Near Monte Cassino, about 545 AD, St. Scholastica. According to St. Gregory’s Dialogues, each year Scholastica came to visit her brother, St. Benedict, so they could spend a day in holy conversation. The last time she came to visit, she prayed successfully to be allowed to continue the conversation through the night. Her prayers were answered because her love was greater than Benedict's. Three days later, she died. Benedict had a vision of her soul rising to heaven in the form of a dove. He had her body placed in a tomb he had prepared for himself.
1164, at Premontré, Blessed Hugh of Fosses, the first disciple of St. Norbert and his coadjutor and successor as Abbot of Premontré and head of the Premonstratensian Order.
In 1960, Blessed Aloysius Stepinac. He was born in what is now Croatia. He wanted to enter the seminary, but was drafted into the army. After World War I he studied agronomy for five years. He was active in Catholic organizations. He studied for the priesthood in Rome and was ordained in 1930. In 1937 he became archbishop of Zagreb. He opposed “exaggerated nationalism” and tried to help Jews fleeing from the Nazis. At first he accepted the pro-Nazi regime imposed by Germany in 1941, but within a year he was their most outspoken critic. In 1946 he was arrested by the communists and imprisoned. His jailers tried to poison him.
Our daily martyrology was written by Fr. Hugh Feiss, OSB. Copyright © 2008 by the Monastery of the Ascension, Jerome, ID 83338.
