Witness of Sainthood

In the beginning of the XVII century there started in Japan one of the most harsh and bloody persecutions of the Church. Many were the numbers of martyrs amongst the members of the Augustinian Order for the Gospel. Augustinians from Japan, Spain, Portugal and Mexico, men and women, tertiaries, lay brothers and other faithful who, with their death, gave an example of the unity and universality of the Order. Hereunder […]

Gulia was born in Tuscany near Certaldo around 1320 in a noble family that became poor. She was orphaned at a young age and started working for a family at Tinolfi, near Florence where she came across the Augustinians and their holiness. When she was not even twenty years of age she joined the Augustinian laity. Later she felt a desire to lead a life without vanity and, in the

Today we honor the memory of two friars who were associated by their work for the good of the Augustinian Order at its origins, but also by their love for the interior life of prayer and contemplation. They both served the Order as Prior General and were instrumental in directing and stabilizing the Order shortly after its birth. At the same time, they excelled in the virtue of humility and

We have only sparse information on B.Sante and, as often happens, history is mixed up with legends. The source of information concerning him are the funeral elogies made by Fr. Ambrogio Massari from Cori (elected Prior General in 1476) who came from the same city as Blessed Sante and who wrote about various episodes of the Order’s history. More information concerning him are found in the Historia Corana written in

He was born on 17 January 1355, son of Simpliciano Migliorati who was a farmer. The holiness of St. Nicholas of Tolentino, who died in 1305, led him to join the Augustinians of his locality where he received his priestly ordination. For twelve years he lived at Tolentino, and for a time at Bari from where, in the beginning of the fifteenth centure, he returned to Amandola (Ascoli Piceno). Here

Blessed Helen is one of the several lay women whose memory is celebrated by the Order. She is, thus, a reminder that Augustinian spirituality is not the exclusive possession of religious only. Our Order has a long and rich tradition of lay men and women walking the same path of Augustinian inspired  values professed by friars, nuns and sisters. We are all called to holiness, and the Augustinian vocation is

The Hermitage of Lecceto, near Siena, from its beginning in the XII century, was fertile ground for Augustinian holiness. By way of example of these so-called “beati leccetani” in the Augustinian liturgical calendar is found the memory of B. Antonio Patrizio. His background cannot be described with exactness; this because there is little sound documentation about his life. Writings about him were recorded in the XV and the XVI centuries,

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