Daily Martyrology for June 26

At Rome, in the fourth century, Saints John and Paul, martyrs, to whom in the fifth century a basilica on the Coelian Hill in Rome was built on earlier foundations. They mentioned in the first Eucharist prayer.

In 1178, St. Anthelm, bishop of Belley. He was a secular priest, serving as provost of Geneva, when he joined the Carthusians. He became the seventh prior of the Grand Chartreuse, and summoned the first general chapter of the order. He resigned to live as a hermit, but was sent to be prior of the monastery of Portes. He was then appointed bishop of Belley. In that office he took special care of a group of women solitaries and a leper house.

In 1975, St. Josemaria Escribá, founder of the Opus Dei movement. He studied theology and law and was ordained in 1925. While continuing his studies in Madrid, he had the inspiration for Opus Dei, which at its inception was a movement of men, mostly graduate students, who wanted to put the gospel into action. During the persecution of the church and the civil war of the 1930s, members of the community were scattered. In Franco’s Spain, Opus Dei grew rapidly and achieved considerable influence. Because the movement’s members were secretive, suspicions about them arose. Escribá developed a constitution and received papal approval in 1947. Since then the movement, still controversial, has spread throughout the world. He was beatified in 1992 and canonized in 2002.

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Our daily martyrology was written by Fr. Hugh Feiss, OSB. Copyright © 2008 by the Monastery of the Ascension, Jerome, ID 83338.