September 23 across 2,026 years of Catholic history

event · SAN GIOVANNI ROTONDO, Apulia, September 23, 1968 AD

Saint Pio dies before dawn in his cell above San Giovanni Rotondo

Soon after midnight St. Pio called his superior to his cell, made his confession and renewed his vows of poverty, chastity and obedience; he died at half past two.

A close portrait of an elderly, bearded Capuchin friar in a brown habit, looking off to the side against a plain green background. — St. Pio of Pietrelcina, the Capuchin friar of San Giovanni Rotondo, in a photographic portrait from the 1950s.

Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, the Capuchin friar who bore the wounds of Christ's Passion for fifty years, died at half past two this morning in his cell at San Giovanni Rotondo. He was eighty-one. Friars crossing the square for Mass at four o'clock were told he was dead, and the police and soldiers standing all over the piazza confirmed it.

A priest in a black cassock extends his hand toward a crowd of poor men and chained galley convicts gathered at his feet, while an angel beside him holds up a monstrance with the Eucharist, and the Virgin and Child look down from clouds above.

event · CHÂTEAU-L'ÉVÊQUE, Périgord, September 23, 1600 AD

St. Vincent de Paul, a farmer's son of nineteen, is ordained priest

Bishop François de Bourdeille of Périgueux ordained St. Vincent de Paul to the priesthood on September 23, 1600 AD, in the church at Château-l'Évêque, a village used because Protestants had pulled down the cathedral in the city. He was nineteen — or twenty-four, by an older reckoning of the year he was born — a farmer's son from the Landes whose father had chosen him for the Church and sold two oxen to keep him at his studies. He said his first Mass in a hill chapel above Buzet, with nobody there but a server and a priest to direct him.

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More in this edition

An oil painting of an elderly nun in a worn brown-black Carmelite habit, white coif and black veil, walking slowly down a whitewashed cloister walk with one hand on the wall, a younger nun in the same habit following a step behind and watching her. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of Spanish Golden Age oil painting, from the paper's reference portrait based on Retrato de Santa Teresa de Jesús (Fray Juan de la Miseria, 1576, Convento de las Teresas, Seville) View source artwork.

Teresa's last journey · Part 4 · ALBA DE TORMES, this week, September 1582 AD

Told she will not recover, St. Teresa rises at the usual hour

Saint Teresa of Ávila has been ill since she reached the Carmelite convent at Alba de Tormes on September 20. Every morning since, she has got up at the usual hour, heard Mass, gone round the whole house and taken her place in the day's work with the rest of the nuns. The doctors the prioress called in this week say she will not recover.

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A Byzantine-style mosaic of a bedchamber: a widow in a dark palla drawn over her head sits on the edge of a low wooden bed, one hand raised as she speaks, beside a young man in a white tunic and dark cloak who sits listening with his hands on his knees; a wooden chest at the right holds a papyrus roll and two wax tablets, and a curtained doorway opens on a courtyard behind. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of Byzantine wall mosaic, from the paper's reference portrait based on John Chrysostom, marginal miniature in the Chludov Psalter (Anonymous Byzantine illuminator, middle of the 9th century, the Chludov Psalter) View source artwork.

writings · ANTIOCH, Roman Syria, 381 AD

St. John Chrysostom answers his critics with his widowed mother's speech

Saint John Chrysostom has finished six books defending his flight from ordination at Antioch. Early in the first book he sets down a speech his mother, Anthusa, made to him in her own bedroom. Widowed at twenty, Anthusa refused every offer of remarriage, kept his father's estate whole and spent her own fortune and her marriage dowry on raising him; she asked in return that he wait until her death before leaving her house.

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A fresco-style painting of a chapter room with a stone vault: a young beardless friar in a grey-brown habit stands on a low wooden platform with one hand raised in speech and a closed clasped book at his feet, while friars sit packed on benches and on the floor, several turning towards an older bearded friar who stands in the arched doorway with his feet off the ground and his arms stretched wide. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of a Trecento buon fresco, from the paper's reference portrait based on St Anthony of Padua, from the fragments of a double-sided dossal from San Francesco al Prato, Perugia (Master of Saint Francis, c. 1272 AD, Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria, Perugia) View source artwork.

column · ARLES, Provence, 1224 AD

St. Francis appears in the doorway at Arles as St. Anthony preaches

In the middle of a sermon to the friars gathered at Arles this year, Saint Francis of Assisi was seen in the doorway of the room, raised off the ground with his arms stretched out in the form of a cross. He was alive at the time and hundreds of miles away in Italy. Friar Monaldo affirmed afterwards that he had seen it, and St. Francis said openly that it had happened.

Today in the Church

Saint Pius of Pietrelcina, priest (Memorial)

Saint Pius of Pietrelcina, priestMemorial

Saint of the day

Saint Pio of Pietrelcina

Saint Pio of Pietrelcina (1887–1968 AD) was a Capuchin friar of San Giovanni Rotondo in southern Italy. He bore the wounds of Christ's Passion for fifty years and spent his days hearing confessions. Pope John Paul II canonised him in 2002 AD.

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On this day in the Church

1600 Bishop François de Bourdeille of Périgueux ordained St. Vincent de Paul to the priesthood at Château-l'Évêque, at nineteen and for a diocese that was not his own.Our report Source
1850 Diggers working beneath the high altar of the church of Santa Chiara at Assisi reached the coffin of St. Clare of Assisi and opened it, six centuries after her burial there.Our report Source
1968 St. Pio of Pietrelcina died at half past two in the morning in his cell at the friary of Our Lady of Grace, San Giovanni Rotondo, aged eighty-one.Our report Source

Quote of the day

“Love Our Lady and help others to love her. Always recite the Rosary.”

— St. Pio of Pietrelcina, his last wishes, San Giovanni Rotondo, 23 September 1968 AD, Pope John Paul II, Regina Coeli, 2 May 1999 (the day of his beatification), §1