Augustinian Blessed

Persecutions do not only create martyrs but many times create “soldiers of Christ”. Such was Thomas Jihyoe, a Japanese Augustinian, who was a Christian soldier during the persecution against Christians of the seventeenth century. For five years he evaded the Emperor’s soldiers who were seeking him because he was a catholic priest. He was born at Omura near Nagasaki around 1600. His parents, teachers of religion, both died martyrs for […]

We celebrate the memory of another martyr today on the Augustinian calendar of saints, William Tirry, an Irish friar who died rather than deny his faith. He was taken prisoner as he was about to celebrate Mass, for it was against the law to be a priest in 17th Century Ireland. Though offered his freedom if he would renounce his faith, he refused to do so and was led to

Mexico’s history is replete with light and shadows, and insofar as the life of the Church in Mexico is concerned, there are most beautiful pages – like the appearance of Our Lady at Guadalupe – and others stained with the redness of the blood of innocents. Amongst the latter we find the story of the Augustinian martyr Elias del Socorro Nieves, member of the Augustinian Province of St. Nicholas of

Today we remember a French Augustinian who excelled in preaching the word of God. By means of his own deep interior life and attentiveness to Scripture, his influence on the people of his day through this ministry as well as through the gift of spiritual direction, was significant and widespread. He was loved and admired by the people, who recognized his holiness and the power of his intercession. William was

Many are of the opinion that St. Rita could never have had such wrold-wide fame as is known today had there not existed B. Teresa Fasce, an Augustinian nun, for many years the superior of the monastery of contemplative nuns of Cascia. A magnanimous woman who, from the quietness of contemplation, managed to reach the world with the spirituality of her own prayers to God. She was born in 1881in