Canon Benjamin Norman

Saint Raymond of Peñafort: The Sailing Cloak

5th March 2020 by Canon Benjamin Norman

The Saints’ Attributes:St. Raymond of Peñafort was born near Barcelona in 1175. He was an accomplished professor of canon law and held the canon law chair at the University of Bologna for three years. His treatise on ecclesiastical legislation is still conserved in the Vatican library. The saint joined the Dominican Order, influenced by the preaching of Blessed Reginald, prior of the Dominicans of Bologna. He received the habit of this order in 1222. At Barcelona, with Saint Peter Nolasco … Read More

Catholic Church

The Saint’s Attributes – St Frances of Rome

25th February 2020 by Canon Benjamin Norman

St. Frances of Rome: The Archangel and the Flaming Heart One of the most celebrated mystics of the fifteenth century, Saint Frances of Rome, was born in the Eternal City in 1384, to a noble family. She had from a young age desired to enter religious life, but her father had other plans, and she was married as a young woman to Lorenzo de’ Ponziani, a nobleman and soldier. Saint Frances distinguished herself by her charity towards the poor and … Read More

Catholic Church | Catholic Education

St. Clare of Assisi

31st August 2019 by Canon Benjamin Norman

Saint Clare is remembered as the Cofoundress of the Order of Poor Ladies, or Poor Clares, and the first Abbess of San Damiano. She was born at Assisi the 16th July 1194, and her feast is celebrated in the traditional liturgical calendar on the 12th August. From her tender youth Clare seems to have been endowed with uncommon virtue. As a child she was much given to prayer and mortifications. Saint Francis of Assisi, who first met Clare when she was eighteen years of age while preaching a Lenten retreat at the Church of San Giorgio, in Assisi, immediately recognised in her a soul set apart by God … Read More

Catholic Church

St. Gregory the Great and his dove

2nd April 2019 by Canon Benjamin Norman

St. Gregory the Great is one of the most remarkable figures in Ecclesiastical History. He had in many respects a tremendous influence on the doctrine, organisation, and discipline of the Catholic Church. The saint was born in Rome about 540 and died the 12th March 604. He was raised in a pious Patrician family, and as a young student so excelled in grammar, rhetoric and dialectic as to be thought foremost in these disciplines in Rome. He very likely studied … Read More

Catholic Church | Liturgy

St Athanasius

22nd March 2019 by Canon Benjamin Norman

St. Athanasius, the great bishop of Alexandria and a Confessor and Doctor of the Church, was born between 296 and 298 in Alexandria, and died the 2nd May 373. He is remembered as “the Father of Orthodoxy;” the greatest champion of Catholic belief on the subject of the Incarnation that the Church has ever known. Gifted with a powerful character and intellect, his childhood education was that common to youths of a better class and included grammar, rhetoric, jurisprudence, and … Read More

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