Biographies & Lives of the Saints

BY JOSEPH GREGORICH - Small booklet - 74 pages

Frederic Baraga was born in Slovenia to a very pious family of the lower nobility when George Washington was president of a newly founded republic in the New World. The ‘Northwest Territories,’ where this newly born child was destined to spend thirty years of his life as a missionary to the Indian Nations of the western Great Lakes, had just been ceded to the new nation upon her independence from England and would soon be incorporated into the United States.
After being counselled by his friend and confessor in Vienna, St. Clement Mary Hofbauer, he was ordained and after a few years service in Slovenia he decided to become a missionary in the new world and was accepted by Bishop Fenwick for work in the diocese of Cincinnatti.
Bishop Baraga was well known and loved during his lifetime, and his letters about his missionary work among the Chippewa and other Indian Nations were published widely in Europe, inspiring Saint John Neumann and Father Francis Xavier Pierz, among many others, to emigrate to the United States. He spent his life working for the conversion of the native inhabitants of this new young nation, and most certainly wished that the Faith would be more widely accepted here by all men, natives and immigrants alike.
Venerable Irenaeus Frederic Baraga (June 29, 1797–January 19, 1868), Pray for us!

J. J. Barry - PB - 516 pages

Christopher Columbus is one of the most saintly and heroic Catholic laymen in the annals of our glorious history, whose true life-story should be known by all Catholics, but especially by Catholic Americans who owe so much to him.
It is very important for Catholics to have a sense of gratitude, and to express it. Columbus Day is still, in this age of secularism and hatred of the Faith, a civil holiday; one that should be celebrated with great reverence, especially by Catholic Americans.
The true story of his life and the glories of his achievement (indeed all of the achievements of that great Catholic nation called Spain), have been under attack for a long time now by the Christ-haters, some of whom even pretend that it might be true that the people of the Americas would have been better off without Columbus’ discoveries and the subsequent events of conquest and evangelization due to his efforts. This book refutes those calumnies.
To recognize and admit that the success of the great voyages of discovery was truly due to the special designs of the providence of God and under His direct protection, was the first impulse of the heart of Columbus. His life of faith and devotion is truly inspirational.
The miraculous nature of Columbus’ life and work is the subject of this extensive biography. Here you will discover the hidden reasons and plans that propelled him on his voyage of discovery, and how God ultimately frustrated some of those plans and made others fruitful.

First Exarch of the Russian Catholic Church - PB 278 pages

By the inscrutable designs of divine providence, during the fateful year of 1917, when Our Lady appeared at Fatima, there were two events that also occurred in Russia. The very first Catholic Exarch (a bishop approved by, and under the direct jurisdiction of, the See of Peter) for the Russian Catholic Church was named. He was Blessed Leonid Feodorov. The other event was of course the Revolution, accomplished by Kerensky and Lenin in two stages, that turned over the vast Russian Empire of the Romanovs to a clique of anti-Christian persecutors. Holy Mother Russia (and the whole world) has suffered greatly from this Revolution, and both still suffer from the scars and effects of it.
The message(s) of Fatima, given both in 1917 and in subsequent apparitions to Sr. Lucia dos Santos, show Heaven’s concern with Holy Mother Russia and her errors and her coming conversion. The conversion refers of course to the end of Russia’s first and most fundamental “error”—her separation from the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church under the Vicar of Christ. The holy reunion that the Mother of God desires (and demands) is the perfection of the Orthodox Church of Russia that is to be accomplished by a miracle of Grace resulting from the Consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart by the Pope and all of the Bishops in union with Peter.
The erection of the Exarchate by Pope St. Pius X and Pope Benedict XV set the pattern for proper and fruitful reunion of the Orthodox. The holy life of the first Exarch, Blessed Leonid Feodorov (and his only successor Blessed Klymentiy Sheptytskyi, who died in 1951) established the norm that all should look to who pray and work for the successful reunion of the two Churches as Heaven wishes.
The Exarchate has been extinguished since 1951, but we believe that its resurrection is only a matter of time, and that its previous existence, and the life of Blessed Leonid, remain as divine signposts on the path of the most glorious and fruitful reunion that is to come.

For more information on Leonid Feodorov see the wonderful article here.

Father Alban Butler - Hardcover - 538 pages - Illustrated

With reflections for every day of the year compiled from Butler’s Lives and other approved sources

This beautifully illustrated book is the perfect solution for so many Catholics anxious to get reacquainted with the lives of the saints, but who have too little time to read more thorough biographies. There are approximately five hundred entries covering the feast days for each day of the year with an accompanying pictorial sketch of the saint being honored, and some pious reflection useful for daily meditation.

This is the original version of Butler’s Little Pictorial Lives first published in 1874 and largely taken from Butler’s original work. This work is a popular, but very scholarly, abridgement of the complete Butler’s Lives published in twelve volumes in 1847. That is the best edition of Butler’s work with no late 19th or early 20th century ‘modernizations.’

This collection makes excellent reading at table or after the family rosary where in the bosom of intimate familial unity, the history of sanctity may be passed to young minds eager to hear stories of true heroism. Many saints, indeed some very well known and popular ones, took their first steps toward a life of heroic virtue by reading or hearing the lives of other saints who went before.

Father Alban Butler was born in 1710, at Appletree, North-amptonshire, the second son of Simon Butler, Esq. Orphaned at the age of eight, he was sent to be educated at the English College, Douay, in France. In 1735, Butler was ordained a priest. At Douay, he was appointed professor of philosophy, and later professor of theology. It was at Douay, he began his principal work The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints. He also prepared material for Richard Challoner’s Memoirs of Missionary Priests, a work on the martyrs of the reign of Elizabeth.

He labored for some time as a missionary priest in Staffordshire, and was finally appointed president of the English seminary at Saint Omer in France, where he remained till his death in 1773.

Pio Nono:A Study in European Politics and Religion in the Nineteenth Century

by E. E. Y. Hales  - PB - 378 pages

At the time of his death in 1878 Pope Pius IX had served as pope longer than any pope besides Saint Peter. His papacy, from 1846 until 1878, was the political and religious pivot-point of the nineteenth century.
He was elected pope as the candidate of the politically “liberal” party in the College of Cardinals. By liberal here we mean those who were sympathetic generally towards the new republican and anti-monarchical leanings of so many leaders and thinkers in those post-enlightenment years; but the violent revolutions of 1848 convinced him that the liberals had far more than merely political ends in mind. In fact, he now believed that the destruction of the Church was their ultimate goal, and for many of the leaders, it was. Because of that, he became, although not by his choice, a political as well as a religious warrior.
Because the position that Pio Nono inherited as Pope was that not only of the universal shepherd of the faithful and vicar of Christ, but also that of a temporal Prince and sovereign, the task of leadership before him was inextricably intertwined with political and revolutionary affairs. The great battles of church and state that dominated that century were, by the grace of God, his to fight. Mr. Hales beautifully and faithfully tells us the story of that battle and Blessed Pio Nono’s part in it.

By Fanchon Royer - PB - 304 pages - EBOOK - PDF, Kindle, & EPUB

Miguel Pro was born in 1891. He was the third of eleven children, four of whom had died as infants or young children. He entered the Jesuit novitiate at El Llano on August 15, 1911, was ordained in 1925, and executed in 1927. In 1952—just 25 years later—his cause came up for beatification and he was beatified by Pope John Paul II on September 25, 1988.
At the time of Padre Pro’s death, Mexico was under rule of the fiercely anti-clerical and anti-catholic President Plutarch Elias Calles who had begun what writer Graham Greene called the “fiercest persecution of religion anywhere since the reign of Elizabeth.” During those years of the Masonic-Communist persecution, the Mexican people rose up in a great war to defend their nation and the rights of the Church and of Christ the King. Their battle-cry was Viva Christo Rey! Blessed Padre Pro’s martyrdom came at the height of the war and it typifies the period of the Cristero rebellion and its heroes. He took no part in the war, but spent his life ministering to the poor and faithful Mexicans.

He was one of the earliest combatants of communism and a pioneer “priest worker.” While observing the Mexican miners’ needs as assistant to his father, a mine operator, he first recognized his vocation. After entering the Society of Jesus, and spending time in Belgium and Spain for studies, he fell into the company of priests and seminarians who were preparing the way for the apostolate to the worker. When he returned to Mexico at the height of the anti-Catholic persecution, his was a mission to the laborers and to the poorest Mexicans.

Mario Peterson & Tom Concert — 96 Pages - PB

Searching for Fine Pearls is an easy-to-read summary of the monumental Catholic classic The Mystical City of God that was written by Venerable Mary of Agreda, a 17th century Franciscan abbess, who had mystical visions and revelations concerning many intimate details of the life of our Lord and his Blessed Mother not revealed in the Gospels. These revelations were described and published in four volumes, in Spanish, during her lifetime.
For those readers who might be daunted by the thought of reading the full work of over 2,000 pages, this short summary may encourage them to make the effort. Many saints, popes, religious, and other holy men and women, as well as humble laymen from all walks of life have found great grace and consolation in the pages of The Mystical City of God.
This work has received the approbation of seven popes and has been read and meditated upon by millions in the four centuries since its original publication. An English translation was produced in 1912 and has enjoyed a wide readership.
Mary of Agreda’s incorrupt remains and the well documented facts of her evangelizing bilocations to the New World attest to her holy life. Fray Junipero Serra, the founder of so many of the famous California missions, and a brilliant scholar and theologian, was profoundly influenced by her inspirational writings. He always carried with him three books; his breviary, a copy of the bible, and The Mystical City of God.

Dom Louis Soltner - PB 240 pages

This history of Solesmes and its founder Dom Guéranger is an excellent work published by the Monks of Solesmes. It tells the story of one of the greatest scholars and saintly men of the 19th century, and chronicles the enduring work that he founded and promoted during his lifetime. In our estimation, it is slightly marred by some comments regarding the movement toward a restoration of the Roman Liturgy that was largely inspired by Dom Guéranger and how that movement has culminated in the novus ordo liturgy of the 20th century. However, that issue aside, it is an excellent historical resumé, and it is well worth your time to read.

For more in-depth commentary on the modern liturgical movement, we refer our readers to the book by Fr. Bonneterre found on our website here.