As we commemorate the First Martyrs, let us not forget that today, more than ever before, our brothers and sisters in Christ are going home to God because of their fidelity to the faith which saves.
Saint Catherine of Siena, Virgin and Doctor of the Church, won great miracles from Heaven by the power of her prayers. On her feast day, here is the story of one of those miracles.
Devotion to the Seven Sorrows of Mary goes back to the Middle Ages, but the devotion has reached a new generation of Catholics following the Marian apparitions in Kibeho, Rwanda, in 1981.
"My mission - to make God loved - will begin after my death," she said. "I will spend my heaven doing good on earth. I will let fall a shower of roses."