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September 16 across 2,026 years of Catholic history

Catholic history · Real stories · Every day

Catholic Saints for Kids

Junior Edition · September 16, 2026

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

An oil painting of a Roman street on a bright morning: at the left, open sacks of wheat on trestle boards under an awning, a dealer holding up an empty hand to three townspeople who do not buy; at the right, a file of young men in plain black cassocks and caps carrying bedding rolls, books and boxes down the steps of a gate marked with a small carved IHS, past a loaded mule and its carter.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of mid-sixteenth-century Roman oil painting, 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.

Start here 3 min read

The big question

Grain cost so much that a hundred men left Rome

Grain had climbed out of reach, and St. Ignatius of Loyola had to choose which of his hundred and sixty men in Rome would go.

Men in Rome
Close to a hundred and sixty in March
Money in hand
Twenty-five scudi, on March 1
When
September 1555 AD
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More from this edition

A panel painting of a thin, veiled woman in a coarse grey-brown habit sitting on a low bed in a bare stone cell, written leaves on a board across her knees, an oil lamp burning on a stool beside her, and two barefoot sisters standing at the foot of the bed, one bending to take a leaf from her.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of an Umbrian panel painting in egg tempera on poplar over a burnished, tooled gold ground, from the paper's reference portrait based on Saint Clare (Lippo Memmi, ca. 1330 AD, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) View source artwork.

Story 02 3 min read

Who makes the rules

St. Clare's rule says own nothing, and the cardinal agreed

Saint Clare of Assisi wrote it from her sickbed, and no woman had ever written a rule and sent it to a pope for approval before.

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A painted interior: a woman in a black gown stands at a tall leaded window with her back to the room, an opened letter and a second sheet with a broken red seal lie on a carpet-covered table, and a servant waits by the door with a cup on a tray.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of French oil painting of the middle of the seventeenth century, from the paper's reference portrait based on Saint Vincent de Paul ramene des galeriens a la foi (Jean-Jules-Antoine Lecomte du Nouy, 1876, Chapel of Saint Vincent de Paul, eglise de la Sainte-Trinite, Paris) View source artwork.

Story 03 3 min read

Who decided

He said goodbye as if he would be back soon

The Count would give him an assistant, and let him live in the house as he pleased — if only he would come back.

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In a gold-ground panel painting, a young woman in a black gown, red mantle and white veil, wearing a circlet of roses and lilies and a gold halo, stands with one hand raised in speech before a bearded magistrate seated at the left, with a soldier behind her and two clerks writing at the right.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of a gold-ground egg-tempera panel painting, from the paper's reference portrait based on Saint Cecilia and stories from her life - Cecilia before the prefect Almachius (Master of the Saint Cecilia Altarpiece, c. 1305-1310 AD, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence) View source artwork.

Story 04 2 min read

The big question

One sentence would have set her free. She refused.

Tradition holds that the prefect of Rome could have St. Cecilia killed, or let her walk free.

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Today in the Church for kids

Wednesday in Ordinary Time — Saints Cornelius and Cyprian, martyrs

  • Saints Cornelius and Cyprian — one a Pope, one a bishop, and both killed for the faith

Saint of the day for kids

Saints Cornelius

Saint Cornelius was the Bishop of Rome from 251 AD, and he died in exile at Centumcellae in 253 AD. Today the Church remembers him together with Saint Cyprian, the Bishop of Carthage, who was killed for the faith in 258 AD.

On this day in the Church for kids

  • 230 The oldest list of the days the Church remembered its martyrs, called the Martyrologium Hieronymianum, names St. Cecilia by herself under September 16, on the Appian Way, the day she was buried in the Catacomb of Callistus.Source
  • 1252 At Perugia, Cardinal Rainaldo, the Bishop of Ostia who looked after the order, approved the way of life St. Clare of Assisi had written for the Poor Sisters of San Damiano.Our reportSource