October 5 across 2,026 years of Catholic history

event · KRAKÓW, October 5, 1938 AD

A sister woken by mistake sees St. Faustina smile and die at Łagiewniki

The lay sister, who left school after three years and was already held a saint in her order, received the last sacraments and died before midnight, aged thirty-three.

Black-and-white head-and-shoulders portrait of a nun in a dark veil and white wimple, looking calmly toward the camera against a plain pale background. — St. Faustina Kowalska in the habit of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy, in a portrait taken before 1938 AD.

Saint Faustina Kowalska died of tuberculosis at about eleven at night in the infirmary of her convent at Łagiewniki, in Kraków, hours after her confessor gave her absolution and the Sacrament of the Sick. A cook, gardener and porter with three years of schooling, she had kept from most of her sisters the image and the feast of Divine Mercy that Jesus asked of her in 1931 AD. Two sisters were at her bed when she died.

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A black-and-white portrait of a bearded friar in a dark hooded habit, looking to the side against a blurred outdoor background.

event · SAN GIOVANNI ROTONDO, October 5, 1925 AD

St. Pio refuses chloroform so no surgeon can see his side wound

Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, the Capuchin priest who bears the stigmata, was operated on for a hernia at the friary of San Giovanni Rotondo without anaesthetic. He refused chloroform because he understood the Vatican had ordered that no one inspect the wound in his side again. Afterwards, while St. Pio lay unconscious from exhaustion, his surgeon examined the wound anyway.

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More in this edition

An oil painting of a black-bearded priest in a black cassock at a wooden table, pausing with a quill over a letter and looking up. A small wooden crucifix and a book are on the table, and a window shows palms and sailing ships at anchor on a river. Through a doorway on the left, a sick man lies on a cot in a hospital ward while an attendant in white cotton carries a brass jug. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of the Portuguese painters of c. 1620, from the paper's reference portrait based on Saint Francis Xavier preaching in Goa (André Reinoso, c. 1619, Museu de São Roque, Lisbon) View source artwork.

writings · GOA, September 20, 1542 AD

In India, St. Francis Xavier writes to friends he expects never to see

Saint Francis Xavier wrote from Goa to his companions in Rome on September 20, 1542 AD, the first letter he sent from India. He described his work in the city's hospital, jail and leper house and told them the Governor was sending him south. St. Francis Xavier did not expect to see his companions again in this life, so he asked them for long letters. In the same letter he called himself a useless instrument.

4 min read

A sepia family photograph: an older man in a dark waistcoat and an older woman stand among a young woman and several children in a garden before a stone wall and foliage.

profile · BERGAMO, October 5, 1892 AD

Angelo Roncalli, ten, passes seminary exams after a summer with his priest

Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, the future Saint John XXIII, passed the entrance examinations of the Seminary of Bergamo on October 5 and 6, 1892 AD. Three months earlier he had missed his final examinations at the college of Celana. The ten-year-old son of sharecroppers at Sotto il Monte had spent the summer studying with his parish priest, Father Francesco Rebuzzini, who later helped pay for his place with the family's landlord, Count Giovanni Morlani.

An ink-and-wash drawing of an empty barrel-vaulted stone cellar, its floor dug open around a ring of old dressed-stone foundations, with shovels leaning on the walls, a coil of rope and two oil lanterns, and worn steps rising to a daylit doorway on the left. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of a nineteenth-century reportage drawing in pen, ink and wash. No person appears in it.

place · TOURS, October 2, 1860 AD

A red cross and a lamp mark the wall hiding St. Martin's tomb

In October 1860 AD a commission dug in a cellar in Tours, on the site of the lost basilica of Saint Martin of Tours, and found the foundations of its choir. The tomb lay beyond the cellar wall, under the next house, and the work stopped until the Church could get in. A red cross and a lamp burning day and night marked the spot.

Today in the Church

Monday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time

Saint Faustina Kowalska, virginOptional Memorial

Saint of the day

Saint Faustina Kowalska

Saint Faustina Kowalska, born Helena Kowalska in Poland, was a lay sister of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy who worked as a cook, gardener and porter. Jesus entrusted to her the image and feast of Divine Mercy. She died in Kraków in 1938 AD, aged thirty-three.

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On this day in the Church

1378 On hearing that the rebel cardinals had elected a rival pope, St. Catherine of Siena wrote from Siena to Pope Urban VI telling him to stand firm.Our report Source
1451 By a bull of this date Pope Nicholas V ruled that the body of St. Vincent Ferrer should remain in the cathedral of Vannes even after his canonization.Source
1858 After the people of Lourdes appealed to the Emperor, the barriers around the grotto of St. Bernadette's apparitions were taken down by the men who had put them up.Our report Source
1946 St. Pio's House for the Relief of Suffering at San Giovanni Rotondo received its official status and legal constitution.Saint Pio of Pietrelcina Source

Quote of the day

“There will be a Feast of Divine Mercy, I see it, all I want is to do God's will.”

— St. Faustina Kowalska, to Mother Irena Krzyżanowska, in the convent infirmary at Łagiewniki, 1938 AD, Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy, Biography of Saint Faustina, ch. 10, 'To the House of the Merciful Father'