Category: Biography

Biographies provide one of the more enjoyable ways to learn history, especially when they are well written. Focusing on the events surrounding the life of someone of great accomplishment gives the reader a window through which to see a slice of a time, its persons and places, as they relate to the subject of the biography.

Most, but not all of the biographies on our website are of extraordinary Catholic men and women whose sanctity, zeal, intelligence, and courage made the Church more holy and the world less evil. One can see in the lives recounted how they impacted a certain part of the world, or, with some other individuals, even the whole world. In some cases, they affected future generations as well. Their lives are posted so that our readers may learn history, especially that of the Church and Christendom, and draw inspiration from the Church’s heroes and heroines. Occasional villains show up here, that we might learn how they, too, impacted history.

Dom Prosper Guéranger

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American Catholics who are not students of French history may be aware that at the time of the Revolution of 1789 the Church in France was made to suffer much, but they may also suppose that once the period known … Continue reading →

The Death of Chopin

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The great nineteenth-century composer, Frédéric François Chopin (1810-1849), was born in the wake of that horrid reign of “enlight­ened” barbarity, the French Revolu­tion – the age when Masonic phil­osophers boasted that Reason had finally triumphed over “the Gali­lean,” Jesus Christ … Continue reading →

The Barber Family

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Saint Jerome rhetorically queried: “If the Apostles and martyrs, while still living on earth, could pray for other men, how much more do they do it after their victories? Have they less power now that they are one with Christ?” … Continue reading →

Fr. De Smet

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Editor’s Introduction: The following story is taken from the Life of Father De Smet, S.J. by E. Laveille, S.J. . We are pleased to reprint it for a number of reasons: It clearly illustrates that the fruits of the labors … Continue reading →