Saint Mathilda

Saint Mathilda (c. 892 - 968) of Ringleheim - which has a melodious mediaeval ring to it - was of royal vintage in the...

Four Spaniards and a Saint?

On March 12th, 1622, Pope Gregory canonized Philip Neri, along with Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, Teresa of Avila and Isidore the Farmer - or,...

15 Minute Cities – Utopian Villages, or Dystopic Hells?

There's much ado of late on '15 minute cities', (FMCs - like everything else now, they have their own acronym) a proposed redesigning of...

Saint John Ogilvie, the Last Martyr of Scotland

John Ogilvie, born in 1579, just as the Protestant 'reformation' was taking hold in Britain, including his (and my own) native land of Scotland...

The Almost-Youngest Saint, Dominic Savio

Dominic Savio died on March 9th, 1857, at the age of 14, his last words, 'what beautiful things I see...! When he was declared...

The Radical Prodigal, John of God

Saints are by definition ‘extreme’, for they see past the veil of this world, and act as though all that mattered were the next...

Saints Perpetua, Felicity and Thomas Aquinas

Today marks the optional memorial of the early martyrs Perpetua and Felicity, put to death likely in the year 203, under the reign of...

Cheating Chat-GPT

In 1950, Alan Turing - one of the inventors of the modern computer, and fresh from helping win the war by designing it to...

The Rise – and Fall? – of the Nones

He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. "When the unclean spirit has gone out...

Saint Casimir of Poland

(With the conflict unfolding in Ukraine, and potentially across Europe, today's saint, one of the patrons of Poland, and of Lithuania, whose very name...