Maria Gran Cirera, MSC
•Tiananmen Square massacre, Peking, China, 1989.
SACRIFICE
Hanging on a cross
Head bowed,
Blood flowing from His side.
He gave the total sacrifice
This Son of God.
His blood flows out still.
His suffering with us
Becomes a red river.
Blood mixing with blood
The red river flows from Beijing.
A Christian hunger striker in Tiananmen Square
5 •St. Boniface, Anglo-Saxon mink, missionary, bishop and martyr, apostle of Germany, c.
675-754.
•Agustin Ramírez, worker, Christian activist, killed in asentamiento San Francisco Solano,
Gran Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1988.
•André Trocmé (1901-1971), Reformed pastor of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, rescuer of Jews,
pacifist.
6 •St. Norbert, Bishop of Magdeburg, founder of the Premonstrasians, 1080?-1134.
•Sister Ann Manganaro, S.L., Sister of Loreto, doctor, US missionary to El Salvador, worker
at the hospital in Guarjila, El Salvador, died of cancer in St. Louis, Missouri, 1993.
That fruitful tree seeded in you, seek first:
That space, that place, that realm, the soil of God,
the holy ground within you, wherein is come
Your God to dwell. Let this life in you burst
Open, let yourself become the very food
Of the feast you seek. Seek first the reign of God.
Sr. Ann Manganaro, March, 1984
7 •Chief Seathl, [Noah Seattle], chief of the Suqvamish tribe, near the Puget Sound, convert to
Catholicism (c. 1790-1866)
Your God is not our God!
Your God loves your people and hates mine!
He holds his strong protecting arms lovingly about the paleface
and leads him by the hand as a father leads an infant son.
But He has forsaken His Red children, if they really are His.
Our God, the Great Spirit, seems also to have forsaken us.
Your God makes your people wax stronger every day.
Soon they will fill all the land.
Our people are ebbing away like a rapidly receding tide that will never return.
The white men’s God cannot love our people or He would protect them.
They seem to be orphans who can look nowhere for help.
How then can we be brothers?
How can your God become our god and renew our prosperity and awaken in us
dreams of returning greatness?
If we have a common Heavenly Father He must be partial,
for He came to His paleface children....
A few more moons,
a few more winters,
and not one of the descendants of the mighty hosts that once moved over this broad land
or lived in happy homes, protected by the Great Spirit,
will remain to mourn over the graves of a people
once more powerful and hopeful than yours.
But why should I mourn at the untimely fate of my people?
Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea.
It is the order of nature, and regret is useless.
Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come,
for even the White Man whose God walked and talked with him as friends to friend,
cannot be exempt from the common destiny.
We may be brothers after all.
We will see.
Chief Seathl [Seattle], 1854 treaty oration ceding land to the settlers
•Birth of Mohammed, 570.
•Sr. Filomena López Filha, Franciscan sister, apostle of the favelas La Viga and Posse,
Nueva Iguaçu, Brazil, killed, 1990.
•Matt Talbot (1857-1925), Irish ex-alcoholic, died in Dublin.
•Sister Ann Hlova, Ukranian sister of the Sisters Servants of the Immaculate Heart,
Vinnystia, Ukraine. Kidnapped June 2, 2002; body found, June 7.
8 •Death of Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J., poet and priest, 1889.
•Bishop Luís Vallejos Dalle, “Don Lucho,” Archbishop of Cuzco, Perú, bishop of the poor,
died in a purported accident, 1982.
•Fr. Nicolás Van Cleef, 1989.
9 •St.Columba, Irish monk, founder and abbot of Iona, 521-597.
•St. Ephrem the Syrian, deacon and doctor of the church, 306?-373.
This day Mary has become for us
The heaven that bears God
For in her the exalted Godhead
Has descended and dwelt;
In her It has grown small, to make us great.
St. Ephrem’s homily on the Nativity
•Padre Hector Gallegos, missionary from Colombia, abducted in Santa Fé de Veraguas,
Panama, and killed, 1971.
“The holy faith does not stand at the sideline; we are part of a global situation and as such we have to face it together.”
“If I should disappear, don’t look for me, but continue the struggle because what is important is the salvation of all
from the slavery of exploitation, and for this one has to die if necessary; this is the ultimate Christian commitment.”
Fr. Hector Gallegos
10
11
12
13
•Padre Juan Moran Samoniego killed coming to the defense of an indigenous woman about
to be abducted, San Pedro de Alto, diocese of Toluca, Mexico, 1979.
•Norman Perez Bello, university student, base community member, killed, Bogotá,
Colombia, 1992.
•St. Barnabas of Cyprus, apostle and martyr, c. 61.
•Ismael Enrique Pineda and other Caritas workers, disappeared, El Salvador, 1980.
•Joaquin Neves Norte, lawyer for the Naviraí Rural Workers Union, Paraná, Brazil,
assassinated, 1981.
•St. Dominic Savio
•St. Anthony of Padua, Franciscan priest and preacher, doctor of the church, “Friend of the
Poor,” 1231.
“For you we have left everything and have become poor. But since you are rich, we have followed you that you
might enrich us... We have followed you as the creature follows the Creator, like sons of the Father, as children
follow their mother, as the starving their bread, as the sick their doctor, as the weary their bed, as exiles their
homeland...”
St. Anthony of Padua, Sermones, II, p. 484
14 •Fr. Cosme Spezotto, OFM, Italian missionary, killed while praying in the church of San
Juan Nonualco, El Salvador, 1980.
“I have a feeling that at one time or another fanatical persons can take away my life. I ask the Lord that at the
opportune moment he give me the strength to defend the rights of Christ and his Church. To die a martyr would be a
grace I don’t deserve. To wash away with the blood, poured out by Christ, all my sins, defects, and weaknesses of
my past life would be a gracious and gratuitous gift of God.”
from a letter found in Fr. Cosme’s belongings, “to be opened in the case of a sudden death.”
•Fr. Vicente Hordanza, Spanish missionary, pastor of Chancay, Peru, killed, 1983.
•The prophet Elisha (Byzantine calendar)
•Bishop Charles Buswell (1913-2008), retired bishop of Puebla, Colorado, human rights and
peace activist.
15 •The prophet Amos (Byzantine calendar)
16 •Soweto massacre, South Africa, 1976.
“Do not forget that every protest against injustice, every prayer for liberation, every act of compassion and love is an
affirmation of freedom and a living sign of the kingdom of God.
“And if it sometimes seems futile and the dark clouds of despair threaten to blot out the sun and your hope,
remember that we are guided, not by worldly strength and power, but by faith in God who through his Son loves us and
through his Spirit nurtures us, and who has given us a vision that should not die: a vision of hope, truth, love, justice,
and peace.”
Rev. Allan Boesak, If This Is Treason, I Am Guilty
•Will Warren, British pacifist, peacemaker in Northern Ireland, died, 1980.
“One of my fundamental beliefs is that there is something of God in everybody. Everything else springs from this. I am
not nonviolent by nature. I do believe that nonviolence must come if you try to follow the way of Christ. I also believe
that if you see anything wrong, you shouldn’t be a democrat and call a meeting and elect a committee to do something
about it, and then forget to do it; but you should do something yourself, or try to do something yourself about it. This is
followed by one other thing. I do not believe that you can effect reconciliation unless you can speak to the people
you’re trying to reconcile.”
Will Warren
17 •Boipatong massacre, South Africa, 1992.
•Rev Henry Chadwick (1920-2008), English Anglican priest, scholar of early Christianity.
“Nothing is sadder than someone who has lost his memory, and the church which has lost its memory is in the same state
of senility.”
Henry Chadwick
18 •Venerable Matt Talbot
19 •St. Romuald, abbot, founder of the Camaldolese Benedictines, c. 950-1027.
20 •Pancho Villa (born Doroteo Arango), Mexico revolutionary hero, assassinated, 1923.
•Brother Mariano Blanco, Salvadoran, Marist brother, killed in a burst of gunfire by the
National Guard, Estelí, Nicaragua, 1979.
•Father Rafael Palacios martyred, Santa Tecla, El Salvador, 1979.
•Fr. Leo Commissari, Italian missionary priest, killed near São Paulo, Brazil, 1998.
•Fr. Martin J. Royackers, S.J. (1959-2001), killed in the parish of St. Theresa, Annotto Bay,
Jamaica. Martyr for land reform
21 •St. Aloysius Gonzaga, S.J., 1568-1591.
•Cardinal Jaime Sin (1928-2005), archbishop of Manila, Philippines, died.
Strength without compassion is violence.
Compassion without justice is sentiment.
Justice without love is Marxism.
And… love without justice is baloney!
Cardinal Jaime Sin
22 •St. Paulinus of Nola, bishop, 354?-431.
“Let me fear and desire nothing and consider enough to be enough.”
St. Paulinus of Nola
•Feast of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More.
“God made the angels to show him splendor, as he made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity. But Man
he made to serve him wittingly in the tangle of his mind.”
Thomas More, in Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons
•St. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, England, martyred, 1469-1535.
•Arthur McKinnon, Canadian missionary in the Dominican Republic, martyred after
protesting the imprisonment of 37 people, 1965.
23 •Sister Catherine Siena [Anna Ivanovna Abrikosova], convert to Catholicism, apostle to her
Russian people, died in the Butryka Prison, in Moscow, 1936. (1882-1936)
•Pastor Manuel Saquic, Human Rights Coordinator for the Maya Kaqchiquel Presbytery,
Guatemala, abducted and killed, 1995.
24 •Birth of St. John the Baptist.
“The man crying in the wilderness. We live in an age that has every right to consider itself no wilderness. But woe to
any age in which the voice crying in the wilderness can no longer be heard because the noises of everyday life drown it
— or restrictions forbid it — or it is simply stifled by authority, misled by fear and cowardice. Then the destructive
weeds will spread so suddenly and rapidly that the word ‘wilderness’ will recur to [people]’s minds willy-nilly. I
believe we are no strangers to this discovery.
“Yet for all this, where are the voices that should ring out in protest and accusation? There should never be any lack
of prophets like John the Baptist in the kaleidoscope of life at any period; brave [people] inspired by the dynamic
compulsion of the mission to which they are dedicated, true witnesses following the lead of their hearts and endowed
with clear vision and unerring judgment. Such [people] do not cry out for the sake of making a noise or the pleasure of
hearing their own voices, or because they envy other[s] the good things which have not come their way in account of
their singular attitude towards life. They are above envy and have a solace known only to those who have crossed both
the inner and outer borders of existence. Such [people] proclaim the message of healing and salvation. They warn
[people] of [their] chance, because they already feel the ground heaving beneath their feet, feel the beams cracking and
the great mountains shuddering inwardly and the stars swinging in space. They cry out to [people], urging [them] to
save [themselves] by a change of heart before the coming of the catastrophes threatening to overwhelm [them].
“Oh God, surely enough people nowadays know what it means to clear away bomb dust and rubble of destruction,
making the rough places smooth again. They will know it for many years to come with this labor weighing on them.
Oh, may the arresting voices of the wilderness ring out warning [hu]mankind in good time that ruin and devastation
actually spread from within. May the Advent figure of St. John the Baptist, the incorruptible herald and teacher in
God’s name, be no longer a stranger in our own wilderness. Much depends on such symbolic figures in our lives. For
how shall we hear if there are none to cry out, none whose voice can rise above the tumult of violence and destruction,
the false clamor that deafens us to reality?”
The Prison Meditations of Father Alfred Delp, S.J.
•Alfonso Suriago, member of the National Executive Committee of the United Church of
Christ in the Philippines, killed in Cebu City, Philippines, 1988.
25 •Fr. Jerome Casimir Michael Cypher, O.F.M. Conv., U.S. missionary, and Fr. Ivan Betancur,
S.J., Colombian missionary, and six others, martyrs of Los Horcones, killed in Juticalpa,
Department of Olancho, Honduras, 1975.
“What is important is not that we wait for a revelation in some book or in some saying, but take the revelation we
have in our everyday life. And the revelation in our everyday life is to use the talents God gave us. Lazarus had no
‘talents’ — but what he was, he was. And that was all.
“There is beauty in life if we only worry about living completely and just being truly what God meant us to be. We
miss it when we worry about not being really great, about accomplishing things we cannot accomplish. When we want
God to make us greater than we are, we become smaller, because we neglect what we have and what we are already.
“Remember this Gospel. It is a sort of warning: Don’t look too far into the future. When you look into eternity, don’t
look on forever; you will stumble over your own life. Look for eternity in those who are near you right now. For
eternity begins today; it begins this moment. It begins right NOW!”
Fr. Michael Cypher
•Bishop Joaquín Ramos, Salvadoran bishop and military vicar, killed, 1993.
26 •The United Nations is founded, 1945.
•Blesseds Father Mykola Conrad (1876-1941) and Volodymyr Pryjma (1906-1941), cantor,
killed by the Russian Communist secret police, Stradch, Russia, 1941.
27 •St. Cyril of Alexandria, patriarch of the Eastern church, theologian, doctor of the Church,
376?-444.
•Juan Pablo Rodríguez Ran, indigenous priest, killed, Guatemala, 1982.
•Fr. Hilario Arango Serna, 46 year old priest, killed in Cali, Colombia, 2002, opponent of
violence.
28 •St. Irenaeus of Lyons, bishop, martyr (130?-220).
“For the glory of God is a living human being; and the life of a human consists in beholding God. For if the
manifestation of God which is made by means of the creation, affords life to all living in the earth, much more does that
revelation of the Father which comes through the Word, give life to those who see God.”
Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book 4, chapter 20, 7
•CIA-led coup overthrows Guatemalan president, Jacobo Arbenz, 1954.
•Hans Urs von Balthasar, (1905-1988), Swiss priest and theologian.
“Lovers are those who know the most about God and the theologian mist listen to them.”
“The deepest thing is Christianity is God’s love for the earth. That God is rich in his heaven is something known by
other religions. That he wanted to be poor together with his creatures, that in his heaven, he wanted to and did indeed
suffer for his world, and that through his Incarnation he enabled himself to prove his love to his creatures: this is the
thitherto unheard-of-thing.”
Hans Urs von Balthasar
29 •Saints Peter and Paul.
30 •The Martyrs of the Church of Rome, 64.
•Ramon Lull (1232-1316), Franciscan tertiary, martyr, philosopher, theologian (Died June
29,1316)
•Fr. Hermógenes López, founder of Rural Catholic Action, killed in San José Pinula,
Guatemala, 1978.
“We’re sons of God. We’ve a minimum of obligations on a happy pilgrimage as priests. One obligation is to
convince those on top to get to know the condition of those on the bottom. God is good. We gain some merit, we see
some liberty, some progress and we suffer. That’s our life.”
“If the blood of one of us is necessary for peace, I am ready to shed mine.”
Fr. Hermógenes López
JULY
1 •Blessed Junípero Serra, Franciscan missionary to California, 1713-1784, died August 28,
1784.
“It is indeed right that the soldiers guard and accompany the missionary, but if despite this the Indians should kill a
missionary, what good will we achieve by going to war against them? The military will answer me by saying, ‘We will
inflict an exemplary punishment on them so that they will not kill others.’ To this I reply: ‘Allow the murderer to live so
that he can be saved.’ This is our purpose here. The murderer should be told, after some moderate punishment, that he is
forgiven. Thus we shall fulfill our Christian law, which commands us to forgive injury and to seek not the sinner’s death,
but his eternal salvation.”
Fra Junípero Serra, O.F.M.
•Fr. Marcelo [Tulio] Maruzzo, OFM, Italian missionary, killed, Guatemala, together with
Luís Navarette, catechist, 1981.
•Br. Chris Manion, S.M. from Britain, and Br. Joseph Rushigajiki, S.M. Rwandan Hutu,
Marist brothers, missing on July 1, 1994, in Rwanda, were killed by Rwandan Patriotic
Front.
•Blessed Antonio Rosmini (1797-1855).
•Bishop Francisco Claver, S.J., (1929-2010) Vicar Apostolic Emeritus of Bontoc-Lagawe,
advocate of the poor and nonviolence, died.
It is the task of the Gospel to bring about personal conversion and spiritual growth in individual Christians. But those
Christians in turn must work for the transformation and sanctification of the society in which they live.
Bishop Francisco Claver, SJ, The Making of a Local Church, p. 167
2 •Bishop Antonio Fortich (1913-2003), bishop of Negros, Philippines, advocate of the poor
and of nonviolence.
"I have no problem with a world in which there are rich and poor; you have an automobile, I have a bicycle, so what?
But I cannot accept that some people have to live by scavenging for food in the garbage cans of others.”
Bishop Fortich
•Br. Tomás Zavaletto, O.F.M., Salvadoran Franciscan missionary, killed by a mine, near
Matiguas, Nicaragua, 1986.
3 •St. Thomas, apostle.
•Father Bernard Haring, C.SS.R., Redemptorist priest, moral theologian, 1912-1998.
4 •St. Elizabeth of Portugal, Queen, lay Franciscan, protector of the poor, peacemaker, 12711336.
•Independence Day, United States.
“It seems to me that there are very dangerous ambiguities about our democracy in its actual present condition. I wonder to
what extent our ideals are now a front for organized selfishness and systematic irresponsibility. If our affluent society ever
breaks down and the facade is taken away, what are we going to have left?”
Thomas Merton
• Fathers Pedro Duffau, Alfredo Kelly, and Alfredo Leade, Pallotine priests, killed, Buenos
Aires, Argentina, 1976.
•Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati (1901-1925), Italian athlete, university student, friend of the
poor.
5 •St. Anthony Mary Zacaria, priest, 1502-1539.
•Death of Georges Bernanos, French writer, author of Diary of a Country Priest, 1948.
“I hold that the poor will save the world and they will save it without wishing to do so, they will save it despite
themselves, that they will ask it nothing in return, simply because they will not know the value of the service they have
rendered.”
Georges Bernanos, Les enfants humilés
•Marco Antonio Cacao Muñoz, evangelical pastor and founding member of a union of
journalists, killed, Guatemala, 1980.
6 •St. Thomas More executed, England, 1478-1535.
“Take some poor and unfruitful year in which hunger has carried off many thousands of men. If the barns of the rich
were searched at the end of the year, I maintain that enough grain would be found to feed everyone, and to save those
who died from the famine and from the plague caused by the famine. How easily the bare needs of life might be
provided, if money, which is meant to procure us the necessities of life, did not deter us! Certainly rich men know
this....”
Thomas More
•Blessed Nazaria Ignacia March Mesa, founder of the church Crusades and the first women’s
trade union in Latin America in Oruro, Bolivia, died in Buenos Aires, 1943.
•St. Maria Goretti, virgin and martyr, 1890-1902.
•Jan Hus (c.1369-1415), priest of Bohemia, reformer, burned at the stake.
•Armando Avelae, sacristan and choir leader, and Carlos Hernández, killed in La Libertad, El
Salvador, 1980.
•Prophet Isaiah.
7 •Arturo Bernal, Christian campesino leader of the Agrarian Leagues, dies under torture in
Paraguay, 1976.
•Oswaldo Petrini, engineering student, catechist, disappeared, Argentina, 1977.
8 •Evangelical deacon, Roberto Ortiz Morales, killed, Guatemala, 1980.
9 •Rose Hawthorne Lathrop (1851-1926), founder of St. Rose’s Free Home for Incurable
Cancer in New York City and the Dominican Sisters of St. Rose, died, 1926.
“Treat the poor with great respect, not only as equals, but as superiors, for they are suffering much more than we. Poor
persons are the messengers of God to us, sent to prove our love, and to save us by our work for them.”
Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
“Having faced the disaster and looked upon the injured, let us act, remembering God’s word, not man’s. Diplomacy
and courage are strangers to each other; excessive business prudence and charity will not shake hands; but God and the
poor await us, side by side.”
Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
“Sacrifice for the Poor – A Difficulty Challenged,” Christ’s Poor 1904.
•St. Oliver Plunkett, Archbishop of Armagh, Ireland, killed at Tyburn, 1624 - 1681.
“Holy Stephen did pray for those who stoned him to death; so do I pray for those who with false oaths spill my blood.”
St. Oliver Plunkett, at the scaffold in Tyburn
•Saints Nicolas Pick and companions, Franciscans, Premonstrasians, and diocesan priests,
martyrs, Gorcum, Holland, 1572.
10 •Fr. Faustino Villanueva, Spanish priest, Missionary of the Sacred Heart, worked with the
indigenous, martyred Joyabaj, El Quiché, Guatemala, 1980.
“We cannot leave the people abandoned. The situation is very bad.”
Fr. Faustino Villanueva, MSC
•Joseph Lafontant, lawyer, founder of the Center for Human Rights, killed, Haiti, 1988.
•John Calvin born, 1509.
11 •St. Benedict, monk (He died on March 21, 547) 480?-547.
“The brethren should serve one another. Consequently, none will be excused from kitchen service unless they are sick
or engaged in some important business of the monastery, for such service increases reward and fosters love. . . . Let all
the rest serve one another in love.”
Rule of St. Benedict, chapter 35
•Monseñor Carlos Ponce de Leon, bishop of San Nicolás, Argentina, died in a suspicious
accident, 1977.
•Fr. Rudy Romano, abducted and disappeared by the military, Cebu, Philippines, 1985.
•Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, philosopher, humanist, translator of the scriptures, died
1536.
12 •Henry David Thoreau born, 1817.
“Any man more right than his neighbors, consists a majority of one already.
“... I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name, — if ten honest men only,
— aye, if one HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from
this copartnership and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. For it
matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever.”
H. D. Thoreau, “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience”
•Fr. Aurelio Rueda, advocate of slum dwellers, joined the guerrillas, killed, Colombia, 1976.
•St. Teresa de los Andes, Chile.
•Saints John Jones and John Wall, Franciscan priests and martyrs in England. (John Jones
martyred, July 12,1598; John Wall martyred August 22, 1679.)
13 •St. Henry, king, 972-1024.
•Fr. Fernando Hoyos, former Jesuit priest, missionary among the indigenous, member of the
Guerrilla Army of the Poor, killed in Chojzunil, Huehuetenango, Guatemala, 1982.
`“From the rain and old of the mountains, a warm embrace. And the spirit of all my comrades here, all of our concerns
and hopes in our struggles, are in this embrace, all run together and overflow....We are still one, you and I, no matter
what part of the world we are in. Our problems, our hopes for victory, unite us...We must think that beyond these
mountains and these volcanos, across the rivers and valleys, there are other heads and other hearts in solidarity with
ours, feeling the same things as we, suffering and rejoicing as we — and that hope is keen there, too, for a new society
of justice and fellowship.”
Fernando Hoyos to his Jesuit friends
• Blessed Carlos (Charlie) Manuel Rodríguez Santiago (1918-1963), lay promoter at Catholic
University Center of the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico.
“We need Catholics who are alert to the present moment [...] modern Catholics who know how to nourish themselves
in the past but whose eyes are fixed on the future.”
Carlos Rodríguez
14 •St. Francis Solano, (1549-1610) Franciscan missionary, apostle of the indigenous peoples in
Tucuman and Peru, 1616.
•St. Camillus de Lellis, Italian, priest, founder of the order of Ministers of the Sick, patron of
the sick and nurses, 1550-1614.
•Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, virgin, Iroquois, died April 17 1680 in Caughnawaga, Canada.
1656-1680.
“I am not my own; I have given myself to Jesus. He must be my only love. The state of helpless poverty that may befall
me if I do not marry does not frighten me. All I need is a little food and a few pieces of clothing. With the work of my
hands I shall always earn what is necessary and what is left over I’ll give to my relatives and to the poor. If I should
become sick, and unable to work, then I shall be like the Lord on the cross. He will have mercy on me and help me, I
am sure.”
Kateri Tekakwitha
•Bastille Day, France, 1789.
•Brother Mauricio Silva, Uruguayan priest, Little Brother of the Gospel, street sweeper,
killed, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1980.
Cuando amar es un surco humilde y oscuro, que reclama al grano
para ser fecundo y morir en soledad, yo sé que Tú estás Señor.
When loving is a humble and dark furrow which claims the grain
In order to be fertile and die in solitude, then I know that You are present, Lord.
Mauricio Silva
•Massacre of 324 people, Cuarto Pueblo, Rabinal, Guatemala, 1982.
•Sister Marta Inés Velez Serna, member of the Little Sisters of the Poor of St. Peter Claver,
active and peace and human rights work, killed, Mogotes, Santander State, Colombia,
2002.
• Bishop Luigi Locati, killed in Kenya, 2005.
15 •St. Bonaventure (c. 1218-1274), Franciscan, bishop, doctor of the church.
“One becomes holy only by doing common things well and being constantly faithful in small things.”
St. Bonaventure
•St. Swithin (c. 800-862), bishop of Winchester, England.
•St. Vladimir (c. 956-1015), king of Kiev, “equal to the apostles.”
•Rodolfo Lunkenbein, missionary, and Lorenzo Simao, Bororo chief, give their lives for the
indigenous, Brazil, 1976.
•Héctor Jurado, Methodist pastor, martyr of the Uruguayan people, 1972.
•Misael Ramírez, campesino, animator of communities, martyr for justice, Colombia, 1981.
•Julio Quevedo Quezada, catechist, agronomist, director of Social Ministry, diocese of El
Quiché martyred by security forces in Santa Cruz del Quiché, Guatemala, 1991.
16 •Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
If you meet the Virgin
coming down the road,
ask her into your house —
she bears the Word of God.
St. John of the Cross
•First Atomic bomb test, Alamagordo, New Mexico, 1945.
“The arms race presents questions of conscience we may not evade. . . . . After the passage of nearly four decades
and a concomitant growth in our understanding of the ever growing horror of nuclear war, we must shape the climate of
public opinion which will make it possible for our country to express profound sorrow over the atomic bombing in
1945. Without that sorrow, there is no possibility of finding a way to repudiate future uses of nuclear weapons or of
conventional weapons in such military actions as would not fulfill just-war criteria.”
US Catholic Bishops, The Challenge of Peace (1983), 301-302.
17 •Fr. Lawrence Martin Jenco, O.S.M., Servite priest, hostage in Lebanon, died in Illinois,
1996.
“Some people advise me to forgive and forget. They do not realize that this is almost impossible. Jesus, the wounded
healer, asks us to forgive, but he does not ask us to forget. That would be amnesia. He does demand we heal our
memories.
“I don’t believe that forgetting is one of the signs of forgiveness. I forgive, but I remember. I do not forget the pain, the
loneliness, the ache, the terrible injustice. But I do not remember it to inflict guilt or some future retribution. Having
forgiven, I am liberated. I need no longer be determined by the past. I move into the future free to imagine new
possibilities.”
Fr. Lawrence Martin Jenco, Bound to Forgive
•Blessed Peter To Rot (1912-1945), catechist on South Pacific island of New Britain, killed
by lethal injection by the occupying Japanese forces for opposing the reintroduction of
polygamy.
18 •Bishop Bartolomé de las Casas, Dominican friar, bishop of Chiapas, Mexico, protector of
Indians, died, 1566.
“All the gold and silver, all the pearls and other riches that you have extracted from this New World is robbery and
must be returned to its rightful owners. Otherwise, those who have pillaged and stripped the land will have to
respond before the divine tribunal. If these stolen goods are not restored, you cannot be saved.”
Fray Bartolomé de las Casas
•Fathers Juan de Dios Murias and Gabriel Longueville, of the diocese of La Rioja, killed for
defending campesinos, found dead, La Rioja, Argentina, 1976.
•Carlos Arturo Reyes, 23 year old staff member of the environmental ministry of the diocese
of Juticalpa, Honduras, killed in his home town of El Rosario, Honduras, 2003.
20 •The prophet Elijah (Byzantine calendar)
•Prophet Daniel (Roman martyrology)
21 •St. Lawrence of Brindisi, Capuchin Franciscan priest, preacher, doctor of the church , 15591619
•Albert Luthuli, South African black leader, advocate of nonviolence, winner of the 1960
Nobel Peace Prize, died, 1967.
“Law and conditions that tend to debase human personality — a God-given force — be they brought about by the
State or individuals, must be relentlessly opposed in the spirit of defiance shown by St. Peter when he said to the rulers
of his day: ‘Shall we obey God or man?’ ”
Chief Albert Luthuli
•Fr. Milan Gono, secretly ordained Slovak priest, killed, 1979.
•Monseñor Alejandro Labaca, OFM Cap, Spanish missionary, bishop, vicar of Aguaricó, and
Inés Arango, Capuchin sister, Colombian missionary, killed in the jungles of Ecuador,
1987.
•St. John Cassian, monk who brought cenobitic life to France, c. 360-433.
•Prophet Elijah (Roman martyrology)
22 •St. Mary Magdalene.
“In a gesture of the utmost tenderness she reached out to him, to heal the healer. Jesus recognized what she was doing:
‘She has done a beautiful thing to me. . . . She has anointed my body beforehand for burying.’ . . . Jesus had himself
become poor, not least in sharing our human need to be supported and loved by others. In his mortality, he shared in the
ultimate poverty of all human beings. . . . Mary’s response to the poverty of Jesus shows what the Christian’s response
must be to the poor who are always with us, and to the poverty that is within us all.”
Dermot Connolly
•Fr. Jorge Oscar Adur, Assumptionist priest, ex-president of YCS [Young Christian
Students], Raúl Rodríguez and Carlos DiPietro, seminarians, disappeared in Argentina,
1980.
23 •St. Bridget of Sweden (c. 1303-1373), wife, mother, widow, religious founder.
•Carlos A. Contreras, worker, base community member, community of San Antonio Abad, El
Salvador, captured and disappeared, 1977.
•Pedro Angel Santos, catechist, responsible for the base communities of Cuscatlán,
responsible for self-defense of people in flight, killed San Francisco Javier, El Salvador,
1983.
•The Prophet Ezekiel (Byzantine calendar)
24 •Father Ezequiel Ramim (“Lele”),Italian missionary, Comboni priest, involved in Land
Pastoral, member of the pastoral team of Cacoal, diocese of Ji-Paraná, defender of the
“posseiros” in Cocoal, Roraima, Brazil, killed in the hacienda Catura, 1985.
25 •St. James, apostle.
•Wenceslao Pedernera, campesino, director of the Diocesan Rural Movement, killed in la
Rioja, Argentina, 1976.
•José Othmaro Cáceres, seminarian, deacon, martyred with 12 companions in Los Leones,
Platanares, municipality of Suchitoto, Cuscatlán, El Salvador, 1980.
•Lay missionaries, Angel Martínez Rodrigo of Spain and Raúl José Leger of Canada,
catechists, killed in Guatemala City, Guatemala, 1981.
“I’m working as hard as I can to be faithful to the Lord, and to the men and women entrusted to me, as I try to ‘run the
race’ with all of the sincerity and dedication that human weakness will permit.”
from the last letter of Angel Martínez Rodrigo
26 •Saints Joachim and Ann, parents of Mary.
•Fr. Titus Brandsma, O.Carm., Dutch priest, killed by lethal injection by the Nazis, Dachau,
Germany, 1942.
“The cross is a blessing from which we should not flee”
“If we consider the intercession of a saint or the influence of a soul favored by God as a special grace from heaven,
then we can equally consider it a disaster if such saints do not cross our path of life, if we miss the sweet influence which
a chosen soul could exert on us. All Catholics should be so saintly that God through them could sanctify millions, just as
He would have saved cities like Sodom and Gomorrah for a few just men.”
Blessed Titus Brandsma, O.Carm.
28 •Fr. Stanley Rother, U.S. missionary priest from Oklahoma, martyred, Santiago Atitlán,
Guatemala, 1981.
“A nice compliment was given to me recently when a supposed leader in the Church and town was complaining that
‘Father is defending the people.’ He wants me deported for my sin.
“This is one of the reasons I have for staying in the face of physical harm. The shepherd cannot run at the first sign of
danger. Pray for us that we may be a sign of the love of Christ for our people, that our presence among them will fortify
them to endure these sufferings in preparation for the coming of the Kingdom.”
Fr. Stanley Rother, 1980 Christmas letter
•Massacre of 70 campesinos, San Juan Cotzal, Guatemala, 1980.
•Bishop Alberto Devoto, bishop of Goya, Corrientes, Argentina, “father of the poor,” died in
an auto accident, 1984.
•Art Gish, Christian Peacemaker Team leader, died 2010.
29 •St. Martha.
•Bishop James E. Walsh, M.M. (1891-1981), Maryknoll missionary to China, imprisoned for
may years, died at Maryknoll.
“At a time when the Catholic Religion is being traduced and persecuted with the design of eliminating it from China,
I think it is the plain duty of all Catholic missionaries . . . to remain where they are until prevented from doing so by
physical force. If internment should intervene in the case of some, or even death I think it should simply be regarded as
a normal risk that is in inherent in our state of life. . . and as a small price to pay for carrying out our duty. . . . In our
particular case I think that such an eventuality would be a privilege, too, because it would associate us a little more
intimately in the Cross of Christ.”
Bishop James E. Walsh, M.M.
30 •St. Peter Chrysologus, bishop of Ravenna, doctor of the church(380-c. 450).
•Massacre of Zacamil, municipality of Suchitoto, Departamento Cuscatlán, El Salvador,
1981.
31 •St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, 1491-1556.
“Teach us, Lord, to serve You as You deserve; to give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to
toil and not to seek for rest; to labor and not ask for any reward, save that of knowing that we do Your will.”
St. Ignatius Loyola
•Michael Harrington, socialist leader, author of The Other America, died, 1989.
“In desert societies — including the American Southwest — water is so precious that it is money. People connive and
fight and die over it; governments covet it; marriages are even made and broken because of it. If one were to talk to a
person who has known only that desert and tell him that in the city there are public water fountains and that children are
even sometimes allowed to turn on the fire hydrants in the summer and to frolic int he water, he would be sure one were
crazy. For he knows, with an existential certitude, that it is human nature to fight over water.
“Mankind has lived for several millennia in the desert. Our minds and emotions are conditioned by that bitter
experience; we do not dare think things could be otherwise. Yet there are signs that we are, without really having planned
it that way, marching out of the desert. There are some who are loathe to leave behind the consolation of familiar
brutalities; there are others who in one way or another would like to impose the law of the desert upon the Promised Land.
It may even be possible that mankind cannot bear too much happiness.
“It is also possible that we will seize this opportunity and make of the earth a homeland rather than an exile. That is the
social project. It does not promise, or even seek, to abolish the human condition, for that is impossible. It does propose to
end that invidious competition and venality which, because scarcity allowed no other alternatives, we have come to think
are inseparable from our humanity.”
Michael Harrington, Socialism
•Sister Valens Mukanoheli, member of the Benebikira congregation, murdered in Gisenyi,
Rwanda, 1998.
AUGUST
1 •The Holy Maccabees: seven young men and their mother, Salome (Byzantine calendar)
•St. Alphonsus Liguori, bishop, spiritual writer, doctor of the church, founder of the
Redemptorists, 1696-1787.
•Massacre of Chota, Peru, 1979.
•Pascual Serech, leader of the Human Rights Committee of Comalapa, Chimaltenango,
Guatemala, member of the Maya Kaqchiquel Presbytery, killed by the local military
commissioner, 1994.
•Bishop Pierre Lucien Claverie, French bishop of Oran, Algeria, proponent of active
solidarity and dialogue with Islam, killed, 1996.
“We are not prophets or fanatics or heroes; but neither are we islands. We have forged some relationships with
Algerians that nothing can destroy, even death.”
“There is no life without love. There is no love without letting go every possession and giving oneself.”
“That is probably what is at the basis of my religious vocation," Claverie wrote in 1996, shortly before he was killed. "I
wondered why, throughout my Christian childhood when I listened to sermons on loving one's neighbor, I had never
heard anyone say the Arabs were my neighbors.
“It is my conviction that humanity can only exist in the plural. As soon as we claim to possess the truth or speak in the
name of humanity we fall into totalitarianism and exclusion. No one possesses the truth; everyone seeks it.
Bishop Claverie
'So that love vanquishes hate, one must love to the point of giving one's life in the daily combat from which Jesus
himself did not escape unscathed.'
•Blessed Maria Stella Mardesewicz and ten other Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth,
killed by the Nazis in Nowogrodek, Poland, 1943.
2 •St. Eusebius of Vercelli, bishop (283?-371)
•Our Lady of the Angels of the Portiuncula.
•Fr. Carlos Pérez Alonso, S.J., apostle of the sick and imprisoned, activist for justice,
disappeared in Guatemala, 1981.
3 •Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964), U.S. author, died.
“It is hard to make your adversaries real people unless you recognize yourself in them — in which case, if you don’t
watch out, they cease to be adversaries.”
Flannery O’Connor
•Frs. James Weeks and Antonio Velarde, LaSallete missionaries, killed, Argentina, 1976.
•Massacre of Bolivian miners, 500 dead, Caracoles, 1980.
•Fr. Jean-Pierre Louis, shot near the parish of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Bizoton, Port-auPrince, Haiti, 1998.
4 •St. John Vianney, Curé d’Ars, priest, confessor, 1786-1859.
“Life is given us that we may learn to die well.”
St. Jean Vianney
•Anne Frank and family are captured in Amsterdam, Holland, and sent to Nazi
concentration camp, 1944.
“I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of
confusion, misery and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness. I hear the ever approaching
thunder, which will destroy us too. I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that
it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.”
Anne Frank, July 15, 1944
•Jean Vanier moved into a house in Trosly, France, with Rafael and Philippe, two men with
mental handicaps, which marked the beginning of the L’Arche communities, 1964.
Christians have always proclaimed
the need to serve the poor,
to do things that will help them
rise out of their misery.
But what we are discovering at l’Arche
is that those who are poor possess a precious gift
and that we must listen to them with deep respect.
They have a gift for others.
We are discovering too
that the life-giving Jesus is hidden in them.
He is truly there.
If you become a friend of the poor,
you become a friend of Jesus.
Jean Vanier, The Broken Body
•Monseñor Enrique Angelelli, Bishop of La Rioja, Argentina, defender of campesinos, died
in a suspicious car crash, 1976.
“We kill when we take the life out of our country, when we abolish joy, hope and the courage to live.”
Bishop Angelelli
•Fr. Alirio “Napo” Macías, pastor of San Esteban Catarina, diocese of San Vicente, El
Salvador, martyred, 1978.
•Archbishop Anthony Bloom, metropolitan of Sourozh (1914-2003), spiritual writer and
leader in the Russian orthodox Church, died
5 •Dedication of St. Mary Major
6 •Transfiguration of the Lord.
“Early Christians used to say Gloria Dei, vivens homo (‘The glory of God is the living person’). We could make this
more concrete by saying Gloria Dei, vivens pauper (‘The glory of God is the living poor person’). From the
perspective of the transcendence of the Gospel, I believe we can determine what the life of the poor truly is. And I also
believe that by putting ourselves alongside the poor and trying to bring life to them we shall come to know the eternal
truth of the Gospel.”
Archbishop Oscar Romero
“The Political Dimension of Faith,” February 2, 1980
•Atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, 1945.
“The very existence of the human race is in jeopardy. We must halt the arms race in the spirit of Tabor or proceed with
the armaments race and face annihilation in the spirit of Hiroshima.”
Bishop Maurice Dingman of Des Moines, 1978
•Death of Pope Paul VI, 1978.
“If the consciousness of universal brotherhood truly penetrates into the hearts of [humans], will they still need to arm
themselves to the point of becoming blind and fanatic killers of their brethren who in themselves are innocent, and of
perpetrating, as a contribution to peace, butchery of untold magnitude, as at Hiroshima on August 6, 1945? In fact has
not our own time had an example of what can be done by a weak man, Gandhi — armed only with the principle of
nonviolence — to vindicate for a nation of hundreds of millions of human beings the freedom and dignity of a new
people?”
Pope Paul VI, World Day of Peace Message, January 1, 1976
7 •St. Sixtus II, Pope, and companions- deacons of Rome, martyrs, 258
•St. Victricius (330-c404/7), bishop of Rouen, conscientious objector to the military.
•St. Cajetan, priest, founder of the Theatines (1480-1557)
“In the oratory we serve God in worship. In our hospital we actually find Him.”
St. Cajetan
8 •St. Dominic, friar, founder of the Order of Preachers, 1170-1221. (Died August 6, 1221)
“I will not study on dead skins while living skins are dying of hunger.”
St. Dominic, explaining why he sold all his possessions,
including his parchment manuscripts to aid the victims of a plague in Palenares
9 •Edith Stein, Carmelite nun, philosopher, deported and killed at Auschwitz by the Nazis,
1942.
“It is good to remember these days that poverty implies being ready to leave our home in the convent. We have bound
ourselves to the enclosure but God has not bound Himself to protect me here forever. He does not need to, because He
has other walls with which to protect us. . . . If we are driven out into the street, then our Lord will send His angels to
encircle us.”
Edith Stein
•Blessed Franz Jägerstätter, Austrian Catholic peasant, conscientious objector to the Nazi
army, executed in Berlin, Germany, 1943.
“Today one hears it said repeatedly that there is nothing any more that an individual can do. If someone were to speak
out, it would mean only imprisonment and death. True, there is not much that can be done anymore to change the
course of world events. I believe that should have begun a hundred or even more years ago. But as long as we live in
this world, I believe it is never too late to save ourselves and perhaps some other soul for Christ. One really has no
cause to be astonished that there are those who can no longer find their way in the great confusion of our day. People
we think we can trust, who ought to be leading the way and setting a good example, are running along with the crowd.
No one gives enlightenment, whether in word or in writing. Or, to be more exact, it may not be given. And the
thoughtless race goes on, always closer to eternity. As long as conditions are still half good, we don’t see things quite
right, or that we could or should do otherwise....
“If the road signs were stuck ever so loosely in the earth that every wind could break them off or blow them about,
would anyone who did not know the road be able to find his way? And how much worse is it if those to whom one
turns for information refuse to give him an answer or, at most, give him the wrong direction just to be rid of him as
quickly as possible?”
Franz Jägerstätter, prison writings
•Atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, 1945.
“Men and women of the world, never again plan war! With this atomic bomb, war can only mean suicide for the human
race. From this atomic waste the people of Nagasaki confront the world and cry out: No more war! Let us follow the
commandment of love and work together. The people of Nagasaki prostrate themselves before God and pray: Grant that
Nagasaki may be the last atomic wilderness in the history of the world.”
Dr. Takashi Nagai, Catholic doctor, Nagasaki, Japan
•Frs. Miguel Tomaszek and Zbigniew Strzalkowski, OFM Conv, Polish missionaries, killed
by the Sendero Luminoso, Perú, 1991.
•Herbert “Betinho” de Souza, Brazilian activist, founder of the Citizens Campaign Against
Hunger and Misery and for Life, founder of “Christmas without Hunger” annual drive,
leader of campaigns for AIDS education and research, to stop violence against street
children, and against unemployment, died, 61 years old, of hepatitis, 1997.
10 •St. Lawrence, deacon, martyr, 258?
•Death of John Henry Cardinal Newman, 1801 - 1890
•Dot Malngan and Masulong Ingad, United Church of Christ in the Philippines deacons,
killed in Alabel, South Cotabato, Philippines, 1988.
•Bishop Adriano Mandarino Hypólito, OFM, bishop of Nova Iguaçu, a slum outside Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil, defender of the poor, “man of the people,” died, 1996.
11 •St. Clare of Assisi, virgin, founder of the contemplative Franciscan order of nuns, the Poor
Clares (1194-1253).
“Since the great and good Lord, on entering the Virgin’s womb, chose to look despised, needy, and poor in this
world, so that people in dire poverty and deprivation and in absolute need of heavenly nourishment might become
rich in him by possessing the kingdom of heaven, then you who have chosen poverty should rejoice and be glad.”
Letter of St. Clare to Blessed Agnes of Prague
The sick and the suffering come daily now to the door of the monastery, for they trust in the compassion with
which they will be received. As far as their own poverty permits, the sisters share what they have.
Sr. Mary Seraphim, PCPA, Clare: Her Light and Her Song
•Blessed Peter Faber, S.J., early member of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, 1501 1546. Died
August 1, 1546.
Christ in so great poverty; I in so great wealth.
Christ in so great suffering; I in so great comfort.
Christ in so great labor; I in so great ease.
Blessed Peter Faber
12 •Brother Tito de Alencar Lima, O.P., tortured to the point of suicide, Brazil, 1974.
•Ramon Aguilar Guillen, member of the Christian community of the parish of Suchitoto, El
Salvador, killed, 1980.
•Margarida Alves, landless campesina, president of the Union of Rural Workers, Alagou
Grande, Paraíba, Brazil, killed, 1983.
•Bishop Antonio Fragoso (1920-2006), bishop Crateús, Brazil, defender of the poor and the
indigenous.
13 •St. Pontian, Pope, and St. Hippolytus, priest, martyrs, c. 235.
•Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), nurse, died.
•St. Tikhon of Zadonsk (1724-1783), bishop, monk.
“No longer should our brothers be seen wandering the roads and in the squares, starving and trembling with cold,
under the icy north wind, naked members of the Body of Christ. . . . There ought to be beggars and destitute persons no
longer. All should be equal.”
St. Tikhon
• Blessed Jacob Gapp (1897-1943), Austrian, Marist priest and martyr of the Nazis,
guillotined in the Plotenzee prison, Germany.
“The commandment of love of neighbor is absolute and makes no allowance of discrimination based on nationality or
religion.”
Fr. Jacob Gapp, S.M.
• Jim McGinnis, Pax Christi Teacher of Peace, co-founder of Parenting for Peace and Jsutice
Network, died 2009.
"In every era, God raises up prophets to point the way, and continues to work through human events to give us signs of
hope. God offers every one of us...a chance to participate in the nonviolent transformation of our world."
Jim McGinnis
14 •Henry David Thoreau jailed for tax resistance to Mexican American War, 1846.
•St. Maximilian Kolbe, OFM Conv, priest and martyr, died at Auschwitz, 1941.
“No one in the world can change Truth. What we can and should do is to seek Truth and serve it when we have found
it. The real conflict is within. Beyond armies of occupation and the hecatombs of the extermination camps, two
irreconcilable enemies lie in the depths of every soul. And of what use are victories on the battlefield if we are defeated
in our innermost personal selves?”
Last editorial of Fr. Maximilian Kolbe in Knight
•Alceu Amoroso Lima, Brazilian Catholic philosopher, journalist, writer, literary critic, died
1983.
“I have loved. I had children and grandchildren.. . . I have adored God. I have sinned. . . . I was always a mediocre
soul. I was never a ‘professional’ in anything. . . . I never talked to my barber. I discussed with Bernanos. I conversed
three hours with Thomas Merton. I crossed the Andes on horseback. . . . The virtue I most adore is naturalness. The
vice I most detest is phariseeism. . . . I will die when God wishes.”
Alceu Amoroso Lima
•The prophet Micah (Byzantine calendar)
• Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004), Polish-America; poet and social critic; born in Vilna,
Lithuania; died in Cracow, Poland.
15 •The Assumption of Mary
“Mary’s Assumption restores and reintegrates women’s bodilness into the very mystery of God.”
Ivone Gebara & Maria Clara Bingemer
•Birth of Monseñor Oscar Arnulfo Romero, El Salvador.
16 •Brother Roger of Taizé, founder of Taizé, killed, 2005
•St. Stephen, king of Hungary, 975- 1038
•Coco Erbetta, catechist and university lecturer, martyr of the Argentinean people’s struggle,
1976.
17 •St. Joan Delanou (1666-1736), foundress of the Sisters of St. Ann of the Providence of
Saumur, France.
18 •St. Jane Frances de Chantal, wife, widow, founder of the Sisters of Visitation (1562-1641).
•Saint Alberto Hurtado, S.J., (1901-1952), Chilean apostle of the poor.
“Marx said that religion was the opium of the people. But I also know that charity can be the opium of the rich.”
“Christ stumbles through our streets in the person of so many poor whop are hungry, thrown out of their miserable
lodgings because of sickness or destitution. Christ has no home! And we who have the good fortune to have one and have
food to satisfy our hunger, what are we doing about it?”
Albert Hurtado, S.J.
19 •St. John Eudes, French priest, founder of the Congregation of Jesus and Mary (1601-1680).
•Sarah, matriarch of the Jewish people, wife of Abraham.
20 •St. Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, doctor of the Church, 1091-1153.
“The love of poverty makes us kings.”
St. Bernard
•Jonathan Daniels, Episcopal seminarian, killed during the civil rights campaign, Alabama,
US, 1965.
“I lost fear. . . when I began to know in my bones and sinews that I had been truly baptized into the Lord's death and
Resurrection, that in the only sense that really matters I am already dead, and my life is hid with Christ in God. I began
to lose self-righteousness when I discovered the extent to which my behavior was motivated by worldly desires and by
the self-seeking messianism of Yankee deliverance! The point is simply, of course, that one's motives are usually
mixed, and one had better know it.”
Jonathan Daniels
•Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968.
•Rosa Cisneros Aguilar, Anglican lawyer killed, El Salvador, 1981.
•Samuel, prophet and judge.
21 •St. Pius X, Pope (1835-1914).
•Fr. Mauricio Lefevre, OMI, Canadian missionary, killed in Bolivia, 1971.
•Benigno Aquino, Filipino leader, assassinated at the airport on his return from exile, Manila,
the Philippines, 1983.
“One can fight hatred with greater hatred, but [former Filipino president Ramón] Magsaysay proved that it is more
effective to fight hatred with greater Christian love. . . .
“I have decided to pursue my freedom struggle through the path of nonviolence, fully cognizant that this may be the
longer and the more arduous road. If I have made the wrong decision, only I, and maybe my family , will suffer. . . .But
by taking the road of revolution, how many lives, other than mine, will have to be sacrificed? . . .
“I refuse to believe that it is necessary for a nation to build its foundations on the bones of its young. . . . Filipinos are
still killing each other in ever increasing numbers. This blood-letting must cease. This madness must cease.
“I think it can be stopped if all Filipinos can get together as true brothers and sisters and search for a healing solution
in a genuine spirit of give and take. We must transcend our petty selves, forget our hurts and bitterness, cast aside
thoughts of revenge, and let sanity, reason, and, above all, love of country prevail during our gravest hour.”
Testimony of Benigno Aquino, at US House Subcommittee hearing, 6/23/83
22 •The Queenship of Mary
•Ignazio Silone (1900-1978), Italian novelist, author of Bread and Wine
“Are we on the side of the men condemned to hard labor — or of their keepers?”
Ignazio Silone
•Jürg Weis, Swiss doctor and theologian in solidarity with the people of El Salvador, killed
by the National Police, Las Flores, Cabañas, El Salvador, 1988.
23 •St. Rose of Lima, virgin, Dominican tertiary, cared for the homeless, the elderly and the sick
(1586-1617)(died 24 August 1617)
“When we serve the poor and the sick, we serve Jesus. We must not fail to help our neighbors, because in them we
serve Jesus.”
St. Rose of Lima
•Sr. Carla Piette, M.M, U. S. Maryknoll missionary to Chile and El Salvador, died in flash
flood, in Chalatenango, El Salvador, 1980.
“...that poverty of spirit that comes with the awareness of our limitations is ever present. God never ceases to teach us
many things as we try to teach others.”
Sr. Carla Piette, M.M.
24 •St. Bartholomew, apostle, martyr.
•Simone Weil, French philosopher, died in England, 1943.
“A single piece of bread given to a hungry person is enough to save a soul — if it is given in the right way.”
Simone Weil, First and Last Notebooks
•Fr. John Anthony Kaiser, US missionary, Mill Hill father, for 36 years in Kenya, critic of
violence and corruption, killed near Naivasha, Kenya, 2000
25 •St. Louis, king of France, 1214 - 1270.
“Be kindly disposed toward the poor, the wretched, and afflicted; help them as much as you can and console them. Thank
God for all the blessings he has bestowed on you so that you may be worthy to receive greater ones. Be just toward your
subjects; in matters of justice adhere to the line, departing neither to the right nor to the left. Incline to the side of the poor
rather than to the rich until you are certain where the truth lies. Take care that all your subjects are safeguarded in justice
and peace...”
Spiritual Testament of St. Louis to his son
•Fr. Alejandro Dordi, Padre “Sandro,” Italian missionary in the parish of the Crucified Lord,
in Santa, department of Ancash, killed by the Sendero Luminoso on his way to celebrate
Mass in Rinconada, Peru, 1991.
•St. Joseph Calasanz, 1556-1648, Spanish priest, founder of a community of teachers for the
poor (which was dissolved and later reformed as the Piarists/Scolopi).
“Would that all religious would heed my admonition and strive to be truly humble and poor, for holy charity, the goal
of all orders, dwells between humility and poverty.”
St. Joseph Calasanz
26 •Our Lady of Czestechowa.
•Women’s suffrage amendment becomes law, 1920.
•Felipe de Jesús Chacón, campesino, catechist of El Salitre, Chalatenango, killed in El
Salvador, 1977.
27 •St. Monica, mother of St. Augustine, c. 332-387.
•Birth of Mother Teresa, 1910.
“Let us not use bombs and guns to overcome the world. Let us use love and compassion. Let us preach the peace of
Christ as He did. He went about doing good. If everyone could see the image of God in his neighbor, do you think we
should still need tanks and generals?”
Mother Teresa
•Hector Abad Gomez, doctor, university professor, political activist, founder and president of
the Permanent Committee in Defense of Human Rights, Medellín, Colombia, assassinated,
1987
“My program is the development of the people in each barrio. I will be their servant, not someone who orders them
around.”
-from an unprinted printed flier promoting the mayoral candidacy of Hector Abad Gomez
•Death of Dom Helder Câmara, retired bishop of Recife, Brazil, 1999.
28
“Personally I have so many mysteries which I have not succeeded in understanding. . . . When I arrive at the House of the
Father I will have a series of questions to ask the Lord. But that won’t be in the first moment, because I will be crazy with
joy to contemplate the Lord face to face and encounter my brothers and sisters. But I’ll get to it in a few days...Naturally
this is only a way of speaking, since I know that when I am face to face with the Lord, all the obscurities will blow away
like smoke.”
Dom Helder Câmara
•St. Augustine of Hippo, bishop, doctor of the church, 354-430.
“Find out how much God has given you and from it take what you need; the remainder which you do not require is
needed by others. The superfluities of the rich are the necessities of the poor. Those who retain what is superfluous
possess the goods of others.”
St. Augustine
•Civil Rights March on Washington, 1963.
“So I say to you, friends, that even though we must face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.
It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of
its creed — ‘we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’
“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia sons of former slaves and sons of former slave-owners will
be able to sit down at the table of brotherhood.
“I have a dream that one day, even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering
with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will be judged by the color of
their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today! . . .
“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough
places made plain, and the crooked places be made straight and the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all flesh shall
see it together.
“With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able
to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.
“With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand
up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.”
Martin Luther King, Jr., “I Have a Dream,” August 28, 1963
•Father Jean-Marie Vincent, Monfort priest, committed to human rights, assassinated in
Puerto Prince, Haiti, 1994.
•Jacob, the patriarch.
29 •Beheading of St. John the Baptist.
30 •St. Moses the Black, desert father, died 405.
•Feast of St. Rose of Lima in most of Latin America.
31 •St. Aidan, Bishop of Lindisfarne, England, missionary, 651.
•St. Raymond Nonnatus, 1204-1240, Catalonian priest, member of the Trinitarians
(Mercedarians) who ransomed slaves and captives.
•Solidarity trade union begun in Gdansk, Poland, 1980.
•John Leary, Catholic Worker, peacemaker, member of Ailanthus Resistance Community,
member of Haley House, co-founder of the Pax Christi Center on Conscience and War,
died, Boston, 1982.
“Whatever he did in terms of draft counselling, service to the imprisoned, to the hungry, to the homeless, to the unborn
was the fruit of the struggle to incarnate, to enflesh, to embody that God that is nonviolent Love.”
Fr. Charles McCarthy at John Leary’s funeral
•Monseñor Leonidas Proaño (1910-1988), bishop of Riobamba, Ecuador, advocate of the
indigenous peoples, died, 1988.
“Above all, I believe in God. I believe in God the Father. It is he who has given me life. He loves me infinitely. I
believe in Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh. According to God’s plan, he became poor, lived among the poor
and preached the Good News to the poor.
“I believe in the [person] that is within me and that is being saved by the Word of God. I believe in the person that is
within all of my brothers and sisters because this same Word of God was sent to save all of us. Therefore, I can also say
that I believe in hope. And for the same reason, I believe in justice. I believe in reconciliation, and I believe that we are
walking toward the Kingdom of God.
“I believe in the poor and the oppressed. I believe that they are tremendously capable, especially in their ability to
receive the salvation message, to understand it, and to put it into practice. It is true then that we are evangelized by the
poor.
“I believe in the church of the poor because Christ became poor. He was born poor, he grew up in poverty, he found
his disciples among the poor and he founded his Church with the poor.”
The creed of Bishop Leonidas Proaño
•Monsignor James Supple, founder of St. Thomas Aquinas Church and Catholic Student
Center, Ames, Iowa, died, 2003.
SEPTEMBER
1 •Julio Expósito, 19 year old student, Christian activist, martyr of the struggles of the
Uruguayan people, killed by the police, 1971.
•Jesús Jiménez, campesino, delegate of the Word, killed, El Salvador, 1979.
•François Mauriac (1885-1970), French novelist.
“Whoever possesses true charity in his heart cannot but serve Christ. Even those who think they hate him
have consecrated their lives to him: for Jesus is found disguised and masked amidst humans, hidden among
the poor, the sick, prisoners, and strangers.”
François Muariac
•Ruth
•Joshua (Byzantine calendar)
• St. Fiacre, hermit, flourished 670.
•Rafael Antonio Pacheco, 1957-1982, Honduras. Delegate of the Word, collaborator with
Caritas, arrested in Corquín, disappeared.
2 •Blessed John du Lac, archbishop of Arles, Francis de La Rochefoucauld, bishop of Arles,
John Francis Burté, OFM Conv., Apollinaris Morel de Posat, OFM Cap., Severin Girault,
TOR, and other martyrs of Paris, 1792.
•Father Arul Doss, 35 year old priest killed, Jamudhi, Orissa state, India, 1999.
3 •St. Gregory the Great, pope and doctor of the church, 540?-604.
“Perhaps it is not after all so difficult for a man to part with his possessions, but it is certainly difficult for him to part
with himself. To renounce what one has is a minor thing; but to renounce what one is, that is asking a lot.”
St. Gregory the Great, Homilies of the Gospels
•Rev. Samuel Bodiangan, United Church of Christ in the Philippines pastor, killed in Davao
City, Mindanao, Philippines, 1988.
•Sisters Denise Leclerc (French) and Jeanne Littlejohn (Maltese), sisters of the Order of Our
Lady of the Apostles, killed in Algiers, Algeria, 1995.
4 •Death of E. F. Schumacher, 1977.
“Justice relates to truth, fortitude to goodness, and temperantia to beauty; while prudence, in a sense, comprises all
three. The type of realism which behaves as if the good, the true, and the beautiful were too vague and subjective to be
adopted as the highest aims of social or individual life, or were the automatic spin-off of the successful pursuit of wealth
and power, has been aptly called “crackpot-realism.” Everywhere people ask: “What can I actually do?” The answer is as
simple as it is disconcerting: we can, each of us, work to put our own inner house in order. The guidance we need for this
work cannot be found in science or technology, the value of which utterly depends on the ends they serve; but it can still
be found in the traditional wisdom of [hu]mankind.”
E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful
•Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), died.
•Fr. André Jarlan, French missionary, shot by a stray bullet while reading the bible in his
room in población La Victoria, Santiago, Chile, 1984.
“You can crush the flower, but you cannot stop spring from coming.”
Banner carried in Santiago, Chile, in the funeral procession of Fr. André Jarlan
•St. Rose of Viterbo (1233-1251), Franciscan tertiary, died March 6, 1251.
•Moses (Byzantine calendar)
•Beyers Naude (1915-2004), South African, minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, antiapartheid activist.
Every day that I live becomes more meaningful, more fulfilled, and, for me, much more enriching. Time is too short,
so I've discovered, for all the tremendous revelations of the love of God which he has given to me - new insights,
new visions, new possibilities, new dimensions of human living, new relationships with people around me, new
depths of concern, and of agony, and of joy which make my life - yes, I can truly say it - so deeply meaningful that
I'm eager when I go to bed at night to awake the next morning and to say, 'It's a new day, a new life, it's a new
experience of God and of humankind.'
Beyers Naude
5 •Chief Crazy Horse died, 1877.
•Charles Peguy, French Catholic novelist, died in the Battle of the Marne, 1914.
•Mother Teresa of Calcutta, foundress of the Missionaries of Charity, died, 1997.
Love is not patronizing and charity isn’t about pity, it is about love. Charity and love are the same — with charity
you give love. So just don’t give money but reach out your hand instead. When I was in London, I went to see the
homeless people where our sisters have a soup kitchen. One man, who was living in a cardboard box, held my hand and
said, “It’s been a long time since I felt the warmth of a human hand.”
Mother Teresa, from Mother Teresa, A Simple Path, p. 85
6 •Jane Adams, founder of settlement houses, winner of 1931 Nobel Peace Prize, born, 1860.
(Died 1935.)
• Massacre of Suai, East Timor: killing of Fathers Tarcisius Dewanto, S.J., Hilario Pereira,
and Francisco Soares and scores of refugees in the church at Suai, by pro-Indonesian
militia, 1999.
Others killed in East Timor include Sister Margarida Soares (80 years old), Fr. Luis
Bonaparte do Rego, Fr. Yosef Daslam, and others in East Timor, 1999.
•Madeleine L’Engle, U. S. Christian author of A Wrinkle in Time and other books, died,
2007, at 88 years of age.
The Ordering of Love
Peace is the centre of the atom, the core
Of quiet within the storm...
Peace is not placidity: peace is
The power to endure the megatron of pain
With joy, the silent thunder of release,
The ordering of Love. Peace is the atom’s start,
The primal image: God within the heart.
Madeleine L’Engle
We have much to be judged on when [Jesus] comes, slums and battlefields and insane asylums, but these are the
symptoms of our illness, and the result of our failures in love. In the evening of life we shall be judged on love,
and not one of us is going to come off very well, and were it not for my absolute faith in the loving forgiveness of
my Lord I could not call on him to come.
Madeleine L'Engle, Irrational Season
7
•Cecilio Lucero (2009), priest of the parish of Catubig, in the province of Samar del Norte,
the Philippines, defender of human rights in the diocese of Catarman, killed by a group of
30 men, at 48 years of age.
•Blessed William of St. Thierry (c. 1085-1148), monk
“ A man who has lost his sense of wonder is a man dead.”
William of St.Thierry
•Christian Beyers Naudé, South African white activist against apartheid, died at the age of
79, 2004
8 •Nativity of the Mary, mother of God.
“Mary is the expression of the need of Salvadorans. Mary is the expression of the anxiety of those who are in prison.
Mary is the sorrow of the mothers who have lost their children and no one tells them where they are. Mary is the
tenderness which anxiously seeks a solution. Mary is, in our country, like a dead end, but hoping that God has to come
to save us.”
Archbishop Oscar Romero, December 24, 1978
•Blessed Frederic Ozanam, French layman, (1813-1853), spouse, father, university professor,
co-founder of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, died 1853.
“Our faith is weak because we cannot see God. But we can see the poor, and we can put our finger in their
wounds, and see the marks of the crown of thorns.”
Frederic Ozanam
•Roman Reyes Elias, catechist, disappeared in Santa Lucía Cotzumalguapa, Guatemala,
1983.
•John Howard Griffin (1920-1980), writer, author of Black Like Me, friend of Thomas
Merton.
“The world has always been saved by an Abrahmaic minority. . . There have always been a few who, in times of
great trouble, became keenly aware of the underlying tragedy, the needless destruction of humanity.”
John Howard Griffin
9 •St. Peter Claver, Jesuit priest, apostle of the black slaves in Cartagena, Colombia, 15811654
•Leo Tolstoy born, 1828.
“I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am sorry for him
and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back.”
Leo Tolstoy
•John Howard Griffin, author of Black Like Me, civil rights activist, friend of Thomas
Merton, died 1980.
•Father Alexander Men, Orthodox priest, martyred, 1990.
•Sister Hildegard (“Hilda”) Feldman, nurse and midwife, Swiss missionary of the Missionary
Society of Bethlehemites, and Ramón Rojas, catechist, martyred, in El Sande, Guachaves
municipality, Department of Nariño, Colombia, 1990.
“Death leads to resurrection; suffering, destruction, humiliation open the way to joy, triumph, and life.”
Sr. Hilda Feldman
•Archbishop Joachim Ruhuma, archbishop of Gitega, Burundi, murdered together with two
sisters and other persons, 1996.
“Burundians, my brothers and sisters, let me speak to the assassins and those who command them. I lift up my voice
- may the world listen. Their crimes are a shame for humanity. I beseech them: ‘Abandon your weapons, cease the
massacres. This is the price of peace. Do you want peace? So do we. Let others live in peace. Let us seek together a
common path in harmony and agreement.
“I ask all those who have lost their loved ones that they do not fall into the trap that leads to vengeance. It is clear
those who have lost their lives have lost them because of their tribe. The assassins who wish to avenge or defend their
tribe have just committed a crime which is the worst of all sins. They have denied God, their Creator. Let no others
allow themselves to be dragged by tribal sentiments to avenge the dead in this way. Killing again will not bring your
loved ones back to you.”
Archbishop Ruhuna, at a July 23, 1996 funeral for massacred Burundis
•Sisters Celeste Carvalho Pinto, Domingas Correia de Sousa, Domingas Guterres, Ana Lisa
Soares Martinho, Jucelina de Lourdes, and Maria Teresinha Gusmao, killed at Baucau,
East Timor, 1999.
10 •Inspiration Day of the Missionaries of Charity.
On the train to Darjeeling, India, Mother Teresa experienced a call from God to serve the
poorest of the poor, 1946. She subsequently founded the Missionaries of Charity, to care
for the poorest of the poor.
A girl came from outside India to join the Missionaries of Charity, We have a rule that new arrivals must go to the
Home for the Dying. So I told this girl, “You saw Father during Holy Mass, with what love and care he touched Jesus
in the Host. Do the same when you go to the Home for the Dying, because it is the same Jesus you will find there in the
broken bodies of the poor.” And they went. After three hours the newcomer came back and said with a big smile. . . ,
“Mother, I have been touching the Body of Christ for three hours. . . When we arrived there they brought a man who
had fallen into a ditch and had been there for some time. He was covered with wounds and dirt and maggots, and I
cleaned him, and I knew I was touching the Body of Christ.”
Mother Teresa of Calcutta
•Ana Julia Escobar, 16 year old catechist, community leader, killed, Tenango, Suchitoto
municipality, El Salvador, 1980.
•Policarpo Chem, delegate of the Word, well known catechist, founder of the Legion of
Mary, and founder and director of the credit and loan cooperative of San Cristóbal, Baja
Verapaz, Guatemala, arrested and tortured by government security forces, 1984.
“I only ask God to pardon those who have killed my son.”
Policarpo’s mother at his funeral
•Conrado “Rading” Fajurano, pastoral worker, missionary with the Lumad tribe, composer
of hymns, killed in Tulunan, North Cotabato, Philippines, 1988.
•.Jacinto Quiroga, pastoral worker in Santander, Colombia, assassinated in the presence of
his family, 1990
11 •Overthrow of the government of Salvador Allende, Chile, 1973.
•Sebastiana Mendoza, indigenous, catechist, promoter of Caritas in El Quiché, martyr for the
faith and solidarity, abducted from the Guatemala City Cathedral, Guatemala, 1981.
•Martyrs of the church of Saint Jean Juan Bosco, in Puerto Príncipe, Haití, 1988.
•Assassination of Antoine Izmery, Haitian businessman and friend of the poor, Haiti, 1993.
•Fr. Karl Albrecht, S.J., German Jesuit missionary, killed in East Timor, 1999.
•Fr. Mychal Judge, OFM (1933-2001), Franciscan friar, New York Fire Department
chaplain, recovering alcoholic, killed at the World Trade Center, 2001
Lord, take me where you want me to go;
Let me meet who you want me to meet;
Tell me what you want me to say
And keep me out of your way.
Fr. Mychal Judge, OFM
12 •Steven Biko, black leader, killed in detention, South Africa, 1977.
“We are aware that the white man is sitting at our table. We know that he has no right to be there; we want to remove
him from our table, strip the table of all the trappings put on it by him, decorate it in true African terms, settle down and
then ask him to join us on our terms if he wishes.”
Steve Biko, in Donald Woods, Biko, p. 60
•José Alfonso “Foncho” Acevedo, celebrator of the Word and pastoral worker in the chapel
of San Ramón, El Salvador, husband and father of five, journalist, abducted and killed,
1982.
13 •St. John Chrysostom, died 407.
“Even though you are rich, if you spend more than you need to, you shall have to render an account of the money
entrusted to you. . . . You have received more than others not that you may use it for yourself alone, but that you may
be a good steward for those others.”
St. John Chrysostom
•John Troyer, U.S. Mennonite missionary, killed, Palamá, Guatemala, 1981.
14 •Triumph of the Cross.
“It was not only then that Jesus began to carry his cross. A cross is not just a piece of wood, it is everything that makes
life difficult; the ‘crosses’ we have to bear in life. It is everything that causes us suffering, especially in our efforts to be
just and to create more fraternal social relationships. That is carrying the crosses day by day. Jesus uncomplainingly
carried the crosses of his life as a poor person and an itinerant prophet.... Now he does not simply accept the cross that is
imposed on him by the Jews and the Romans. He embraces it freely out of love. He transforms the cross from a symbol of
condemnation into a sacrament of liberation.”
Leonardo Boff, Way of the Cross, Way of Justice
•Fr. Miguel Woodward, martyr of the workers of Valaparaíso, Chile, 1973.
•Alfredo Aguirre and Fortunato Collazos, leaders of the asentamiento Jan Pablo II, martyrs of
their commitment to their sisters and brothers, killed by Sendero Luminoso, in the district
of San Juan de Lurigancho, Peru, 1991.
In response to the statement of the Senderista, “Get out of here, our complaint isn’t against you,” Alfredo responded:
“If it is against my neighbor, it is against me.”
15 •Mary, Mother of Sorrows.
“Even when all despaired, at the hour when Christ was dying on the cross, Mary, serene, awaited the hour of the
resurrection. Mary is the symbol of the people who suffer oppression and injustice. Theirs is the calm suffering that
awaits the resurrection. It is Christ suffering, the suffering of the Church, which does not accept the present injustices, but
awaits without rancor the moment when the Risen One will return to give us the redemption we await.”
Archbishop Oscar Romero, December 1, 1977
•Central American Independence Day.
•Four black school girls killed in Sunday school bombing, Birmingham, Alabama, 1963.
•Victor Jara, Chilean songwriter, killed in the National Stadium, Santiago, Chile, 1973.
•Arturo Hillerns, doctor among the poor in Puerto Saavedra, 29 year old husband and father,
former diocesan director of the Catholic University Student Association, martyr in service
of the poor, Chile, 1973.
•Fr. Antonio Llids, Spanish priest, disappeared, martyr of the prisons of Chile, 1974.
•Pedro Pío Cortés, Achí Indian, catechist, delegate of the Word, in Rabinal, Baja Verapaz,
Guatemala, 1981.
•Fr. Giuseppe Puglisi, pastor of San Gaetano Parish, Brancaccio, Palermo, Sicily, Italy,
opponent of the Mafia, killed on his 56th birthday, 1993.
16 •St. Cornelius, Pope and martyr (d. 253), and St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage (martyred,
September 14, 258)
“It is a barren prayer that does not go hand in hand with alms.”
“When we have pity on the poor, we are lending to God at interest; and when we give to the lowly, we are giving to
God. In a spiritual sense, we are sacrificing a sweet fragrance to Him.”
“Whereas the Lord tells us to sell, we buy instead and accumulate.”
St. Cyprian of Carthage
•Fr. James “Guadalupe” Carney, S.J., US missionary, accompanying Honduran guerrillas,
1983.
“To love Christ really is to try to live as He lived. If I love the poor as Christ did, I, too, freely choose to become
one with them, live with them, share their lives, besides trying to use my talents to help and teach them... He freely
chose to become one of the masses of poor people of the world, of the eighty percent of the world who ‘have not,’
rejecting the comfortable life of the twenty percent who ‘have’ (even though he loved them too). And he tore into the
system and those that held the masses in the bondage of ignorance and poverty....And he was killed for it. To be
killed for my following of Christ would be my greatest joy too....”
Fr. James Guadalupe Carney
17 •Hildegaard of Bingen, nun, musician, theologian, mystic, 1098-1179.
•Stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi, on Mount Alverna, Italy, 1224.
•St. Robert Bellarmine, S.J., bishop and doctor, 1542-1621.
“If anyone would contend that these superfluous goods are not to be given to the poor out of the rigor of the law, one
cannot truly deny that they are to be given to them our of charity, for it matters little, God knows, whether one goes to hell
for lack of justice or for lack of charity.”
Saint Robert Bellarmine, S.J., The Art of Dying Well
•Juan Macías, Dominican lay brother, confessor of the faith and servant of the poor, in
colonial Peru, died 1645.
•Paulita Ubeda de Morales, teacher in Estelí, Nicaragua, killed by the Guardia Nacional,
1978.
•Augusto Cotto, Salvadoran Baptist, involved in the revolutionary struggle, died in a plane
accident, 1980.
•Alirio, Carlos and Fabian Buitrago, Geraldo Ramírez and Marcos Marón, campesinos,
catechist of the parish of Cocorna, Colombia, killed, 1982.
•Julian Bac, celebrator of the Word, and Guadalupe Lara, catechist, martyrs of the parish of
Santa Lucía de Cotzumalguapa, Escuintla, Guatemala, 1983.
•Adrienne Von Speyer, (1902-1967), medical doctor, mystic, writer, stigmatist, wife and
widow.
• Sister Leonella Sgorbati, Italian sister, killed in Mogadishu, Somalia, 2006.
18 •St. Joseph Cupertino, Franciscan priest, died 1663.
•St. Juan Macias, O.P., (1585-1645) lay brother, porter of the Dominican convent of St. Mary
Magdalene, Lima, Peru, “Father of the Poor.”
•Dag Hammarskjold, United Nations Secretary General, died in plane crash, the Congo,
1961.
“The ‘great’ commitment is so much easier than the ordinary everyday one — and can all too easily shut our hearts
to the latter. A willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice can be associated with, and even produce, a great hardness of
heart....
“The ‘great’ commitment all too easily obscures the ‘little’ one. But without the humility and warmth which you
have to develop in your relations to the few with whom you are personally involved, you will never be able to do
anything for the many. Without them, you will live in a world of abstractions, where your solipsism, your greed for
power, and your death-wish lack one opponent which is stronger than they – love. Love, which is without an object, the
outflowing of a power released by self-surrender, but which would remain a sublime sort of super-human self-assertion,
powerless against the negative forces within you, if it were not tamed by the yoke of human intimacy and warmed by
its tenderness. It is better for the health of the soul to make one [person] good than ‘to sacrifice oneself for
[hu]mankind.’ For a mature [person], these are not alternatives, but two aspects of self-realization, which mutually
support each other, both being the outcome of one and the same choice.”
Dag Hammarskjold, Markings
•Miguel (Michel) Angel Quiroga Gaona (1972-1998), Colombian Marianist priest, killed by
paramilitaries while confronting them on behalf of his people, in his parish of Lloro, 1998.
19 •St. Januarius, bishop of Naples, died 305.
•Fr. Juan Alinsa, Spanish missionary, worker-priest, killed by police, Chile, 1973.
“If we go down, something of your hope goes down with us. If we rise to new life from the ashes, this is something
newly born in you.”
Juan Alinsa
• Sister Yolando Ceron, Sister of Mary, director of social action for the diocese of Tumaco,
Colombia, killed, 2001.
•Bishop Raymond Lucker, retired bishop of New Ulm, MN, died, 2001.
20 •Sts. Andrew Kim Taegon, priest (1821-1846), and Paul Chong Hasang, lay apostle and
catechist (1794-1839), and 101 other martyrs of Korea, 1838 - 1867.
“When he was in the world, the Lord Jesus bore countless sorrows and by his own passion and death founded his
Church; now he gives it increase through the sufferings of his faithful. No matter how fiercely the powers of this world
oppress and oppose the Church, they will never bring it down....
“Because we have become the one Body, should not our hearts be grieved for the members who are suffering? Because
of the human ties that bind us, should we not feel deeply the pain of our separation.
“But, as the
Scriptures say, God numbers the very hairs of our head and in his all-embracing providence he has care over us all.”
Fr. Andrew Kim Taegon, final exhortation from prison
•Fr. Francisco Luis Espinoza, Spanish missionary, killed in Estelí, Nicaragua, 1978.
•Orlando Letelier, Chilean ex-chancellor, killed by DINA, the Chilean secret police, in
Washington, DC, 1976.
•Fr. José Luis Arroyave Restrepo, Commune No. 13, west Medellin, Colombia, killed by
paramilitaries, 2002
21 •St. Matthew, apostle.
•Henri J.-M. Nouwen, Dutch priest, spiritual writer, chaplain at L’Arche Daybreak, Canada,
died, 1996.
“It is my growing conviction that in Jesus the mystical and the revolutionary ways are not opposites, but two sides of
the same human mode of experiential transcendence. I am increasingly convinced that conversion is the individual
equivalent of revolution. Therefore, every real revolutionary is challenged to be a mystic at heart, and one who walks
the mystical way is called to unmask the illusory quality of human society, Mysticism and revolution are two aspects of
the same attempt to bring about radical change. No mystics can prevent themselves from becoming social critics, since
in self-reflection they will discover the roots of a sick society. Similarly, no revolutionaries can avoid facing their own
human condition, since in the midst of their struggle for a new world they will find that they are also fighting their own
reactionary fears and false ambitions.”
Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer
22 •Fr. Noel Stanton, abducted from his parish and killed, Capetown, South Africa, 1990.
•St. Thomas Villanova, Augustinian, Bishop of Valencia, Spain (1488 - 1555).
“If you desire that God should hear your prayer, hear the voice of the poor.”
St. Thomas Villanova
•The prophet Jonah (Byzantine calendar)
23 •The Conception of St. John the Baptist (Byzantine calendar)
•Henry Bello Ovalle, activist, martyr in solidarity with the youth in his barrio, Bogota,
Colombia, 1989.
•Sergio Rodríguez, worker and university student, martyr of the struggle for justice,
Venezuela, 1993.
•Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet, died, 1973.
•Saint Padre Pio, OFM Cap, (1887-1968) priest, mystic, stigmatist, confessor.
24 •Marlene Kegler, student and worker, martyr for faith and service among the university
students of La Plata, Argentina, 1976
25 •St. Cleopas and companion, martyrs, followers of the Lord on the road to Emmaus. (Roman
martyrology)
•St. Sergius of Radonezh, Russian hermit and abbot (c. 1315-1392).
•Sister Erminia Cazzaniga (Italian) and Mother Celeste de Carvalho Pinto (East Timorese),
Deacon Fernando dos Santos, Deacon Jacinto Xavier, and seminarian Valerio, and others,
killed returning from Los Palos, East Timor, 1999.
•John Menezes, Aslam Martin, and five other members of the Institute for Justice and Peace,
Karachi, Pakistan, murdered. 2002.
26 •Saints Cosmos and Damian, martyrs - legendary doctors, the “moneyless ones” who did not
charge, died about 303 in Syria.
•Lázaro Condo and Cristóbal Pajuña, campesino martyrs of the Ecuadoran people, Christian
leaders in their communities in the struggle for land reform, killed in Riobamba, Ecuador,
1974.
•Manuel de Jesús Tzalam Coj, health promoter, catechist, killed during a celebration of the
Word, Salcic, Municipalidad San Luís, El Petén, Guatemala, 1986.
“If you cannot struggle for your brother, what good is your life”
Manuel de Jesús Tzalam Coj
•Robert Lax, “poet and prophet of slowing down,” died, Olean, NY, 2000.
“I think that the whole universe is so alive that is as though there were a roomful of angels.”
Robert Lax, interview 1997 (Merton and Friends)
•Father Nicholaspillai Pakia Ranjit, Sri Lankan priest, coordinator of Jesuit Refugee Service
work in Mannar, Sri Lanka, killed by a claymore mine while driving supplies to displaced
people near Kilinochch, 2007.
27 •St. Vincent de Paul, founder of the Congregation of the Mission, cofounder, with St. Louise
de Marillac, of the Sisters of Charity, 1580?-1660.
“You will find that charity is a heavy burden to carry, heavier than the kettle of soup and the basket of bread. But
you must your gentleness and your smile keep. Giving soup and bread isn’t all the rich can do. They [the poor] are your
masters, terribly sensitive and exacting as you will see. But the uglier and dirtier they are, the more unjust and bitter,
the more you must give them your love. It is only because of your love — only your love — that the poor will forgive
you the bread you give them.”
St. Vincent de Paul
•Sister María Augusta Rivas, 70 year old Sister of the Good Shepherd, La Florida,
Chanchamayo province, Junín department, prelature of San Ramón, killed by the Sendero
Luminosa in Peru, 1990. {possibly 29 October}
“It seems that these might be the last days of my life; so I must take advantage of the time, which flies by so quickly.
Otherwise I shall show up in eternity with empty hands,”
Sister Maria Augusta Rivas
28 •Sts. Lawrence Ruiz, Filipino husband and father, Antonio González and Domingo Ibañes,
Spanish Dominican priests, and thirteen others, martyrs in Nagasaki, Japan, 1633 - 1637.
•St. Wenceslaus, martyr, king (907?-929)
• William Quijano, 21 year, member of the community of San Egidio in San Salvador, killed
by a gang because of his commitment to youth, 2009.
29 •Michaelmas: Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, archangels.
•Apolinario Serrano, José López, Félix Salas y Patricia Puertas, Salvadoran labor leaders
killed, 1979.
•Shusaku Endo (1923-1996), Japanese Catholic novelist/writer, died.
“It was to share men's pain that I carried my cross.”
from Silence
“In ‘maternal religion’ Christ comes to prostitutes, worthless people, misshapen people and forgives them. God is not a
punishing God, but a God who asks that children be forgiven.”
from A Life of Jesus
“A novelist cannot write about what is holy," Endo says. "He cannot depict the holy Christ, but he can write about
Jesus through the eyes of the sort of people who stepped on the fumie, or the eyes of his disciples and others who
betrayed the Christ.”
Shusaku Endo
•Fr. Jorge Sánchez, Ramírez, 62 year old pastor of Restrepo, Colombia, killed with three
others, 2002
30 •St. Jerome, priest, doctor of the church, translator of the Bible into Latin (345 420).
St. Augustine said that God writes in two books. The first is the book of creation, of life, of history; here God is
writing daily in our lives and in the lives of all peoples. But because of sin we cannot read this book adequately, though
it is the primary book. The second book is the Bible. God gives us the Bible so that we can see and read the reality of
the first book more clearly.
•Elie Wiesel, Jewish author and Holocaust survivor, born, 1928.
“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in the camp, which turned my life into one long night, seven times
cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into
wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.
“Never shall I forge those flames which consumed my faith forever.
“Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I
forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams into dust. Never shall I forget these
things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.”
Elie Wiesel, Night
•Honorio Alejandro Núñez, celebrator of the Word and seminarian, martyr of the struggles of
the Honduran people, 1981.
•Vicente Matute and Francisco Guevara, indigenous martyrs in the struggle for land,
Honduras, 1991.
•José Luís Cerrón, university student, martyr in solidarity with the youth and the poor in
Huancayo, Peru, 1991.
•Haiti coup overthrowing elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide, 1991.
“Between violence and revenge, reconciliation shall intervene. Between impunity and wickedness, justice shall
prevail.”
Jean-Bertrand Aristide
•Sr. Anna Jurevic, catechist, organist, stabbed to death outside the Caritas office, Kakanj,
Bosnia-Herzogovina, 1996.
OCTOBER
1 •St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus of Lisieux, French, Carmelite nun, 1873 - 1897.
“The significance of our smallest acts! The significance of the little things we leave undone! The protests we do not
make, the stands we do not take, we who are living in the world.”
Dorothy Day, Therese
•Julio Rocca, Italian coworker, martyr of Solidarity, Peru, 1992
• Romano Guardini, priest, theologian, 1965.
“What I wanted from the beginning — initially by instinct, then always more deliberately — was to bring the truth to
light.”
Romano Guardini
•Raffaele Di Bari, Italian Comboni missionary priest, killed about 40 kilometers south of
Kitgun, Uganda, by rebels, 2000.
2 •Guardian Angels.
•Mohandas K. Gandhi born, 1869.
“Whether you wet your hands in the water-basin, fan the fire with the bamboo bellows, set down endless columns of
figures at a desk, labour in the rice-field with your head in the burning sun and your feet in the mud, or stand at work
before the smelting furnace, so long as you do not do all this with just the same religiousness as if you were monks
praying in a monastery, the world will never be saved.”
Mohandas K. Gandhi
•Bishop Jesús Emilio Jaramillo, bishop of Arauca, Colombia, martyr for peace and service,
1989.
3 •Death of St. Francis of Assisi, 1226.
•María Magdalena Enríquez, Baptist, press secretary of the non-governmental Human Rights
Commission of El Salvador, martyred, 1980.
•Carlo Carretto, Little Brother of Jesus, spiritual writer, died, 1988.
When you feed the hungry
When you defend the weak
you believe in the resurrection.
When you have the courage to marry
When you welcome the newly-born child
When you build your home
you believe in the resurrection.
When you wake at peace in the morning
When you sing to the rising sun
When you go to work with joy
you believe in the resurrection.
Carlo Carretto
•Manuel Alfredo Velásquez, member of Santa Lucía parish, El Salvador, martyred 1980.
•Brother Antonio Bargiggia, 43 year old Italian Missionary, member of Friends of the Poor,
project director for Jesuit Refugee services, killed, October 3, near Kibimbi, Burundi, 2000.
“Our charism [in the community of ‘Friends of the Poor] is that of living the gospel among the poorest and most
abandoned people, trying to live a life like that of Jesus in the simplicity of Nazareth. And that’s why we chose to be
in the area of Buterere and why we live in a house like the people here.
“Prayer, poverty and charity to those who have the greatest need are the guiding principles of our presence; manual
work and weariness make us feel closer to these poor people and help us to understand their suffering and the
difficulties they have to endure.
“This choice to share their lives with them comes from a deep conviction that religious life should as far as possible,
reflect the life of Jesus, in order to be able to transmit goodness and love to the world.
“In our smallness we want to be this reflection for the people of our area.”
Antoine Bargiggia, May, 2000
4 •St. Francis of Assisi, the Little Poor Man of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan orders, c.
1181-1226.
“The peace which you proclaim with words must dwell even more abundantly in your hearts. Do not provoke others to
anger or give scandal. Rather, let gentleness draw them to peace, goodness, and concord. This is our vocation: to heal
wounds, to bind what is broken, to bring home those who are lost.”
St. Francis, in Legend of the Three Companions
“If we want to own things, we also have to have weapons to defend ourselves. This is where all the quarrels and battles
that make love impossible come from. And this is why we don’t want to own anything.”
St. Francis of Assisi
•Omar Venturelli, martyr, committed to the poorest, in Temuco, Chile, 1976.
•Marbel López, member of the parish of Zacamil, El Salvador, martyred, 1980.
•Elsa Elena Pérez Paredes, member of the parish of Santiago Texancuangos, El Salvador,
killed, 1980.
5 •Miguel Angel Acevedo, member of the parish of San Ramón, El Salvador, martyred, 1980.
•Blessed Alberto Marvelli (1918-1944), engineer, leader of Catholic Action in Rimini, Italy,
cared for the poor and liberated Nazi train cars by breaking open locks.
6 •St. Bruno, priest, founder of the Carthusians, a community of monks living in solitude,
1030?- 1101.
•Blessed Marie Rose Durocher, Canadian, founder of the Sisters of the Holy Names,
dedicated to the education and care of the poor, 1811-1849.
7 •Our Lady of the Rosary
•Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, of Johannesburg, South Africa, Nobel Peace Prize
winner, opponent of apartheid, born, 1931.
“We who have the privilege of working in situations of injustice and oppression, where God’s children have their noses
rubbed in the dust daily and their God-given dignity is trodden callously underfoot with a cynical disregard for their
human rights, are filled with an anomalous exhilaration. We are filled with an indomitable hope and exhilaration
because we know that ultimately injustice and oppression and evil and exploitation cannot prevail and that the
kingdoms of this world are becoming the kingdom of our God and his Christ.”
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
•José Osman Rodríguez, campesino, Delegate of the Word, martyr in Honduras, 1978.
•Fr. Manuel Reyes Mónico, parish priest, pastor of the parish 10 de septiembre, San
Salvador, El Salvador, martyred, 1980.
•Eileen Egan, peacemaker, advocate of nonviolence, friend of the world’s poor, worker with
Catholic Relief Services, co-founder of Pax Christi USA, died, 2000.
“My life has had a single strain: to see Jesus in every human being, to realize that each one is inviolable and sacred in
the eyes of God, and then to translate that into everything I do. This is the heart of anything I’ve done, the heart of my
peace work.”
Eileen Egan
8 •Nestor Paz Zamora, seminarian, university student, son of a general, killed in Bolivian
revolutionary struggle, 1970.
“Love for me is the grace to find solutions for other’s problems, where you, Lord, show yourself alive.”
Nestor Paz
•Penny Lernoux, author on the Latin American church, died, 1989.
“I feel that I’m walking down a new path. It’s not physical fear or fear of death, because the courageous poor in Latin
America have taught me a theology of life that, through solidarity and our common struggle, transcends death. Rather, it
is a sense of helplessness — that I who always wanted to be the champion of the poor am just as helpless — that I, too,
must hold out my begging bowl; that I must learn — am learning — the ultimate powerlessness of Christ. It is a cleansing
experience. So many things seem less important, or not at all, especially the ambitions.”
Penny Lernoux
9 •Patriarch Abraham (Roman martyrology)
•Ché Guevara, doctor, revolutionary, killed, Bolivia, 1967.
“Christians must definitively choose the revolution, and especially in our continent where the Christian faith is so
important among the masses. When the Christians in Latin America take seriously the revolutionary teachings of the
Gospel, the revolution will become invincible. Until now, Christians have permitted their doctrines to be manipulated
by reactionaries”
Ché Guevara
•St. Denis, bishop of Paris, and companions, martyred, 258?
•St. John Leonardi, priest, Italy (1541?-1609)
•St. Luís Beltran, OFM, Spanish missionary to Colombia, 1581.
•Blessed John Henry Newman, Cardinal, (1801-1890). His feast is on the day he was
received into the Catholic Church in 1845.
God has created me to do Him some definite service.
He has committed some work to me
which he has not committed to another.
I have a mission.
I may never know it in this life
but I shall be told it in the next.
I am a link in a chain,
a bond of connection between persons.
He has not created me for naught.
I shall do good — I shall do His work;
I shall be an angel of peace,
a preacher of truth in my own place,
while not intending it,
if I but keep His commandments.
Therefore I will trust Him.
Whatever I am, I can never be thrown away.
If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him.
In perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him.
If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him.
He does nothing in vain.
He knows what He is about.
He may take away my friends.
He may throw me among strangers.
He may make me feel desolate,
make my spirits sink,
hide my future from me —
still He knows what He is about.
John Henry Cardinal Newman
•Magda Trocmé, rescuer of Jews during the Second World War, in the village of Le
Chambon sur Lignon, France, with her husband, Reformed Church pastor André Trocmé,
died, 1996.
“I do not hunt around to find people to help. But I never close my door, never refuse somebody who comes to me and
asks for something. This I think is my kind of religion. You see, it is a way of handling myself. When things happen,
not things I plan, but things sent by God or by chance, when people come to my door, I feel responsible.”
Magda Trocmé
10 •Saints Daniel, Samuel, Agnellus, Donulus, Leo, Nicholas, and Hugolinus, Franciscan
missionaries, martyrs, Ceuta, Morocco, 1227.
•St. Francis Borgia, S.J., (1510-1572) general of the Jesuits.
11 •Luís de Bolaños, Franciscan missionary, precursor of the indigenous missions, translator of
the catechism, apostle of the Guaraní, 1629.
•Humberto Lizardi, Chilean Methodist law student, shot, 1973
For those who do not have God, that they may find him”
We have wounds
but they take away our medicine.
We are hungry,
but they took away our bread.
And here we suffer
and there they are happy
and here we weep
and there they laugh
and here we die
and there they are happy and laugh
and we are poor
and they rich
we without possession
they owners
slaves
lords
But we, we have more:
we have light
we have water
we have life.
Life, water, light
are everlasting.
They will not perish with the dollar.
We have God.
Humberto Lizardi
•Fr. Joâo Bosco Burnier, S.J., Jesuit priest, shot while going to the defense of two women
being tortured, Riberão Bonita, Mato Grosso, Brazil, 1976. He died the next day.
“In this world of fear and force, it will be a miracle if justice triumphs in the end; but miracles do exist.”
João Bosco Burnier, in a letter to Cardinal Arns
•Marta Gonzalez de Baronetto and companions, martyrs for faith and service, Córdoba,
Argentina, 1976.
•Fr. Leonas Sapoka, parish priest of Luoke, Lithuania, tortured and killed in his home, 1980.
•Benito Hernández and companions, indigenous, martyrs in the struggle for land, in Hidalgo,
Mexico, 1983.
•Memorial of Blessed John XXIII (died June 3, 1963) – on anniversary of the convening of
the Second Vatican Council, 1962.
12 •Nuestra Senhora Aparecida, the black Madonna, patroness of Brazil.
•Christopher Columbus lands in the Western Hemisphere. 1492.
“What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is
the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it all the rest are not only useless but disastrous.
“Proof: the great travelers and colonizers of the Renaissance were, for the most part, men who perhaps were capable
of the things they did precisely because they were alienated from themselves. In subjugating primitive worlds, they
only imposed on them, with the force of cannons, their own confusion and their own alienation.”
Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert
•12 catechists of San Martin Jilotepeque, Chimaltenango, Guatemala, captured by the army,
taken to the church, tied up and shot, 1982.
•Marco Antonio Orozco, evangelical pastor, martyr for the cause of the poor, Guatemala,
1983.
13 •Our Lady of Fatima
•Madeleine Delbrêl (1904-1964), French Catholic lay woman, founder of équipes (small core
groups) of women living simply in community, advocate of dialogue with the Communists,
peace advocate, died.
14 •St. Callistus I, Pope and Martyr (d. 223?)
•Fr. Nerilito Satur, martyr for defending God’s Creation, killed in the Bukidnon province of
Central Mindanao, Philippines, 1991.
“The task of preserving and healing is a daunting one given human greed and the relentless drive of our plunder
economy. But we must not lose hope. God has gifted us with creativity and ingenuity. He has planted in our hearts a
love for our land, which bursts forth in our songs and poetry. We can harness our creativity in the service of life and
shun anything that leads to death....
“At the root of the problem we see an exploitative mentality, which is at variance with the Gospel of Jesus. This
expresses itself in acts of violence against fellow Filipinos. But it is not confined to the human sphere. It also infects
and poisons our relationship with our land and seas.”
Catholic Bishops of the Philippines,The Cry of the Land (January 1988)
• Mwalimu (Teacher) Julius Nyerere, African liberation leader, first president of Tanzania,
died at age 77, 1999.
15 •St. Teresa of Avila, Spanish nun, spiritual writer, doctor of the church, reformer of the
Carmelites, 1582.
“Some people have all they need and a good sum of money shut up in their safe as well. Because they avoid serious
sins, they think they have done their duty, They enjoy their riches and give an occasional alms, yet never consider that
their property is not their own, but that God has entrusted it to them to share with the poor. . . . We have no concern
with this except to ask God to enlighten such people. . . and to thank him for making us poor, which we should hold as
a special favor on his part.”
St. Teresa, Conceptions of the Love of God, II,8
•Antonio López, member of the parish of San Roque, martyred, El Salvador, 1980.
•Sister Gina Simionoto, Religious Educators of St. Dorothy, killed in an ambush by
guerrillas, Burundi, 2000.
16 •St. Hedwig, wife, friend of the poor, religious at Trebnitz, Silesia, Germany (1174?-1243)
•St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, Visitation sister, devotee of the Sacred Heart (1647 1690)
•World Food Day.
“We have indigestion from overeating, yet let our neighbor starve.”
Brother Carlo Carretto
•St. Marguerite d’Youville (1701-1771), wife, mother, widow, shelterer of poor women,
founder of the Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart, in Montreal, Québec. Died December 23,
1771.
•Digna Ochoa y Placido, Mexican human rights lawyer, worker with Miguel Pro Juarez
Human Rights Center, killed, 2001.
17 •St. Ignatius of Antioch, bishop, martyr, 107.
“Pay close attention to those who have wrong notions about the grace of Jesus Christ, which has come to us, and note how
at variance they are with God’s mind. They care nothing about love: they have no concern for widows or orphans, for the
oppressed, for those in prison or released, for the hungry or the thirsty. They hold aloof from the Eucharist and from
services of prayer, because they refuse to admit that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ who suffered for
our sins and whom, in his goodness, the Father raised from the dead.”
St. Ignatius of Antioch, letter to the Church at Smyrna
•Richard Michael Fernando, S.J., (1970-1996) Filipino Jesuit seminarian at the Center of the
Dove, Bantesy Prieb Technical School for the Handicapped, Cambodia, killed protecting
the students from an angry student threatening to lob a grenade, 1996.
I wish when I die, that people remember
not how great, powerful, or talented I was,
but that I served and spoke for the truth.
I gave witness to what is right.
I was sincere with all my words and actions.
In other words, I loved and followed Christ.
Richie Fernando, S.J., retreat diary, January 3, 1996
•Fr. Richard McSorley, S.J., peacemaker, died at 88, 2002.
•The prophet Hosea (Byzantine calendar)
18 •St. Luke, evangelist.
19 •Sts. Isaac Jogues and Jean de Brebeuf, S.J., and companions, North American martyrs. (St.
Isaac Jogues - 1607-1646- died October 18, 1647; St. Jean de Brebeuf 1593 - 1649 - died
March 16, 1648.)
A Bit of History
Those Jesuit fathers (wrote Isaac Jogues from New France)
who purpose volunteering for these wilds
and the service of their Indian brothers
had best leave behind all regret for
university degrees, honors, prerequisites.
The questions raise by their clients will be other
than the subtleties their minds
sharpened and shone on, elsewhere.
TO WIT: can they bear heartbreaking portages
survive on sour pemmican
live under intense extremes of heat, cold, solitude?
The times mitigate the questions, never quite stilling them.
As I learn, my middle cast cranium
bending to the intricacies, simplicities
of a new a b c.
Daniel Berrigan, Prison Poems
•Blessed Jerzy Popieluszko, (1947-1984), diocesan priest, supporter of Solidarity, abducted,
October 19, and killed, October 20, Poland, 1984.
“Do not fight by means of violence. Violence is a sign of weakness. Whatever cannot win by influencing the heart tries
to win by means of violence. The most splendid and lasting battles known to history are the battles of human thought.
The most ignoble and the shortest are the battles of violence. An idea which needs weapons to survive will die of itself.
The idea which prevails merely through the use of violence is perverted. A living idea conquers by itself. It is followed
by millions.”
Fr. Jerzy Popielusko, Mass for the Country, December 1982
•The prophet Joel (Byzantine calendar)
•St. Peter of Alcantara (1499-1562), Spanish Franciscan priest, reformer of the strict
observance, friend of St.Teresa of Avila.
20 •John Woolman, Pennsylvania Quaker, born, 1720. (Died October 7, 1772.)
“O that we who declare against wars, and acknowledge our trust to be in God only, may walk in the light, and therein
examine our foundations and motives in holding great estates! May we look upon our treasures, the furniture of our
houses, and our garments, and try whether the seeds of war have nourishment in these our possessions. Holding
treasures in the self-pleasing spirit is a strong plant, the fruit thereof ripens fast. A day of outward distress is coming,
and Divine love calls to prepare against it.”
John Woolman, A Plea for the Poor, IX
•Fr. Ray Herman, priest of the archdiocese of Dubuque, Iowa, U. S. missionary among the
Quechua, killed in Morochata, Cochabamba, Bolivia, 1975.
“Ever since college I have wanted to give everything to our Lord, and only since I have come to Morochata do I feel
that I am really happy and, to some degree at least, successful in giving all to Christ.”
Fr. Ray Herman
•Sisters Barbara Ann Muttra and Mary Joel Kolmer, U.S. missionaries in Liberia, killed,
1992.
21 •Fr. Julio Chevalier, founder of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, died, 1907.
“[Jesus] took pleasure in pouring out the tenderness of his heart on the little ones and the poor, on those who suffer, on the
fishermen, on all the miseries of humanity. At the sight of misfortune his heart was filled with compassion.”
Fr. Julio Chevalier, MSC
•Fr. Gerardo Poblete, Salesian priest, tortured and killed, Chile, 1973.
•Rosa Parks (1913-2005), civil rights activist, Birmingham bus boycott, died.
•Valmir Motta deOliveira (known as Keno), leader of the Movement of the Rural Landless
(Movimento de Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra -MST), killed, 2007, shortly after
occupying a farm near the town of Santa Teresa do Oeste in Paraná state, southern Brazil.
22 •Eduardo Capiau, CICM, Belgian brother, incorporated into the Guatemalan guerrilla forces,
killed in combat, Guatemala, 1981.
•Nevardo Fernandez and Luz Stella Vargas, young Christian activists, active in theater and
popular song, from Neija, department of Huila, Columbia; Carlos Paez and Salvador
Ninco, leaders of the indigenous community of Caguán Dujos, department of Huila,
captured and assassinated, 1987.
23 •St. John Capistrano, Franciscan priest, 1386 -1456.
•Vilmar José de Castro, 27 year old rural teacher, pastoral worker and activist with the
Pastoral Land Commission, assassinated in Caçu, state of Goias, Brasil, by the UDR
(Unico Democratica Ruralista, organization of landowners), 1986.
•Sisters Kathleen McGuire, Shirley Kolmer, and Agnes Mueller, U.S. missionaries in
Liberia, Sisters Adorers of the Precious Blood of Christ, killed in the Gardnerville section
of Monrovia, Liberia, 1992.
“That's where God is. Right there, in that struggle, in that hassle.”
Sister Agnes Mueller
•Sister Esther Paniagua and Sister Caridad María Alvarez, Spanish Augustinian Missionaries,
killed in the Bab-el-Ued section of Algiers, Algeria, 1994.
24 •St. Anthony Mary Claret, Spanish missionary, founder of the Claretians, archbishop in
Cuba, 1870.
•United Nations Day; UN founded, 1945.
•Raul Julia, Puerto Rican actor, died, 1994.
“The ego is about the wrong things: ‘Do I look good? Is this person upstaging me?’ The ego is me, me, me. Acting is
about giving. The greater the acting, the greater the giving.”
Raul Julia
•Fr. Thomas T. Anchaninkal, S.J. (1951-1997), [A.T. Thomas], state of Bihar, India,
advocate of the dalits [untouchables], disappeared, found decapitated on October 26/27,
1997
“when one works for the poor, these [the possibility of being killed] are the things which one has to face. Jesus would
not have died on the cross if he had not made the option for the poor. He would have died from a heart attack. Jesus
made the option for the poor and he inspires me to do the same.”
A. T. Thomas in an interview
25 •Henri Perrin (1914-1954), French worker-priest.
“The presence of priests really living among the masses seems to me a necessary condition of reform and progress.”
Henri Perrin
•Wladimir Herzog, journalist, killed by the military dictatorship in São Paulo, Brazil, 1975.
•Carlos Paez and Salvador Ninco, indigenous leaders, Luz Estela and Nevardo Fernandes,
workers, Colombia, 1987.
•Alejandro Rey, pastoral worker in Santander, Colombia, founder and animator of the
Christian Communities of San Vicente de Chucurí, 1988.
•Jorge Parraga, evangelical pastor, and companions, martyr for the cause of the poor, Perú,
1989.
• The Forty Martyrs of England and Wales
26 •Ramón Valladares, administrative secretary of the non-governmental Human Rights
Commission, El Salvador, killed, 1981.
•Herbert Anaya Sanabria, president of the nongovernmental Human Rights Commission
(CDHES, no-gob), assassinated, 1987.
“It is the lack of basic needs that most violates human rights.... As hunger intensifies and housing deteriorates the
people make organized demands and these demands are met with repression.... Hunger will not be solved through
handouts, but through social transformation. Repression will prolong, not resolve, the crisis. Whatever germ of
inequality is planted also nourishes the seed of social justice and the determination to transform society. With our final
breath we will continue our work. This isn’t heroism. It is simply doing what we have to do.”
Herbert Anaya Sanabria
•Daniel Gillard, Belgian missionary, Assumptionist priest, pastor in marginalized barrios in
Medellín and Cali, Colombia, shot by an army patrol on April 10, 1985, died on this date,
1985.
27 •Desiderius Erasmus, Renaissance humanist scholar, born 1466. (Died 1536.)
“We must look for peace by purging the very sources of war — false ambitions and evil desires. As long as individuals
serve their own personal interests, the common good will suffer. Let them examine the self-evident fact that this world of
ours is the Fatherland of the entire human race.”
Desiderius Erasmus, Querela Pacis
28 •Sts. Simon and Jude, apostles.
•Mauricio Maraglio, Italian missionary priest,in the diocese of Coroatá, state of Naranhão,
martyr of the struggle for land, Brazil, 1986.
29 •Manuel Chin Sooj, campesino and catechist, member of a movement for land, martyr in
Guatemala, 1987.
•Archbishop Christophe Munzihirwa, S.J., (1926-1996) archbishop of Bukavu, Zaire,
protector of Hutu and Tutsi refugees, proponent of democracy, assassinated by Rwanda
soldiers in Bukava, 1996.
“There are things that can be seen only with eyes that have cried.”
“God's mercy, which breaks the chain of vengeance, is hurtful to militants on every side. But in reality, that is the only
thing that can definitively shatter the infernal circle of vengeance.”
“Despite anguish and suffering, the Christian who is persecuted for the cause of justice finds spiritual peace in total and
profound assent to God, in accord with a vocation that can lead even to death.”
Archbishop Munzihirwa, S.J.
•Clarence Jordan, (1912-1969) Baptist pastor and biblical scholar, founder of Koinonia, a
Christian community in Georgia devoted to peace and racial reconciliation, translator of the
Cotton Patch Versions of the Gospel, died, 1969.
“Jesus has been so zealously worshipped, his deity so vehemently affirmed, his halo so brightly polished that in the
minds of many he no longer exists as a man. . . . By thus glorifying him we more effectively rid ourselves of him than
did those who tried to do so by crudely crucifying him.”
Clarence Jordan
30 •María Alicia Pineda Perdomo, member of the parish of Cuscatancingo, El Salvador,
martyred, 1980.
•John Howard Yoder, (1927-1997), US Mennonite theologian, author of The Politics of
Jesus, died in his office at the University of Notre Dame.
“...the believer’s cross is no longer any and every kind of suffering, sickness, or tension. the bearing of which is
demanded. The believer’s cross must be, like his Lord’s, the price of his social nonconformity. It is not, like sickness or
catastrophe, an inexplicable, unpredictable suffering; it is the end of a path freely chosen after counting the cost. It is
not, like Luther’s or Thomas Muntzer’s or Zinzendorf’s or Kierkegaard’s cross or Anfechtung, an inward wrestling of
the sensitive soul with the self and sin; it is the social reality of representing in an unwilling world the Order to come.”
John Howard Yoder, The Original Revolution
•St. Marcellus, Centurion, beheaded by the Romans, 298 for refusing to continue to serve in
Caesar's army
31 •Reformation Day.
“God is the God of the humble, the miserable, the oppressed, and the desperate, and of those who are brought even to
nothing; and his nature is to give sight to the blind, to comfort the broken-hearted, to justify sinners, to save the very
desperate and damned.”
Martin Luther
•José Matías Nanco, evangelical pastor, father of 9, killed with 13 others, killed by soldiers,
Mariquina, Chile, 1973.
“Why are you killing? God did not come to kill, but to give life in abundance.”
Last words of Pastor José Matías Nanco before he was shot
•St. Alfonso Rodriguez, S.J., (1533-1617) Jesuit brother, porter of the Jesuit College in
Majorca.
“Jesus, love of my soul and center of my heart!
Why am I not more eager
to endure pans and tribulations for love of you,
when you , my God, have suffered so many for me?
…
This is my happiness, this my pleasure:
to live with Jesus, to walk with Jesus,
to converse wit Jesus,
to suffer with and for him,
this is my treasure.”
St. Alphonsus Rodriguez, S.J.
NOVEMBER
1 •All Saints Day.
“A saint preaches sermons by the way he walks and talks, the way he picks up things and hold them in his hands.”
Thomas Merton
•Florinda Soriano, “Doña Tings”, illiterate campesina, director of the Federation of Christian
Agrarian Leagues, martyr of the people of the Dominican Republic, 1974.
•José Maria González, husband and father, delegate of the Word, killed in an ambush by the
contras, near Rio Blanco, Nicaragua, 1989.
•Simón Hernández, Achí Indian, catechist, delegate of the Word, campesino, Rabinal, Baja
Verapaz, Guatemala, 1981.
2 •All Souls Day.
“Why do we think that Christian death is an easy death? Why do we believe that a hope for a life with Christ will make
our death a gentle passage? A compassionate life is a life in which the suffering of others is deeply felt, and such a life
is a life that may also make one’s death an act of dying with others...”
Henri Nouwen, In Memoriam
“The great secret in life is that suffering, which often seems to be so unbearable, can become, through compassion, a
source of new life and new hope.
“God has become human so as to be able to live with us, suffer with us, and die with us. We have found in Jesus a
fellow human being who is so completely one with us that not a single weakness, pain, or temptation has remained
foreign to him.”
Henri Nouwen, Letters to Mark about Jesus
3
•St. Martin De Porres, Dominican lay brother, Lima, Peru, patron of social justice, 1579 1639.
•Leon Bloy, French author, 1846 - 1917.
“One does not enter into paradise tomorrow, nor in ten year; one enters it today, when one is poor and crucified.”
Leon Bloy
•Birth of Bishop Samuel Ruíz, of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, defender of
the indigenous, 1924.
“The church, when faced with this violence of the ‘established order,’ cannot remain silent lest it condone by its silence
the sin of the world. With the energy that the spirit of the prophets has given us, and with the power of the Gospel, we
have called — in season and out of season — for the conversion of persons and of social structures. But it would seem
that we have been ‘a voice crying in the wilderness.’ ”
Bishop Samuel Ruíz, March 1994 Lenten pastoral
• Ciro Martínez, priest, professor in the Catholic University, killed Asunción, Paraguay,
1997.
4 •St. Charles Borromeo, bishop, reformer, 1538 - 1584.
•Raïssa Maritain, poet, wife, contemplative, 1883-1960.
”I have the feeling that what is asked of us is to live in the whirlwind, without keeping back any of our substance,
without keeping back anything for ourselves, neither rest, nor friendships, nor health, nor leisure — to pray incessantly
. . . in fact to let ourselves pitch and toss in the waves of the divine will till the day when it will say: ‘That’s enough.’”
Raïssa Maritain
•Copapayo massacre, in Copapayo, municipality of Suchitoto, and the nearby villages of San
Nicolás and La Escopeta, 1983.
5 •Saints Elizabeth and Zechariah, parents of John the Baptist.
•Eugene V. Debs born, 1855.
“While these is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am
not free.”
Eugene V. Debs
•Blessed Bernhard Lichtenberg, martyr, provost of St. Hedwig’s cathedral, Berlin, defender
of Jews, died on his way to the Dachau concentration camp, victim of the Nazis, 1943.
•Mindaugas Tamonis, engineer, husband, father, killed, 1975.
•Fanny Abanto, teacher, leader of professors, animator of Christian communities in Lima,
Peru, connected to the people’s struggles, witness for the faith, 1980.
6 •José Excelino Forero, agronomist, diocesan pastoral worker in social ministry, martyred in
Popagá, San José de Miranda municipality, Santander, Colombia, 1988.
•Little Sister Magdeleine of Jesus (1898-1989), foundress of the Little Sisters of Jesus.
7 •Fr. Augusto Rafael Ramírez Monasterio, OFM, pastor of San Francisco church, Antigua,
Guatemala, abducted and killed, found tortured, November 8, 1983.
“The Church is suffering persecution as an historical verification of its fidelity in fulfilling its mission that Christ
confided it — to save humanity from sin and from all its consequences, to announce redemption, and to denounce with
vigor all that opposes its full realization.
“The faith causes us to understand that the Church in Guatemala is living an hour of grace and of certain hope.
Persecution has always been a clear sign of faithfulness to Christ and to his gospel. The blood of our martyrs will be a
seed of new and numerous Christians and the proof comforts us who are bearing our part of the suffering ‘which was
lacking in the suffering of Christ’ for the redemption of the world.
Guatemalan bishops’ pastoral letter, August 6, 1981
8 •Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker, born, 1897.
“People say, ‘What good can one person do? What is the sense of our small effort?’ They cannot see that we must lay
one brick at a time, take one step at a time. We can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment. But
we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform all our individual actions, and know that
God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the loaves and the fishes.”
Dorothy Day
•Brothers Servando, Mayor Garcia, Miguel Angel Isla Lucio, and Fernando de la Fuente,
Marist brothers working in a camp with Rwandan refugees, killed in Bugobe, Bukavu,
Zaire, by a group of soldiers, 1996. Their bodies were found on this date.
•Blessed John Duns Scotus, Franciscan, philosopher, theologian, 1266-1308.
9 •Dedication of the Basilica of St. John Lateran, Rome
“A community — and especially a Christian one — will always be running against the tide of society, with its
individualistic values of wealth and comfort and resulting rejection of the people who get in the way of these. A
Christian community constantly calls its members to share, welcome, become poorer and go beyond their own
resources to a truer love.”
Jean Vanier, Community and Growth
•Justo Mejía, union member, campesino and catechist in Las Vueltas, coordinator of
Christian Communities in the department of Chalatenango, a founder of the Union de
Trabajadores de Campo, tortured and martyred, El Salvador, 1977.
•Berlin Wall falls, 1989.
•Kristallnacht, Germany, 1938.
10 •St. Leo the Great, Pope (died 461)
“The price of the kingdom is the food you give to those who need it.”
St. Leo the Great
•Policiano Albeño López, Protestant pastor, and Raúl Albeño Martínez, martyrs for faith and
justice in El Salvador, 1980.
•Padre Alvaro Ulcué Chocué, Paez Indian priest, pastor in Toribio, Cauca department,
brought the Gospel to his people in their land and struggled for land, killed, Santander,
Colombia, 1984.
“Let us not be afraid to speak the truth; it will take charge of liberating us.”
Fr. Alvaro Ulcué Chocué
•French Sister Odile Prévost, Little Sister of the Sacred Heart, killed in Algiers, Algeria,
1995.
11 •St. Martin, Bishop of Tours, 316? - 397.
“I am a soldier of Christ; I cannot fight.”
St. Martin of Tours
•Søren Kierkegaard, philosopher, 1813-1855.
“What this age needs is not a genius, but a martyr.”
Søren Kierkegaard
•Armistice Day
“With the monstrous weapons man already has, humanity is in danger of being trapped in this world with its moral
adolescence. Our knowledge of science has clearly outstripped our capacity to control it. We have too many men of
science, too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.
[Humanity] is stumbling blindly through spiritual darkness while toying with the precarious secrets of life and death....
“...the world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience, Ours is a world of nuclear giants and
ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace; more about killing, than we know about living.”
General Omar N. Bradley
•Evangelical preachers, Apoliciano Albeno López and Raúl Albeno Martínez, killed in
Jutiapa, Guatemala, 1980.
•Sebastian Acevedo, activist, father, immolated himself in the steps of the cathedral of
Concepción, Chile, in protest of the abduction and torture of two of his children, 1983. He
died November 12.
12 •St. Josaphat, Basilian monk, bishop of Polotsk, the Ukraine, martyred in Vitebsk, martyr of
the Ukrainian Catholic Church (1580?-1623)
•Elizabeth Cady Stanton, abolitionist and suffragette, born, 1815
“Every truth we see is ours to give to the world, not to keep to ourselves, for in doing so we cheat humanity out of their
rights and check their own development.”
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
•Marcos Hernández, president of Catholic Action, disappeared in Guatemala, 1980.
•Nicolás Tum Quixtán, spouse and father, catechist and minister of the Eucharist, killed,
Chipaj, Chicamán, El Quiché, Guatemala, 1980.
“Kneel down and pray to God for yourselves! You’re going to have to suffer a lot! I’m going to die, but I know I’ll rise
again...and take good care of the kids.”
last words of Nicolás Tum to his wife as he lay dying
•Massacre at Santa Cruz cemetery, Dili, East Timor, 1991.
“As a member of the Church, I take upon myself the mission of enlightening and denouncing all human situations
which are in disagreement with the Christian concept and contrary to the teaching of the church concerning all
mankind..
“The Catholic bishop is a pastor of a part of God’s people. Such mission is spiritual. Such mission is incumbent upon
him ally as a dispenser of spiritual resources for the salvation of persons and consolidating them in faith in Jesus Christ.
“But mankind is not limited to a spiritual dimension; one should be saved as a whole, human and spiritual. In this
aspect, anyone shall never be indifferent when a people’s possibilities for human realization, in all dimensions, are not
respected.”
Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, SDB, bishop of Dili, East Timor
on receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, 1996.
13 •St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, Italian-American nun, founder of the Missionary Sisters of the
Sacred Heart, missionary to the United States, (1850-1917), died December 22, 1917, in
Chicago.
“I wish to die of love, after a life of total surrender to God — O Jesus, I love You only, only, so much, so much. I am
being consumed by Your love. For You I languish and die. The earth is only a pale shadow compared to the fire of love
with which you surround me. Give me a heart as large as the universe, so that I may love, if not as much as You
deserve, at least as much as I am capable. Adorable Heart of Jesus, most loving Heart, Heart in flames, ardent Furnace
of divine Love; what do you wish me to do? I am your victim ready to be sacrificed; do with me what you will.”
St. Frances Xavier Cabrini
•Death of Francis Thompson, poet, 1907
•Father Indalecio Oliveira, martyred in Uruguay, 1969.
•Vine Deloria, Jr., a Standing Rock Sioux, author of Custer Died for Your Sins, died, 2005.
•Msgr. Charles Owen Rice, Pittsburgh labor priest, died, 2005.
14 •Booker T. Washington died, 1915.
“Let no man pull you so low as to make you hate him.”
Booker T. Washington
•U.S. bishops issue pastoral letter, Economic Justice for All, 1986.
Such perspectives provide a basis for what is called the “preferential option for the poor.” Though in the Gospels and in
the New Testament as a whole the offer of salvation is extended to all peoples, Jesus takes the side of those most in
need, physically and spiritually. The example of Jesus poses a number of challenges to the contemporary Church. It
imposes a prophetic mandate to speak for those who have no one to speak for them, to be a defender of the defenseless,
who in biblical terms are the poor. It also demands a compassionate vision which enables the Church to see things from
the side of the poor and powerless, and to assess lifestyles, policies, and social institutions in terms of their impact on
the poor. It summons the Church also to be an instrument in assisting people to experience the liberating power of God
in their own lives so that they may respond to the Gospel in freedom and dignity. Finally, and most radically, it calls for
an emptying of self, both individually and corporately, that allows the Church to experience the power of God in the
midst of poverty and powerlessness.
Economic Justice for All, #52.
•Joseph Cardinal Bernadin, Archbishop of Chicago, died of cancer, 1996.
“One of things I have noticed about illness is that it draws you inside yourself. When we are ill, we tend to focus on our
own pain and suffering. We may feel sorry for ourselves or become depressed. But by focusing on Jesus’s message —
that through suffering we empty ourselves and are filled with God’s grace and love — we can begin to think of other
people and their needs; we become eager to walk with them in their trials. My decision to discuss my cancer openly and
honestly has sent a message that when we are ill, we need not close in on ourselves, or remove ourselves from others.
Instead, it is during these times when we need people the most.”
Joseph Cardinal Bernadin, The Gift of Peace
15 •St. Albert the Great, Dominican, bishop, philosopher, teacher of St. Thomas Aquinas, doctor
of the church, 1206-1280.
“An egg given during life for love of God is more profitable for eternity than a cathedral full of gold given after death.”
“That you weep one tear of love: that is more pleasing to God than that you weep tears of regret or self-pity, even if
they would flow as abundantly as the waters of the Danube.”
St. Albert the Great
•Sts. Roque Gonzales de Santa Cruz, S.J.,(1576-1628), Paraguayan, and Alonso Rodríguez,
S.J., (1598-1628) Spanish missionary, martyred in the reducción of Todos Los Santos,
Caaró, Brazil, 1628.
“What does it mean to be a Jesuit today? to commit oneself under the banner of the cross in the crucial struggle of our
time: the struggle for faith and the struggle for justice which that very faith demands.... We will not work in the
promotion of justice without paying the price.”
from the Jesuit Constitutions
•Pedro Caal, evangelical, killed, Petén, Guatemala, 1980.
•Vinoba Bhave (1895-1982), Indian disciple of Gandhi, founder of the Bhoodan land-gift
movement.
“Men are possessed in the measure in which they are possessors, and delivered in the measure in which they are givers
and self-givers.”
“Now, if there is one evil amongst us which is the source of wretchedness, of strife between neighbors, of family
quarrels and war between nations, of fraud and oppression, corruption and cruelty, it is the desire to possess. Let us
make a merry bonfire of all this, my brothers, and burn care along with title-deeds; let us burn envy, ambition, vanity,
abuses, in a merry sacrifice.”
Vinoba Bhave
•Fernando Velez, lawyer, sociologist, theologian, husband and father, president of the
Commission of Human Rights, professor of the University of Antiquia, Colombia,
murdered, 1987.
16 •St. Margaret of Scotland, 1050?-1093.
•St. Gertrude the Great, (1256?- 1302), died November 17, 1301.
“Property: the more common it is, the holier it is.”
St. Gertrude
•Martyrs of the UCA, El Salvador, 1989. Fathers Ignacio Ellacuría, S.J., Ignacio MartínBaró, S.J., Segundo Montes, S.J., Amando López, S.J., Juan Ramón Moreno, S.J., Joaquin
López y López, S.J., priests of the Central American University (UCA), and Julia Elba
Ramos and her daughter, Celina Ramos, domestic help, martyred at the UCA, San
Salvador, El Salvador.
“Concluding his meditation on sin, Ignatius Loyola asks us to look at the crucified Christ and ask ourselves what have
we done for him, what are we doing for him, and what are we going to do for him. Ignacio Ellacuría, also crucified,
asks us to place ourselves before the crucified people and answer the same three questions: What have I done to crucify
them? What am I doing to take them down from their cross? What should I do to ensure their resurrection?”
Jon Sobrino, S.J.
“Basically the poor are impoverished due to hoarding and exploitation by the rich; and the rich are enriched at the cost
of the impoverishment and misery of the masses. To free the poor by giving them access to living conditions consonant
with their dignity as human beings and children of God entails sacrificing the privileges of wealthy oppressors.
Hence,when faced with the news that the Kingdom of God is coming, the rich feel challenged and called to accept
God’s justice and kindness, by allowing themselves to be re-created and changed by that justice into brothers and
sisters, and persons in solidarity. ‘Be converted and believe the good news’ (Mark 1:15). Only conversion, metanoia,
change of mentality, new eyes in order to see reality with love in solidarity with which God sees it, can enable the
approach of the Kingdom to ring out as good news in the ears of the rich — conversion to God who comes in gratuity
and kindness to remake things, the God of the Kingdom.”
Juan Ramón Moreno, S.J.
17 •Feast of St. Hugh Bishop of Lincoln, resister of taxes for war (died November 16, 1200)
“I hereby leave anything which I appear to possess to the Lord Jesus Christ, in the person of His poor.”
St. Hugh of Lincoln
•St. Elizabeth of Hungary, lay Franciscan, protector of the poor and sick, 1207 1231.
“We must give God what we have, gladly and with joy.”
St. Elizabeth of Hungary
•St. Juan de Castillo, S.J., Spanish missionary, killed in the reducción of Asunción, near
Ijuhi, Paraguay, 1628.
•Luís Che, Kekchi Indian, catechist in Rio Pita, Izabál, Guatemala, captured and killed, 1985.
•David Alexander Amaya, catechist, youth group member, disappeared in the parish of San
Francisco Mejicanos, El Salvador, 1989.
18 •Dedications of the Basilicas of Saint Peter and Saint Paul.
•St. Rose Philippine Duchesne (1769-1852), religious, sister of the Society of the Sacred
Heart, French-born missionary to the US and to Native Americans, called “Quah-kha-kanum-ad” (”Woman who prays always”) by the Potawatami.
“We cultivate a small field for Christ, but we love it, knowing that God does not require great achievements but a heart
that holds back nothing for self....The truest crosses are those we do not choose ourselves....He who has Jesus has
everything,”
St. Rose Philipine Duchesne
19 •Santos Jiménez Martínez and Jerónimo "Don Chomo", Protestant pastors, campesinos,
martyrs, Guatemala, 1980.
•St. Agnes of Assisi, (1197-1253) Poor Clare, abbess of Florence.
•The prophet Obadiah (Byzantine calendar)
•José María Llorens, S.J., priest, evangelizer of the poor, died of a heart attack, Barrio San
Martín, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1984.
20 •Death of Leo Tolstoy, 1910
•Fr. Bill (Guillermo) Woods, M.M., US missionary, killed in suspicious plane crash,
Guatemala, 1976.
“I love Guatemala and especially those peasants who are putting so much effort into developing a new life in the Zona
Reina [in the Ixcán]. It would break my heart to have to leave the country. I repeat, my only interest is to help make the
peasants better Christians, better Guatemalans, and thus help them produce more for themselves and for their country.”
Fr. Bill Woods, 5/27/76 letter to the Guatemalan president
21 •The Presentation of the Virgin Mary
•St. Gelasius, African pope, 496.
•Lutheran pastor David Fernández killed in San Miguel, El Salvador, 1984.
“Without God we are defenseless. With God, we are secure.”
David Fernández
22 •Fr. Georges Kakuja, Congolese priest, killed by rebels, Kalonge, Congo, 1999.
•Fr. Josí Nedumattathil, Salesian priest, director of Don Bosco secondary school in Maram,
state of Imphal, India, killed, 1997.
•Death of Fr. César Jerez, S.J., Guatemalan Jesuit, educator, rector of the Universidad
Centroamericana in Nicaragua, 1991.
“Universities have to help tell our peoples the truth about their situation and its limits. And, alongside them, we must
formulate proposals that go beyond sterile protests. Universities should increase aspirations toward democracy with the
aim that it is developed from the base, in a totally participatory form. University knowledge, to be legitimate and
Christian, will have to make the daily bread of each table in more and more popular groups.”
Fr. César Jerez, S.J.
•Death of C.S. Lewis, 1964.
“Christianity thinks of human individuals not as mere members of a group or items in a list, but as organs in a body —
different from one another and each contributing what no other could. When you find yourself wanting to turn your
children, or pupils, or even your neighbors, into people exactly like yourself, remember that God probably never meant
them to be that. You and they are different organs, intended to do different things. On the one hand, when you are
tempted not to bother about someone else’s troubles because they are ‘no business of yours’’, remember that though he
is different from you he is part of the same organism as you. If you forget that he belongs to the same organism as
yourself you will become an Individualist. If you forget that he is a different organ from you, if you want to suppress all
differences and make all people alike, you will become a Totalitarian. But a Christian must not be either a Totalitarian
or an Individualist.”
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
•St. Cecilia, virgin and martyr
23 •St. Clement I, pope and martyr, c. 99.
“The Lord ate from a common bowl and asked the disciples to sit on the grass. He washed their feet with a towel
wrapped around his waist — he who is the Lord of the universe! He drank water from an earthenware jug with the
Samaritan woman, Christ made use his aim, not extravagance.”
St. Clement
•St. Columban, Abbot, 543? - 615.
•Blessed Miguel Agustín Pro, S.J., (1891-1927) priest, martyr of the Mexican revolution,
1927.
“If life be hard, love makes us stronger; and only love, grounded on suffering, can carry the cross of Jesus.”
“You have to speak out against injustice. We must speak and cry out against injustice with confidence and not with
fear.”
Fr. Miguel Pro, S.J.
•Fr. Ernesto Abrego disappeared, El Salvador, 1980.
24 •St. Andrew Dung-Lac, priest, and companions, the 117 martyrs of Viet Nam, 1820 - 1862.
25 •Birth of Giovanni Roncalli, later Pope John XXIII, 1881.
“The church is and desires to be the church of all, but principally the church of the poor.”
Pope John XXIII, 11 September 1962
•Bishop Patrick J. Byrne, M.M., Maryknoll missionary to Korea, died as a prisoner in North
Korea, 1950.
•Marçal Tupa-y, Manore Indian, nurse, killed by land owners, Aldea Campestre, Antonio
João municipality, Brazil.
26 •Sojourner Truth died, 1883.
“These colored people will bring the whites out of Egyptian darkness into marvelous light. The white people cannot do it,
but these will. They will teach the slaveholders the truth that they never had and never knew of... These colored people
are going to be a people. Do you think that God has had them robbed and scourged all the days of their life for nothing!”
Sojourner Truth
•Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Argentinean architect and nonviolent leader, winner of the 1980
Nobel Peace Prize, born, 1932.
“I won’t write about suffering, I want to write about hope — about the grace Our Lord gives us to share with our
brothers and sisters who are the victims of injustice—who after two years or longer in prison still don’t know why
they’re being punished.
“Yet there’s always a light shining, to clarify and explain all these trials — God’s presence every moment in every
move- the God of love who forgives from the cross, down across the ages. . .
“Bars can’t lock up the Spirit - who is Christ’s love dwelling with its infinite presence in each one of us. . . .
“To live and share and walk with those who suffer! Blessed are they! We only ask to be faithful to his Word, and to
live in his love.”
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, in a letter smuggled from prison, April 20, 1977
•Virgil Michel, OSB, leader of the liturgy and social justice movement in the US Catholic
Church, died at St. John’s Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota, 1938.
“As long as the Christian is in the habit of viewing his religious life from the subjectivistic and individualistic
standpoint, he will be able to live his daily life in terms of the prevalent individualism and subjectivism without any
qualms of conscience.”
Fr. Virgil Michel OSB
•Monseñor Arturo Rivera y Damas, archbishop of San Salvador, defender of refugees and the
poor, died, 1994.
“Sorrow is a school which purifies, redeems, and makes us mature.
“The prolonged suffering of the war has made our people mature, open themselves to forgive and to the forgetting of
offenses, and feel themselves ready to reconstruct, with others, what has been destroyed.
“A priest friend of mine, referring to the witness of a Spanish volunteer, told me that he has worked with refugees
and the displaced and because of this wishes to return to our country to continue working with our people who are
simple, noble, and generous.
“Only the egotistical, who have not suffered the pains of the war, are those who want to continue till they finish off
the last communist.
“What madness and insensitivity! But above all, what blindness and hard heartedness! How far from the sentiments
of Job, figure of Jesus, the Divine Savior, meek and humble of heart.”
Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas, homily of February 10, 1985
27 •Enrique Alvarez, Juan Chacón, Manuel Franco, Enrique Barrera, Doroteo Hernández,
leaders of the Democratic Revolutionary Front (FDR), abducted from Externado San José,
the Jesuit high school, and killed, San Salvador, El Salvador, 1980.
•Mario Leonfanti, Salesian priest, a founder of the Ecumenical Movement for Human Rights,
worker with the youth, advocate of the poor, died, Argentina, 1993.
28 •Nicolas Rodrígues, diocesan priest, killed in San Antonio Los Ranchos, El Salvador, 1970.
•Ernesto Barrera, “Neto”, priest, worker, martyr of the Salvadoran base communities,
member of the revolutionary group FPL, killed, 1978.
“It is necessary in the hour in which the death of these our brothers, especially Father Ernesto Barrera, has brought us
together to reaffirm as Christians that we cannot live a piety, a gospel, a transcendence, gazing toward eternity without
placing our feet on the earth. It is necessary to reaffirm that it is precisely because we hope for heaven that we have to
work intensely, each one of us in our own vocations, for a better world.
“This seems to me to be the best
message we can take from the corpse of our brother priest, Neto. It is a message of sowing deeply the hope of heaven
but also of working hard on the hopes of this earth. We are not to keep them separate but to treat them as
complementing each other, living realistically as Christians who have their hearts in heaven but with their hands and
feet they are also working on the everyday realities of this earth.”
Archbishop Oscar Romero at the funeral of Father Ernesto Barrera
•William Blake, poet, born, 1799. (Died 1888.)
•Fr. Marcial Serrano, diocesan priest, killed in El Salvador, 1980.
29 •C. S. Lewis born, 1898.
•Fr. Pablo Gazzari, Argentinian priest, Little Brother of the Gospel, captured and
disappeared, Argentina, 1976.
•Luís Adolfo Jaramillo, Christian worker, tortured and killed, Quilmes, province of Buenos
Aires, Argentina, 1976.
•Dorothy Day died, 1980.
“Today the whole world is in the midst of a revolution. We are living through it now - all of us. History will record
this time as a time of world revolution. And frankly, we are calling for Saints. The Holy Father in his call for Catholic
Action, for the lay apostolate, is calling for Saints. We must prepare now for martyrdom — otherwise we will not be
ready. Who of us if ... attacked now would not react quickly and humanly against such attack? Would we love our
brother [or sister] who strikes us? Of all at The Catholic Worker how many would not instinctively defend [themselves]
with any forceful means in [their] power? We must prepare. We must prepare now. There must be a disarmament of the
heart.”
Dorothy Day, September 1938 editorial
•Brother François Cardinal, FCI, Canadian missionary, director of an agricultural school,
killed outside Klagi, Rwanda (c. 1992).
•George Harrison (1943-2001), Beatle, musician, died 2001.
"Everybody dreams of being famous, rich and famous," Mr. Harrison later said about the start of his spiritual quest. "Once
you get rich and famous, you think, 'this wasn't it.' And that made me go on to find out what it is. In the end, you're trying
to find God. That's the result of not being satisfied. And it doesn't matter how much money or property or whatever
you've got, unless you're happy in your heart, then that's it."
George Harrison
30 •St. Andrew, apostle.
•Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, Irish born, U.S. union organizer, Catholic, 1830?-1930.
“Pray for the dead, but fight like hell for the living.”
“Mother” Jones
•Etty Hillesum died in detention by the Nazis, 1943.
“The threat grows ever greater, and terror increases from day to day. I draw prayer round me like a dark protective
wall, withdraw inside it as one might into a convent cell and then step outside again, calmer and stronger and more
collected again. I can imagine times to come when I shall stay on my knees for days on end waiting until the protective
walls are strong enough to prevent my going to pieces altogether, my being lost and utterly devastated.”
Etty Hillesum, 18 May 1942, An Interrupted Life
•Fritz Eichenberg, Quaker artist, friend of the Catholic Worker, died, 1990.
“There is enough excitement in our daily tasks if we approach them reverently and creatively, no matter in what
medium we work. Whether we work in the field of human relations, in stone or wood, with pen and paper, there is the
thrill of fighting injustice, inequality, disease, of suffering for our convictions, of having the courage to stand up and be
counted for all the despised and unpopular causes for which we feel called upon to fight.”
Fritz Eichenberg
DECEMBER
1 •Blessed Charles de Foucauld, priest, solitary, killed in the Sahara, 1916.
“The first worshippers, the first company it pleased our Lord to have at his manger, were the most humble,
unsophisticated, unimportant and simple people — shepherds.
“He did not merely accept them: he called them, having them called by pure spirits, the angels...
“We should have infinite regard for the most unimportant, humble and unsophisticated people, our brothers [and
sisters], honoring them as Jesus’ intimates, realizing that they deserve to be, for they are generally the simplest and purest
people, least wrapped in pride. We should mix with them and so far as God wills, be one of them. We should do all
possible for their bodies and souls, treating them with honor for the honor of Jesus, and fraternally, so as to have the
honor and good fortune of being reckoned one of them. Unhappy is he whose insensate pride despises them whom God
puts in the first ranks — ‘as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me.’”
Charles de Foucauld, June 17, 1916, Spiritual Autobiography
“Father, I put myself in your hands; Father, I abandon myself to you. I entrust myself to you. Father, do with me as it
pleases you. Whatever you do with me, I will thank you for it. Giving thanks for anything, I am ready for anything. As
long as your will, O God, is done in me, as long as your will is done in all your creatures, I ask for nothing else, O God. I
put my soul into your hands. I give it to you, O God, with all the love of my heart, because I love you, and because my
love requires me to give myself, I put myself unreservedly in your hands with infinite confidence, because you are my
Father.”
Charles de Foucauld, Spiritual Autobiography
•Rosa Parks arrested for refusing to give up her seat in a bus, Montgomery, Alabama, 1955.
“I knew someone had to take the first step and I made up my mind not to move.”
“If our lives demonstrate that we are peaceful, humble and trusted, this is recognized by others. If our lives demonstrate
something else, that will be noticed too.”
Rosa Parks
•Diego Uribe, Franciscan priest, joined the armed struggle, killed, Colombia, 1981.
•The prophet Nahum (Byzantine calendar)
•St. Edmund Campion, S.J., English martyr.
2 •Sisters Maura Clarke, M.M., Ita Ford, M.M., and Dorothy Kazel, O.S.U., and Jean
Donovan, U.S. missionaries, martyred in El Salvador, 1980.
“Am I willing to suffer with the people here, the suffering of the powerless, the feeling impotent. Can I say to my
neighbors — I have no solutions to the situation, I don’t know the answers, but I will walk with you, be with you. Can I
let myself be evangelized by this opportunity? Can I look at and accept my own poorness and learn from other poor
ones?”
Sr. Ita Ford, M.M.
“I pray that I will always be an example of God’s love and peace.
“I hope I can express this above all else.
“I pray that people will always be more important to me than the job I do.”
Jean Donovan
•Thirteen campesinos killed in Santiago Atitlán massacre, Guatemala, 1990.
•The prophet Habakkuk (Byzantine calendar)
•Ivan Illich (1926-2002)
3 •St. Francis Xavier, S.J., Jesuit missionary to the Far East (1506-1552)
“Often I am overcome with the desire to cry out against the universities, especially against the University of Paris . . .
and to rage with all my powers like a fool who has lost his senses.
“I would cry out against those who are more preoccupied with becoming scientists than with letting people in need
profit from their science . . . I am afraid that many who learn their disciplines at the university are more interested in
using them to acquire honors, bishoprics, privileges, and high position than in using them for what is just and
necessary. . . The common word is: ‘I will study “letters” in order to get some good privileged position in the Church,
and after that I will live for God.’ These people are brutes, following the guidance of their sensuality and disordered
impulses. . . They do not trust in God, nor do they give themselves completely to him . . . they are afraid that God does
not want what they desire and that when they obtain him they are forced to abandon their unjustly acquired privileges. .
.
“How many would be enlightened by the faith of the Gospel if there were some who would put all their effort into
finding good people who are willing to make sacrifices to search for and find not what belongs to them, but what
belongs to Jesus Christ. In these lands so many people come to faith in Jesus Christ that many times my arms fail me
because of the painful work of baptizing them.”
letter of St. Francis Xavier, cited in Henri Nouwen, Road to Daybreak
•Víctor Raúl Acuña, priest, Perú, 1987.
•The prophet Zephaniah (Byzantine calendar)
4 •St. John Damascene, priest and doctor of the church, defender of icons (676?- 749)
“It was by the Father’s good pleasure that his only begotten Son and Word became incarnate; it was by the Father’s
good pleasure that the salvation of the world was achieved through his only begotten Son; it was the Father’s good
pleasure which brought about the union of the whole universe in his only begotten Son. For humanity is a microcosm
linking in itself all visible and invisible, sharing as it does in the nature of both, and so it must have surely pleased the
Lord, the Creator and Ruler of the universe, for humanity and divinity and thus all creation to be united in his only
begotten and consubstantial Son, so that God may be all in all.”
St. John of Damascus
•St. Barbara, virgin and martyr, 3rd century.
5 •St. Sabas
•St. Clement of Alexandria
6 •St. Nicholas of Myra, bishop. (d. 350?)
7 •Luís Aguirre Monge, Caritas refugee worker, and Elpidio Cruz, killed in Honduras, 1981.
•St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, doctor of the church (340?-397)
“God our Lord willed that this land be the common possession of all and give its fruit to all. But greed distributed the
right of possessions. Therefore, if you claim as your private property part of what was granted in common to all human
beings and to all animals, it is only fair that you share some of this with the poor, so that you will not deny nourishment to
those who are also partakers of your right.”
St. Ambrose, In Psalmo 118.8.22
•Philip Berrigan (1923-2002), peace activist, Plowshare activist, prophet, died in Baltimore at
Jonah House.
“I die with the conviction, held since 1968 and Catonsville, that nuclear weapons are the scourge of the earth; to mine
for them, manufacture them, deploy them, use them, is a curse against God, the human family, and the earth itself.”
Phil Berrigan on his deathbed
8 •Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary.
“The fact that this night of nights [Christmas] brought forth the Light, that Mary kneels before the child, that
motherhood and the grace of compassion have become a law of our life, that the ice of humanity’s inner solitude can be
broken and melted by healing warmth — all this became possible only because the maid Mary yielded of her own free
choice to the inner prompting of God’s voice. Her secret is self-surrender and willing acceptance, offering herself to the
point of complete obliteration of her personal will.
“This is both her message and her judgment of us. As a generation we are completely concerned about our selffulfillment, our self-realization, our living conditions and so on. Everything is organized for our self-gratification. And
precisely because of this we are getting progressively poorer and more miserable. Mary’s decision was complete
surrender to God and it is the only thing that can lead to human fulfillment. Hers is the decisions that obeys the law of
life.”
Fr. Alfred Delp, S.J., Christmas meditation from a Nazi prison
•John Lennon killed, New York City, 1980.
•Sister Alicia Domon and Sister Leonie Duquet, French sisters (Religious of the Foreign
Missions), disappeared, with twelve other women, leaving the church of Santa Cruz in
Buenos Aires, for their work in solidarity with the families of the disappeared in Argentina,
1977.
“We did not go to the villa miseria [the shantytown] to tell people what they should do but to help one another to share
the good and evil in life by taking ourselves as we were. We receive a great deal, perhaps more than we give.”
“I feel in communion with so many families suffering the drama of the disappearances. We seek an answer from the
Lord in the light of the Gospel. I am deeply convinced that this situation of passion is united to that of Christ and it
preceded the resurrection.”
Sister Alice Domon
9 •Saint Juan Diego - Cuauhtlatzin - Chichimeca Indian, witness to the vision of Mary at
Tepeyac, Mexico, 1531.
“Listen, my little child, to what I now tell you: Do not fear illness, or any other distressing occurrence or pain. Am I
not your mother? Am I not your life and health? Have I not placed you in my lap and taken responsibility for you?
What else do you need?”
The Virgin Mary to Juan Diego
•Gordon Zahn died, 2007. Sociologist, Catholic peacemaker, author of German Catholics
and Hitler’s Wars and In Solitary Witness.
10 •Human Rights Day.
•Thomas Merton, U.S. Trappist monk and author, died, 1968.
“If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I
think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.
Between these two answers you can determine the identity of any person. The better answer he has, the more of a person
he is. . . . I am all the time trying to make out the answer as I go on living. I live out the answer to my two questions
myself and the answer may not be complete, even when my life is ended I may go on working out the answer for a long
time after my death, but at least it will be resolved, and there will be no further question, for with God’s mercy, I shall
possess not only the answer but the reality that the answer was about.”
Thomas Merton, My Argument with the Gestapo
•Karl Barth, Protestant theologian, died, 1968.
“To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of our uprising against the disorder of the world.”
Karl Barth
•Sister Léonie Duquet, French sister (Religious of the Foreign Missions), disappeared, in
solidarity with the families of the disappeared in Argentina, 1977.
11 •St. Damasus I, Pope (305?-384)
•Gaspar García Laviana, priest, combatant with the FSLN, killed in the revolutionary
struggle for the liberation of the people of Nicaragua, 1978.
“Believe me that I have never felt myself more a priest than now, because I am living consciously the certitude of
giving my own life for the liberation of the others. Before, when I was not risking my life, to be a priest was something
different: I offered the life of the Other, not mine at His side.”
Fr. Gaspar García Laviana, MSC
•Mozote massacre, Morazán, El Salvador, 1981.
The Anonymous Martyrs of Mozote
This crucified people is the historical continuation of the servant of Yahweh, the one from whom the sin of the world
continues to strip all human features, from whom the powers of this world continue to steal all — taking everything —
even life itself, above all life.
The crucified people are there. Sometimes we see them on television, but in reality they don’t get much attention.
They are not known. Everything is done to hide them so that our western and bourgeois tranquility is not disturbed.
Anything is more important than to really hear the voice of God that, with indescribable moans or loud cries, calls us
to see the open wounds of universal injustice.
It is possible that some feel that presence too obscure or that voice too far away and weak. These poor souls! They
are so far from God. And those who crucify [the people] constitute the beast of the Apocalypse. And those who make
themselves deaf and blind, because to them this does not seem to be a religious problem, they are the lukewarm whom
God, disgusted, has spit out of his mouth.
Ignacio Ellacuría, S.J.
12 •Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, Our Lady of Guadalupe, appears to Juan Diego, in Mexico,
1531.
“Mary and the church in Latin America are marked by poverty. Vatican Council II says that Mary stands out among the
poor who await redemption from God. Mary appears in the Bible as the expression of poverty, of humility, of one who
needs everything from God. When she comes to America, her intimate, motherly conversation is with an Indian, an
outcast, a poor man.
“Mary’s dialogue in America begins with a sign of poverty, poverty that is hunger for God. Poverty is freedom.
Poverty is needing others, needing brothers and sisters, supporting one another so as to help one another. That is what
Mary means....”
Archbishop Oscar Romero, December 12, 1977
•Seminarian Prudencio (Tencho) Mendoza Mejía, seminarian, killed by civil patrol,
Aguacatan, Department of Huehuetenango, Guatemala, 1983.
•Jon Cortina, S.J., Jesuit priest, Salvadoran witness, died 2005.
13 •St. Lucy, virgin, martyr. (d. 304)
14 •St. John of the Cross, priest, doctor of the church, Carmelite reformer, 1591.
“At the evening of life you will be examined in love.”
St. John of the Cross
•Catherine de Hueck Doherty, (1896-1985) founder of Friendship House and Madonna
House, died, 1985.
“What the world needs most today is the hospitality of the heart.... The hospitality of the heart means accepting all
others as they are, allowing them to make themselves at home in one’s heart.
“To be at home in another's heart means touching love, the love of a brother and sister in Christ. Touching the love
of another means realizing that God loves us. For it is through the other — our neighbor, our brother, [our sister] – that
we can begin to understand the love of God.”
Catherine de Hueck Doherty, The Gospel Without Compromise
16
17
18
19
21
•Andrei Sakharov, Russian scientist and human rights advocate, died, 1989.
•Fr. Thomas Edward Gaffney, S.J., U.S. Jesuit missionary, Nepalese citizen, “the father of
social work” in Nepal, killed, Kathmandu, Nepal, 1997.
•The prophet Haggai
•Las Posadas begin
• St. Lazarus
•The prophet Daniel and the three young men, Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah. (Byzantine
calendar)
•Manuel Campo Ruíz, Marist, killed in prison by prison guards and police, Rio de Janeiro,
1992.
•Fr. Alfonso Stessel, CICM, Belgian missionary in Tierra Nueva Uno, Guatemala City,
defender of the rights of the urban poor, murdered, 1994.
•Fray Antonio de Montesinos, Dominican, preaches against slavery, Hispañola, 1511.
“You are all in mortal sin! You live in it and you die in it!~ Why? Because of the cruelty and tyranny you use with
these innocent people. Tell me, with what right, with what justice, do you hold these Indians in such cruel and horrible
servitude? On what authority have you waged such detestable wars on these people, in their mild, peaceful lands, where
you have consumed such infinitudes of them, wreaking upon them this death and unheard-of havoc? How is it that you
hold them so crushed and exhausted, giving them nothing to eat, nor any treatment of their diseases, which you cause
them to be infected with through the surfeit of their toils. so that they ‘die on you’ [as you day] — you mean. you kill
them — mining gold for you day after day? And what care do you take that anyone catechize them, so that they may
come to know their God and Creator, be baptized, hear Mass, observe Sundays and holy Days? Are they not human
beings? Have they no rational souls? Are you not obligated to love them as you love yourselves? Do you not
understand this? Do you not grasp this? How is it that you sleep so soundly, so lethargically? Know for a certainty that
in the state in which you are you can no more be saved than the Moors or Turks who have not, nor wish to have, the
faith of Jesus Christ.”
Sermon of Fray Antonio de Montesinos, as retold by Bartolomé de las Casas
•St. Peter Canisius, S.J., early Jesuit, priest, doctor of the church- missionary in Germany
(1521-1597)
“The fear of many people is greater than necessary, because they look for human and not for divine help; they act
in despair instead of praying with holy confidence for the oppressed church.”
St. Peter Canisius, S.J.
•Guillermo Sandiñas, priest, in solidarity with the Cuban people in their struggle against the
dictatorship, Cuba, died 1964.
22 •Death of Isaac Hecker, founder of the Paulist Fathers, 1888.
“Religion must become an everyday business and a public affair if souls are to be saved and sanctified, and the people
made peaceable and happy. It must be in the closet but also in the family, in society, in trade and commerce; its spirit
must pervade our public assemblies and penetrate our legislation. Its spirit must be everywhere, for out of Christ there is
no way, no truth, no life.”
Isaac Hecker
•Chico Mendez, rubber-tapper, martyr of the environment, killed in Brazil, 1988.
“If a messenger from heaven would guarantee that my death would strengthen our struggle, it might be worthwhile.
But experience teaches us the opposite; so, I want to live.”
Chico Mendez
•Massacre of 45 civilians, members of Socieded Civil Las Abejas (The Bees Civil Society) in
the chapel in Acteal, municipality of Chenalhó, Chiapas, Mexico, 1997.
“. . . we do not have arms to defend ourselves. . . .But we decided to trust in God and we began to pray in the church.
Now we know that they are martyrs. We know that God received the 45 and that God is preparing to receive us also.
Because the struggle continues. We are not afraid to die. We are ready to die, but not to kill. If God permits us some
more days here, all right. If not, that is all right also.”
members of Las Abejas, survivors of the massacre
23 •St. John of Kanty, priest, teacher at the University of Krakow, Poland (1390 1473)
•Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, teacher, prophet (1907-1972)
“Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness,
hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement seeking to
overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.”
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
•Fr. Ernesto Abrego killed, El Salvador, 1980.
•Fr. Gabriel Felix Roger Maire, French missionary in Vila Vehla, Brazil, advocate of civil
rights and base communities, killed, 1989.
“I prefer to die for life than to live for death.”
Fr. Gabriel Maire
•Denise Levertov, poet, died, 1997.
•Archbishop Aloísio Lorscheider, OFM, archbishop of Aparecida, Brazil (1924-2007)
24 •Alfredo Feraguas, supervisor of the Basic Christian Community-Community Organizing
program of the diocese of Bacolod and provincial officer of the ecumenical human rights
organization PENTECOST, killed in Himamaylan, Negros Occidental, 1988.
•Vigil of Christmas
“No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor. The self sufficient, the proud, those who,
because they have everything, look down on others, those who have no need of God — for them there will be no
Christmas. Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone. That
someone is God, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Without poverty of spirit there can be no abundance of God.”
Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, December 24, 1978
25 •Christmas, the Birth of Jesus Christ.
“Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for Him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But
because he cannot be at home in it, because He is out of place in it, His place is with those others for whom there is no
room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those
who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, who are tortured, bombed, and exterminated. With those for
whom there is no room, Christ is present in the world. He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be
nothing but the world at its worst....It is in these that He hides Himself, for whom there is no room.”
Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable
26 •St. Stephen, first martyr.
• Denis A. Goulet (1931-2006), professor emeritus of economics and policy studies and
William and Dorothy O'Neill Chair in Education for Justice at the University of Notre
Dame
27 •St. John, apostle and evangelist.
•Missionaries of Africa priests, Charles Deckers (Belgian), Jean-Marie Chevillard, Christian
Chessel, Alain Dieulangard (French), killed in Tizi Ouzou, Algeria, 1994.
• Blessed Sara Salkahazi, SSS, Sister of Social Service. Killed by Nazis in Budapest,
Hungary, for hiding Jews, 1944.
“It is not dynamite, chemical acid, or bombs that destroy and kill, but the spirit of hatred directing them. Hatred causes
bereavement and pain. Love wipes tears. We want love! We want to create structures based on justice! Let is take a
look at the terrible effects of injustice in the life of the world!... It attacks countries and sets up barriers… It instigates
races to rebel against one another! In the other hand, justice acknowledges the right to life of other countries and
demolishes the barriers that separate people. It identifies the characteristics of various races as God’s different ideas.
Sister Sara Salkahazi, SSS
28 •Holy Innocents of Bethlehem.
When?
The Herods of the world,
fearful for their power,
send soldiers
to slaughter
innocents.
The Caesars of the earth
dispatch armies
to implement decrees
for conquest
and taxes.
But the God
above all governors
came himself,
his armor and his purpose:
love.
We have read the pages
of centuries.
When
will we dare
to write
peace?
Emily Sargent Councilman, 1965.
•Fr. Marcial Serrano killed, El Salvador, 1980.
•Fr. Egide Van Broeckhoven, S.J., Jesuit worker-priest, killed in an accident in the factory
where he worked.
“My vocation is to teach people the mystical depths of friendship.”
Fr. Egide Van Broeckhoven, S.J.
29 •St. Thomas Becket (1118-1170), archbishop of Canterbury, martyred in Canterbury
Cathedral, England, 1170.
“The last temptation is the greatest treason
to do the right thing for the wrong reason.”
T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral
Strange, this love announced by our Lord turns all of life right. To love others is to fill our own empty spaces.
Thomas A. Becket
•Massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, 1890.
•José Francisco Avelino (Zé de Lela), head of peasant movement in Conde, Brazil, base
community leader, and leader in the pastoral Commission on the Land, Archdiocese of
Joâo Pessoa, Brazil, killed, 1988.
“ ‘Land is a gift from God.’ It is a natural good that belongs to everyone and not the result of work. However, it is
work, more than anything else, that legitimizes the possession of land. That is how the settlers understand things when
they claim the right to take possession of lands that are free, unoccupied, or unworked, since it is their understanding
that land is a common patrimony and, as long as they are working it, they cannot be expelled.”
Brazilian Conference of Bishops, The Church and the Problem of the Land (1980), 91
30•Danilo Dolci (1924-1997), Italian pacifist, architect, and nonviolent organizer with the poor
and against the Mafia, in Sicily, died, 1997.
“Personally, I am absolutely convinced that peace mans action — when necessary revolutionary, but non-violent. I
recognize that a diseased situation can be brought nearer to health, and therefore nearer to peace, by other means too:
but I know that violence, even when directed to good ends, still contains the seeds of death.”
Danilo Dolci
•King David (Roman martyrology)
•Archbishop Michael Courtney, papal nuncio to Burundi, killed, 2003.
31 •St. Sylvester I, Pope, died 335.
•Mauricio López, university professor, evangelical pastor, defender of human rights, martyr
for justice, Argentina, 1976.
•Nestor Savchuk, monk, priest in the town of Zharky, Russia, protector of icons against
criminals, murdered, 1993.
NO KNOWN DATE
Winifredo Oton, president of the Christian Youth Fellowship of Southern Mindanao, Philippines,
killed 1989. (cf. Philippine Witness, #27)
Blessed Karl Leisner, priest, died of tuberculosis in Dachau, 1945.
Check with Carmelo Alvarez, Latin American Biblical Seminary, or DEI, Costa Rica.):
Noel Vargas, Nicaraguan Pentecostal pastor, killed 1983
Guillermo Castro, Movimiento Estudiantil Cristiano, Killed in Puerto de Cutuco, El
Salvador, 1980.
Augusto Cotter, Salvadoran Baptist pastor, theologian disappeared, 1980. (Is this Augusto
Cotto?)
Santo Dias da Silva, trade unionist and base community leader, killed in Brazil (Sao Paolo?)
1979.
Chanterelle, wife of Lanza del Vasto, died, November
Other quotes:
Archbishop Janani Luwum
“You are good people and our beloved brothers [he assured his jailers earnestly]. It is not you
but your master, Satan, who is using you to torture us and leave us to go hungry. We love you,
and our master, Jesus Christ, loves you too. The wooden bars at the window of this tiny cell
cannot separate us from the love of God, nor stop us proclaiming his message of salvation
through his son, Jesus Christ. All of us here are committed to Christ, even to death.”
when he and 8 others were jailed in Kitgum, Uganda.
SOURCES
Vanden Broeck, Goldian, ed., Less Is More: The Art of Voluntary Poverty. Harper Colophon
Books, 1978.
Foley, Leonard, OFM, ed., Saint of the Day: Lives and Lessons for Saints and Feasts of the New
Missal. Revised Edition. Cincinnati, St. Anthony Messenger Press, 1990.
Larson, Jeanne, & Madge Micheels-Cyrus, ed., Seeds of Peace: A Catalogue of Quotations. New
Society Publishers, 1987.
Lifton, Robert Jay, and Nicholas Humphrey, ed., In a Dark Time: Images for Survival. Harvard,
1984.
Vigil, José María, Agenda Latinamericana 95.
Swedish, Margaret, and Lee Miller, Like Grains of Wheat. Washington, DC: Religious Task
Force on Central America, 1989.
Ellsberg, Robert, All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our time.
NY: Crossroad, 1997.
ADD:
“In Germany, they first came for the Communists, and I did not speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they
came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up
because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Catholic. Then they
came for me — and by that time no one was left to speak up.”
Pastor Martin Niemöller
Jack Kerouac
"All I want to do is love. God will come into me like a golden light and make areas of washing
gold above my eyes and penetrate my sleep with His Balm - Jesus, His Son, is in my Heart
Constantly."
Jack Kerouac, Sketch Notebook 1952-1953
SOURCES
Josimo Morais Tavares
Binka Le Breton, A Land to Die For. Atlanta: Clarity Press, 1997.
Père Jacques (Lucien-Louis Bunel)
Francis J. Murphy, Père Jacques: Resplendent in Victory. Washington, DC: ICS Publications,
1998.
Film: Au revoir, mes enfants
Frederick Douglas
Between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest
possible difference – so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity
to reject the other as bad, corrupt and wicked…I can see no reason, but the most deceitful
one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity.
W. E. B. DuBois:
“Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our
best work can be done and not some future day or future year. It is today that we fit ourselves for
the greater usefulness of tomorrow.”
Mother Xavier
“One beggar must help another. Good people share with us and we must share with the poor.”