Daily Martyrology for December 16

In 999, St. Adelaide of Burgundy. She was married for dynastic reasons to Lothair, the nominal king of Italy. When he died, his rival Berengarius of Ivrea wanted to marry her to his son. When she refused, he put her in prison. She was freed by Otto the Great, whom she married. They were happily married for twenty years and had five children. When she was sixty, she became regent for her young grandson, Otto III. She worked for peace, founded monasteries and attempted the conversion of the Slavic nations.

In 1717, Blessed Mary of the Angels, an Italian Carmelite who served as novice mistress and prioress, and lived a life of deep and mystical prayer.

In 1916, Blessed Honoratus Kzminski. When the Russians suppressed the religious orders in Poland, he organized groups of Catholic lay people to carry on the work of the religious orders.

In 1940, Blessed Philip Siphon, Blessed Agnes Phila, and companions, the martyrs of Thailand. Thailand had a history of tolerance for Catholic missionaries, but that changed in the 1930s when the country increasingly came under Japanese influence. In an isolated incident Fr. Siphon and seven women - two Thai nuns, four girls and an elderly woman -were martyred.

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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.