Saint Gabriel Possenti – God, and Guns?

Gabriel of the Seven Sorrows, who died on this day in 1862, may be seen as a kind of male Saint Thérèse, but, as...

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...

Pope Benedict’s Resignation, Ten Years On…

Today marks another sombre anniversary - it was ten years ago, on the last day of February, that Pope Benedict XVI officially resigned the...

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...

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 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...

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...

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,...

Saint Mathilda

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

The Tremendous Work of Clement Mary Hofbauer

The tumultuous life of Saint Clement Mary Hofbauer (1751 - 1820) proves what the devil once admitted to the Cure d'Ars, that if there...