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September 19 across 2,026 years of Catholic history

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event · NIEPOKALANOW, Poland, September 19, 1939 AD

Gestapo empty the friary at Niepokalanow and take more than forty friars

St. Maximilian Kolbe was offered one of the two places the Germans left behind to nurse ten wounded men; he refused it and went in the trucks with his brothers.

A black-and-white portrait photograph of a bald, bespectacled Franciscan priest in a dark habit, looking directly at the camera with a serious expression.
St. Maximilian Kolbe, photographed in 1939 AD, not long before his arrest at Niepokalanow.

The Gestapo came to the Franciscan friary at Niepokalanow, outside Warsaw, eighteen days into the German invasion and drove more than forty friars away in two covered trucks. Their guardian, St. Maximilian Kolbe, was offered one of the two places the German commander left behind to nurse ten wounded men lying in the house, and refused it. The trucks went west, toward a camp across the German border.

4 min read

A walled town gate through which a long mounted column rides, led by a rider in crimson on a grey horse under a black double-headed eagle banner, with mitred bishops, armoured knights and pack animals behind him and townspeople pressed back against the houses; at the left, on the steps of a convent doorway, a small tonsured friar in a white habit and black cloak stands holding a closed book, two friars behind him.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of a fifteenth-century panel painting in egg tempera and early oil on gessoed poplar, from the paper's reference portrait based on a scene from the life of St. Vincent Ferrer (Agnolo degli Erri, c. 1470-1490 AD, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) View source artwork.

event · PERPIGNAN, Roussillon, September 19, 1415 AD

St. Vincent Ferrer brings the emperor to Perpignan after a month's argument

Emperor Sigismund rode into Perpignan today with the counts of five provinces, the embassies of three kingdoms and an army of churchmen from the Council of Constance behind him. He has come for the resignation of Pedro de Luna, who reigns as Benedict XIII and is the last of the three men claiming the papacy who will not give it up. St. Vincent Ferrer, who spent years in his service and refused a cardinal's hat from him, is in Perpignan asking him to go.

4 min read

More in this edition

A painted church interior: a line of nuns in white habits and black veils waits at an altar rail while a priest in a red chasuble holds a chalice, and one nun in a worn, stained habit stands alone against a bare white wall at the left, her head bowed and her hands folded.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of a fifteenth-century Netherlandish oil on oak panel, from the paper's reference portrait based on Edelheere Triptych (Descent from the Cross), right wing: Aleydis Cappuyns and her daughters Aleydis and Catharina presented by Saint Aleydis (Unknown Brabantine master, after Rogier van der Weyden, 1443 AD, Sint-Pieterskerk, Leuven, Belgium) View source artwork.

feature · LA CAMBRE, Duchy of Brabant, the 1240s AD

Leprosy keeps St. Alice from the chalice; a voice from heaven answers

The nuns of La Cambre came up to the altar together, and Saint Alice of Schaerbeek was given the Body of the Lord with the rest of them. Then she was moved away before the cup reached her, because lepers are forbidden to come near the Blood for fear of the disease. She complained that she had been robbed of something great, and a voice from heaven told her that nothing of Christ had been kept from her.

3 min read

A mosaic of a gravely ill woman in plain dark wool, her head covered, propped on a board on the floor of a bare plastered room and speaking with a raised hand to a bearded man in a plain tunic who sits listening on a low stool, with a codex, a papyrus roll and an inkhorn on the floor between them.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of Byzantine wall mosaic, from the paper's reference portrait based on Gumusler Monastery, main apse, church fathers in the lowest band - Basil the Great of Kayseri, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus (Anonymous (Cappadocian rock-cut monastery painters); photograph by Dosseman (Dick Osseman), fresco 11th-12th century AD, Gumusler Monastery, Nigde province, Cappadocia, Turkey) View source artwork.

Saint Basil the Great, bishop of Caesarea, died on January 1 this year. His younger brother Saint Gregory of Nyssa crossed Asia Minor to grieve with their elder sister, Saint Macrina. She would not weep with him, and argued instead that the soul does not end with the body, and St. Gregory has written the whole conversation down in the first person.

4 min read

A dark-skinned boy of about ten in a coarse white shirt, dark breeches and a sash stands barefoot in an adobe doorway holding an empty marketing basket, his mother in a headcloth and shawl behind him with a hand on his shoulder, a small wooden crucifix on the whitewashed wall of the room beyond.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of a seventeenth-century viceregal Lima oil painting on canvas, from the paper's reference portrait based on Retrato de San Martín de Porres (Anonymous, Lima school, 17th century, Monasterio de Santa Rosa de las Monjas, Lima) View source artwork.

Don Juan de Porres, a gentleman of Burgos, has been given the government of Panama and has to take ship for it. Before he sails he has had his ten-year-old son, Saint Martin de Porres, confirmed, and has left money with the boy's mother, Ana Velázquez, to feed him and keep him at school. He has also directed that the boy learn the barber's trade, because the university was closed by law to the son of a freed woman whose parents had never married.

3 min read

Today in the Church

Saint Januarius, bishop and martyr (Optional Memorial)

  • Saint Januarius, bishop and martyrOptional Memorial

Saint of the day

Saint Januarius

Saint Januarius was bishop of Benevento and was martyred at Pozzuoli in Campania in the persecution under the Emperor Diocletian. His body is venerated at Naples, of which he is the patron.

On this day in the Church

  • 1415 The Emperor Sigismund rode into Perpignan with the embassies of France, Castile and England behind him, to demand the resignation of Benedict XIII, which St. Vincent Ferrer had spent the summer pressing on him.Our reportSource
  • 1846 The Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to two shepherd children, Melanie Calvat and Maximin Giraud, on a mountain above the village of La Salette-Fallavaux, near Grenoble.Source
  • 1939 The Gestapo cleared the friary at Niepokalanow and took St. Maximilian Kolbe and more than forty friars away in two trucks to the camp at Lamsdorf.Our reportSource

Quote of the day

“Niepokalanow is not these fences or these buildings. Where a man of Niepokalanow is, there is Niepokalanow. ... Many of you will not return here again. I too, it seems, shall not survive this war.”
— St. Maximilian Kolbe, to the friars at Niepokalanow, 5 September 1939 AD, Niepokalanow friary archive, 'Pierwsze aresztowanie (19 wrzesnia 1939)', from the monastery chronicle, recollection of Br Nazariusz Slota