Daily Martyrology for April 5

In 1258, at Fosses in Belgium, Blessed Juliana. An orphan, she was brought up at the double community of Mount Cornillon, which ran a hospital. She joined the community and became superior. She had a dream which urged her to promote a feast in honor of the Eucharist. Caught in a tangle of controversies, she was eventually forced to leave the community and died as a hermit. Her efforts and those of her friend St. Eva of Liège led to the establishment of the feast of Corpus Christi after her death.

At Vannes, in Brittany, in 1419, St. Vincent Ferrer. He joined the Dominicans and was a student and teacher at a number of Dominican faculties in Catalonia and then at Toledo. He was a very effective preacher. When he couldn’t convince his friend, the anti-pope Peter de Luna, to negotiate with his rival, Vincent became a roving preacher and stressed the need for repentance. He finally helped convince Benedict to resign, and then spent the rest of his life as a preacher in Normandy and Brittany.

In 1574, at Palma de Majorca, St. Catalina Tomás. She was an orphan who worked as a shepherdess before becoming a lay sister in the Canonesses of St. Augustine. She was troubled by diabolical events, but remained streadfast. Her body was found to be incorrupt forty years after she died.

In 1744, at Kaufbeuren, Germany, the death of St. Mary Crescentia Hoss. Born of a poor family in Bavaria and christened Anna, she wished to join the local Franciscan convent, but they said they were too poor to receive her without a dowry. The Protestant mayor made shutting a neighboring tavern contingent on the monastery’s acceptance of Anna. The nuns accepted her as a tertiary sister, but treated her miserably. She was eventually allowed to become a full member of the community and later became novice-mistress and superior. She was a visionary, generous to the poor, and a kindly superior.

The Swiss-American Congregation, which was founded in 1870, was formally erected on this day in 1881.

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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.