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September 13 across 2,026 years of Catholic history

Catholic history · Real stories · Every day

Catholic Saints for Kids

Junior Edition · September 13, 2026

True stories of the saints for curious readers ages 10–12.

In a low whitewashed convent passage, an elderly nun in a coarse brown-black habit and black veil looks down at a loaf of bread, eggs and figs set on a plain wooden table, while a younger nun steadies the revolving wooden turn in the wall behind 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.

Start here 3 min read

The big question

The convent where the dinner bell waited for food

At sixty-six, St. Teresa of Ávila must find food every day for a convent her own rule forbids to own anything.

Her age
Sixty-six
Where
Ávila, in Spain
When
September 1581 AD
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More from this edition

A mosaic of a thin, balding elderly man in a dark tunic and heavy brown cloak sitting exhausted on a stone bench inside a small vaulted stone chapel, while a priest sets a lamp beside a Gospel book on the altar and a spear, shield and pack lie on the dry hillside outside the open door.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of Byzantine glass and stone wall mosaic, from the paper's reference portrait based on St. John Chrysostom, micromosaic icon (Anonymous Greek workshop, 14th century, Vatopedi Monastery, Mount Athos) View source artwork.

Story 02 3 min read

The last march

The sooner the bishop died, the better their promotion

He was about sixty, ill, and walking to a lonely shore at the far edge of the empire.

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A wall painting inside a red border showing two new white stone churches across a dusty court — a long hall church with a row of arched windows on the left and a round domed building on the right, its timber doors open on a small silver case resting on a cloth-covered table — with a line of townspeople in plain tunics and mantles ranged along the foot of the picture.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of a late-Roman fresco of the Constantinian decades, from the paper's reference portrait based on Christ enthroned between the apostles Peter and Paul, with the Lamb on the hill of the four rivers and the martyrs Gorgonius, Peter, Marcellinus and Tiburtius (Unknown Roman painter, 4th century AD, Catacomb of Saints Marcellinus and Peter, Via Labicana, Rome) View source artwork.

Story 03 3 min read

The big day

Settle your quarrel first, the emperor's letter said

Bishops at a council in Tyre were told to settle their quarrel, then hurry to Jerusalem for two new churches.

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A young Passionist student in a black habit with the heart-shaped Passionist Sign on his breast sits at a small wooden table writing with a quill, a crucifix, an oil lamp and a small painting of Our Lady of Sorrows beside him, mountains visible through the open window.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of mid-nineteenth-century Roman academic oil painting, from the paper's reference portrait based on Saint Gabriel in his Passionist habit, after the painting by Professor Grandi — frontispiece to 'The Life of Blessed Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows' (Francesco Grandi, 1831-1891; painted 1879, this reproduction published 1910, Wikimedia Commons, from the H. L. Kilner & Co. edition, Philadelphia, 1910) View source artwork.

Story 05 3 min read

Five years of no

He asked to make one promise, and waited five years

He was twenty-three and already ill when the answer came, and nobody in the house was told but the brother who helped him.

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Today in the Church for kids

Sunday in Ordinary Time, and the day of Saint John Chrysostom

  • Saint John Chrysostom, a bishop and one of the Church's great teachers

Saint of the day for kids

Saint John Chrysostom

Saint John Chrysostom was born at Antioch about 349 AD, preached there, and became Bishop of Constantinople in 398 AD. He was sent away twice for preaching against the court, died under guard at Comana in Pontus in 407 AD, and is a Doctor of the Church.

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On this day in the Church for kids

  • 335 The churches the Emperor Constantine built at Golgotha and over the tomb of Christ at Jerusalem were dedicated over two days, and the date was chosen to fall on the day the Cross of the Lord had been found in the digging St. Helena ordered.Our reportSource
  • 603 Agilulf, king of the Lombards, smashed holes in the walls of Mantua with battering rams and took the city by storm, three weeks after Cremona fell and within a month of the truce Pope St. Gregory the Great had long been working for.Our reportSource
  • 2008 At the torchlight procession at Lourdes, in the 150th year since the apparitions, Pope Benedict XVI spoke of the candle St. Bernadette Soubirous carried at the grotto from the fourth apparition onwards, and of how poor the Soubirous family were in the cachot.Source