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September 14 across 2,026 years of Catholic history

Catholic history · Real stories · Every day

Catholic Saints for Kids

Junior Edition · September 14, 2026

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

A young tonsured canon in a white tunic and black cloak stands in the open gateway of a monastery holding a closed book against his side, an older canon at the door beside him, while five townspeople wait on the road outside with the walled city behind them.
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.

Start here 3 min read

The big question

Too many visitors, so he moved a hundred miles away

Saint Anthony of Padua joined the canons outside Lisbon at fifteen. At seventeen he asked to be sent a hundred miles away.

His age
Seventeen
Where
Lisbon to Coimbra, in Portugal
When
1212 AD
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More from this edition

A wall painting of an elderly Roman empress in a pale tunic, purple mantle, pearls and a jewelled headband standing on broken ground with her right hand out, directing three workmen with a basket, a pick and a loaded cart, a bishop in a plain mantle beside her and a dark hollow cut into the ochre rock behind.
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 Seated statue of Helena of Constantinople — head (Unknown Roman sculptor; head recut in the Constantinian period on an Antonine body. Photograph by Jebulon, body: second half of the 2nd century AD; head: Constantinian, c. 306-337 AD, Musei Capitolini, Rome) View source artwork.

Story 02 3 min read

The big dig

Under a temple and a hill of dirt: Christ's tomb

St. Helena, about eighty years old, ordered the temple pulled down, and every soldier in Jerusalem was sent to dig the earth away.

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A small, gaunt friar in a hooded undyed tunic tied with a knotted rope kneels barefoot on a grey mountain ledge, hands drawn to his chest and face lifted toward an empty sky, with four small birds on the rock beside him and a stone chapel and hut behind him above a wooded valley.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of medieval Italian fresco painting of the Assisi cycle, from the paper's reference portrait based on Legend of St. Francis, scene 19: Stigmatization of St. Francis (Giotto di Bondone, 1297–1300 AD, Upper Church, Basilica of San Francesco, Assisi) View source artwork.

Story 03 3 min read

A secret kept

The nails in St. Francis's hands were his own flesh

He had been fasting on this Tuscan mountain since August, and this morning the marks of the nails were in his hands and his feet.

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A mosaic of a small, elderly, balding man in a plain tunic and cloak sitting on a stony road on a bare hillside, one soldier crouching beside him with a water skin and another standing by a horse, a fallen satchel and a parchment book at his feet and a small stone chapel on the slope behind.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of a Byzantine mosaic of glass and stone tesserae, 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 04 3 min read

What happened

St. John Chrysostom asked to rest. The soldiers said no.

The two soldiers marching a sick bishop of sixty to the far edge of the empire would not give him three more hours.

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Today in the Church for kids

Monday in Ordinary Time — the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

  • The Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Saint of the day for kids

The Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Today the Church keeps the Exaltation of the Holy Cross — the Cross on which Christ was crucified. The Roman Martyrology records that this Cross was found at Jerusalem.

On this day in the Church for kids

  • 1654 1654 AD: Six days after Saint Peter Claver died, the leaders of Cartagena walked together to the Jesuit church with the cathedral musicians and held a grand service for the priest who had spent forty-four years working the city's slave wharves.Source
  • 1894 1894 AD: Céline Martin joined the Carmel convent at Lisieux and brought a camera with her, and forty-one of the forty-seven photographs known to be real pictures of her sister Saint Thérèse of Lisieux were taken with it.Our reportSource
  • 2001 2001 AD: At a general meeting of the Order of Saint Augustine, Father Robert Francis Prevost — who would later become Pope Leo XIV — was elected Prior General, the head of the whole order.Saint MonicaSource