VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis issued decrees recognizing that 12 candidates for sainthood, including U.S. Sacred Heart Brother Norbert McAuliffe, lived the Christian virtues in a heroic way. The decrees promulgated by the pope May 19 are the first major step in the sainthood process. A miracle attributed to the candidate’s intercession would be needed before beatification and another miracle would be needed for the person’s canonization. Brother McAuliffe was born Sept. 30, 1886, in New York. After joining the missionary Brothers of the Sacred Heart, he was sent to Uganda, where he founded the order’s first mission in Gulu, in the north of the country. He died there July 3, 1959. Among the other decrees was one recognizing the “heroic virtues” of Polish Cardinal August Hlond, archbishop of Gniezno and Warsaw during World War II. He died in 1948. A Colombian bishop, Bishop Miguel Angel Builes Gomez of Santa Rosa de Osos, who died in 1971, also was among the candidates whose causes advanced. A Colombian bishop, Bishop Miguel Angel Builes Gomez of Santa Rosa de Osos, who died in 1971, also was among the candidates whose causes advanced. The others were five priests and four religious women including one known as the “Angel of Auschwitz,” Trinitarian Sister Angela Maria Autsch. Born in Germany, she entered a novitiate in Austria. Turned in to the Gestapo by a Nazi informant who had heard she criticized Hitler, she was held in the Innsbruck jail before being sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp and, eventually, to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she died Dec. 23, 1944, just a month before the Allies liberated the camp. On Oct. 14, Pope Francis will declare Blesseds Oscar Romero, Paul VI and four others saints at the Vatican during the meeting of the world Synod of Bishops. Romero, archbishop of San Salvador, was gunned down during Mass on March 24, 1980.
Old St. Patrick’s celebrates 1,500th anniversary of Ireland’s ‘matron’ Quick, name a saint — not Patrick — whose feast day is a national holiday in Ireland. Need a hint? This saint is often depicted with a shepherd’s staff, or depending on how you look at it, a bishop’s crozier. As well as a cow, and a plain book.
Relics of St. Thérèse, her parents, visit national shrine in Darien Thousands of people made the trip to the National Shrine of St. Thérèse in Darien Sept. 17 through Oct. 1 to venerate the relics of St. Thérèse of Lisieux and her parents, Sts. Louis and Zélie Martin.
Why do we exhume saints’ bodies and preserve their relics? Deacon David Keene is a canon lawyer who serves as chancellor of the Archdiocese of Chicago, but he also holds a doctorate in archeology and is an expert in the exhumation of human remains. Before he retired, federal, state, county and local officials regularly called him when remains were found and needed to be preserved or relocated.