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October 10 across 2,026 years of Catholic history

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event · VATICAN CITY, October 10, 1982 AD

Pope declares St. Maximilian Kolbe a martyr before the prisoner he saved

Beatified in 1971 AD for heroic virtue, the friar who died in a condemned man's place at Auschwitz is now honoured as a martyr, as Polish and German bishops asked.

A sepia-toned portrait photograph of a bearded, balding man in round wire-rimmed glasses and a dark friar's habit, looking directly at the camera.
St. Maximilian Kolbe, the Polish Franciscan friar who died at Auschwitz in 1941 AD, photographed in 1936 AD.

Pope St. John Paul II canonized Saint Maximilian Kolbe in St. Peter's Square and decreed that he be venerated as a martyr, not only for his heroic virtue. The Polish Franciscan had stepped forward at Auschwitz in 1941 AD to die in place of Franciszek Gajowniczek, a father of a family, who stood in the crowd.

4 min read

More in this edition

A balding, grey-bearded priest in a black cassock sits at a wooden table by a shuttered window, pressing a seal into red wax on a letter, with an inkstand, books and an unrolled sea chart beside him and a crucifix on the wall.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of mid-sixteenth-century Roman oil portraiture, from the paper's reference portrait based on Portrait of Ignatius of Loyola (Jacopino del Conte, 1556 AD, Curia Generalizia of the Society of Jesus, Rome) View source artwork.

In Rome on October 10, 1549 AD, Saint Ignatius of Loyola made India a province of the Society of Jesus and named Saint Francis Xavier to govern it. The two had shared a room as students in Paris and had not met since 1540 AD, and St. Francis Xavier had already landed in Japan.

3 min read

A sepia-toned photographic portrait of an elderly nun in the habit and winged cornette of the Daughters of Charity, head turned slightly to one side.

With Prussian armies surrounding Paris this autumn, the Daughters of Charity at Reuilly have turned their house into a hospital and fixed the Miraculous Medal to its doors and windows, and they live on short rations so the sick and wounded can eat. Among them is Saint Catherine Labouré, sixty-four, who works with old men at the hospice next door; only her confessor knows that Our Lady appeared to her in 1830 AD. She has told the sisters that the Virgin will guard the house and no harm will come to them.

3 min read

A gold-ground mosaic of a young woman in a deep-blue mantle drawn over a white head-covering, standing before a brick wall, while a bearded Roman officer in a red cloak with a short sword at his hip points towards her, a soldier in brown stands behind them and two young men in plain tunics watch from the left.
About this picture

AI-generated image in the manner of a Ravennate wall mosaic of about 500 AD, after the medallion of St. Perpetua in the vault of the Archiepiscopal Chapel, Ravenna (c. 500 AD) View source artwork.

writings · CARTHAGE, Roman Africa, 203 AD

Roman tribune blushes and gives way to condemned St. Perpetua

In the army prison at Carthage, a Roman tribune made conditions harsher for the Christians condemned to the beasts. St. Perpetua, twenty-two, told him to his face that prisoners due to die at the games for the emperor's son should be brought out in good condition. He ordered them treated more humanely and let her brothers in.

3 min read

Today in the Church

Saturday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time

Saint of the day

Saint Francis Borgia

Saint Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandía, was admitted into the Society of Jesus by St. Ignatius of Loyola in 1546 AD, made his solemn profession at Gandía in 1548 AD and later governed the Jesuits of Spain.

On this day in the Church

  • 1891 In New York the Archbishop preached a farewell sermon and gave Benediction to St. Frances Xavier Cabrini and her sisters, ready to sail on for Central America the next morning.Source
  • 1894 At Lisieux Isidore Guérin gathered the remains of St. Zélie Martin and of the four Martin children who died young into the tomb of St. Louis Martin in the town cemetery.Source
  • 1982 Pope St. John Paul II canonized St. Maximilian Kolbe in St. Peter's Square and decreed that he be venerated also as a martyr.Our reportSource

Quote of the day

“I ought rather to have hoped to be placed under the care and authority of my brothers, than to be charged with directing them.”
— St. Francis Xavier, to St. Ignatius of Loyola, from Cochin, 1552 AD, Letter of 29 January 1552 AD, in H. J. Coleridge, The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, vol. 2