Byline: Thomas Craughwell

St. Eugene de Mazenod was born into a family that was doomed from the beginning. His father, Charles-Antoine de Mazenod, was a member of the French aristocracy, a man of genteel breeding who had received a superb classical education. Unfortunately, by the time he reached adulthood all he possessed was his distinguished title; Charles-Antoine’s father and grandfather had squandered the Mazenod fortune years earlier.

His mother, Marie-Rose Joannis, on the other hand, came from a family that was solidly bourgeois and very rich. When Charles-Antoine and Marie-Rose announced their engagement, the bride’s family insisted that the traditional dowry remain in Marie-Rose’s name, out of the reach of Charles-Antoine. This was the just the first instance of the Joannis clan’s interference in the life of the Mazenod family.

Although they held Charles-Antoine in contempt, in the interest of seeing Marie-Rose comfortable, the Joannis family did keep a steady stream of money flowing into the couple’s bank account, but such generosity came at a price. Marie-Rose’s mother meddled in every decision the couple tried to make. Her emotionally unbalanced aunt demanded constant attention, and the Joannis women took every opportunity to humiliate Charles-Antoine by reminding him that he had come into their family penniless.

On Aug. 1, 1782, in Provence, Eugene de Mazenod was born into this wretched family. While he was still a little boy, his family’s dysfunction was further complicated by the French Revolution that claimed the lives of thousands of aristocratic families. In 1791, to escape the guillotine, the Mazenods fled to Venice. Four years later Marie-Rose walked out on her husband and her son, returned to France and filed for divorce. Once the divorce had been finalized, she wrote to her ex-husband, “Now you have nothing.”

Eugene found refuge from his miserable home life in the Church. In 1808 he entered the seminary in Paris; in 1811 he was ordained a priest. He asked to be assigned to work among the poor country people in the south of France. His superiors granted his request, in part because this was his home region and he spoke the local dialect.

The French Revolution had caused tremendous disruption to religious life throughout the country. Those bishops, priests, monks and nuns who had not been killed were in exile or had disgraced their vocation. Churches and schools stood abandoned; convents and monasteries lay in ruins. An entire generation had grown up with virtually no religious instruction.

By 1815, Eugene had assembled a band of dedicated priests who worked with him as missionaries in the rural areas of Provence, bringing people who were nominally Christian back to the Faith. In recognition of the group’s success, the pope organized them into a new religious order and gave them their name — the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. An oblate is someone who offers his life and all his efforts to God, or in this case the Blessed Virgin Mary, for the good of others. As for Eugene, his reward was being named bishop of Marseilles, an assignment he held from 1837 until his death in 1861.

St Eugene was never able to reconcile his parents or bring peace to his family, but he and his fellow priests did bring countless thousands back to the Church.

St. Eugene de Mazenod is the patron saint of dysfunctional families. His feast day is May 21.

Craughwell is the author of more than 30 books, including “Saints Behaving Badly” and “This Saint Will Change Your Life.”

In his biography of St. Margaret, Francois Mauriac, the French author and Nobel laureate, tells us that as a child Margaret possessed a sweet, loving temperament — as long as she got her way. In her village Margaret’s good looks and quick wit attracted attention, especially the attention of older boys. Margaret, who would not let anyone tell her what to do, discovered that with a little skillful flirting she could get boys to do almost anything she wanted them to do. When she was about 14 years old she caught the eye of Arsenio, the 16-yearold son of the local baron; he invited Margaret to live at the castle as his mistress. Margaret accepted.

For Margaret her new life was idyllic. A rich young man said he loved her. She had escaped the harsh life of a peasant to live in ease and comfort in a castle where servants did everything for her. The only thing that marred Margaret’s happiness was Arsenio’s candid avowal that he would never marry her. A baron’s son might have a peasant as his mistress, but he could not marry her. Nonetheless, Margaret believed she could change his mind. When she gave birth to Arsenio’s son, she thought the baby would persuade him to marry her. It never happened.

Margaret had lived as Arsenio’s mistress for nine years when he left the castle for a few days to tend to some business at one of his family’s estates. He did not return on the day he was expected. Nor the day after. Nor the day after that. Then Arsenio’s dog showed up alone. The dog’s behavior made Margaret nervous. It cowered in corners and whined. Suddenly it took her skirt in its mouth and, backing up, pulled her toward the door. As Margaret followed the dog outside she felt a terrible sense of dread. The dog led her deep into the woods, then stopped at a pile of dead branches and dry brush where once again it began to whimper. Margaret’s hands trembled as she cleared away the dead wood. Beneath the pile, lying in a shallow pit, she found Arsenio, dead and decaying.

Who killed Arsenio? No one knows. But Margaret’s mind was not on the culprits: for the first time in a long time she was thinking about the state of her soul. She and Arsenio had lived in sin together for nine years and had never been sorry about what they were doing. Now she wondered if at the last moment Arsenio had had time to repent. And she wondered, if death took her suddenly, would she have the sense to beg God for His mercy and forgiveness?

Determined to make a fresh start, Margaret took her little boy and left Arsenio’s castle. She headed for the hilltop town of Cortona where, she had heard, the Franciscan fathers helped repentant sinners. The Franciscans of Cortona were kinder than Margaret imagined. They found a home for her and her son. They assigned two Franciscan priests to be her spiritual directors. When Margaret’s son was old enough, the Franciscans arranged for him to go to school.

The priests suggested that Margaret devote herself to good works, so she served as nurse to the poor in Cortona. She became such a skilled midwife that the women in labor insisted that no one but Margaret care for them.

Aft er Arsenio’s sudden death, Margaret became especially devoted to the poor souls in purgatory. For the rest of her life she prayed earnestly for the dead. When Margaret herself was dying, she had a vision of a vast company of souls streaming out of heaven: They were the souls she had ransomed from purgatory with her prayers.

As a young woman, Margaret had made a bad decision, but she turned her life around, found a stable home for her child, found a career for herself, and found spiritual and emotional comfort from the Franciscans of Cortona. For these reasons, she is a good role model for single mothers.

St. Margaret of Cortona is the patron saint for women raising children alone, and invoked against sexual temptation. Her feast day is February 22.

Thomas Craughwell is the author of more than 30 books, including “Saints Behaving Badly” and “This Saint Will Change Your Life.”

Blessed Margaret’s life is one of the most heart-wrenching stories in the calendar of the saints. She was born blind, with severe curvature of the spine; her right leg was an inch and a half shorter than her left, and her left arm was malformed. She never grew beyond 4 feet tall.

Her parents kept little Margaret hidden away in their house in Metola in the Italian province of Umbria. She was 6 years old when the family traveled to a shrine at Castello, hoping for a miracle. When no miracle took place, Margaret’s mother and father abandoned her.

Some women of Castello found the terrified child and took care of her until they could arrange for her to be adopted. A husband and wife, Venfarino and Grigia, invited Margaret to live with them; they treated her like their own daughter, with love and kindness. She appears to have spent the rest of her life with her adoptive parents.

There was a convent near Margaret’s home, and the nuns became fond of her. When she was about 13 years old, Margaret asked to be admitted as a postulant. Given her years of friendship with the sisters, Margaret expected that she would be happy in their convent. She was in for a disappointment. The nuns were lax in keeping the rule of their order and even in keeping the routine of daily prayer and meditation. Margaret, on the other hand, was intensely devout.

The lack of fervor in her sisters surprised and confused her, while Margaret’s zeal made the nuns self-conscious, angry and resentful. Ultimately, the superior of the convent asked Margaret to leave. She returned to her adoptive parents and at age 15 joined the Third Order of St. Dominic, which permitted her to wear the habit and take the vows of a nun but still live at home where she felt loved and secure.

Margaret’s disabilities did not make her bitter; rather, she became one of the most generous, sympathetic people in Castello. She nursed the sick, consoled the dying and visited prisoners. Margaret said that in the sufferings of her neighbors she saw the image of the suffering Christ. As for her own disabilities, she regarded them as a means to unite her pain with the pain Christ endured on the cross. Her courage, her patience and her deep religious devotion won her the affection of everyone in Castello.

Margaret died when she was 33 years old. At her Requiem Mass the crowd was so great it seemed that the entire town and all the peasants from the countryside had come to the funeral. Th e parish priest planned to bury Margaret in the churchyard, but after the Mass was over the mourners insisted that she must have a tomb inside the church, with all the other distinguished dead of the parish.

The priest and the congregation were still arguing the point when a girl whose legs were crippled dragged herself to Margaret’s coffin. She touched the casket, then stood up and began to walk. Th e miracle convinced the priest to give Margaret a tomb inside the church. Today her remains lie beneath the high altar of Castello’s Church of St. Dominic.

Blessed Margaret (1287-1320) is the patron saint of the poor and anyone dealing with a disability or physical challenge. She also is venerated as one of the patron saints of the pro-life movement. Her feast day is April 13.

Craughwell is the author of more than 30 books, including “Saints Behaving Badly” and “This Saint Will Change Your Life.”

The Gospels make no mention of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s parents, but the Protoevangelium of James, an apocryphal work written about 150, gives us a complete story of Sts. Anne and Joachim.

Even in the early centuries of the Church, the Fathers could not sort out what was legendary in this book from what (if anything) was true. Obviously, the Blessed Virgin Mary had parents. Considering the extraordinary graces God bestowed upon Mary, it stands to reason that her mother and father were also greatly loved by God. More than that, no one can say with certainty. What follows, then, is the legend of St. Anne and her husband, St. Joachim.

Their home was in Jerusalem, and although they had lived long and happily together, Anne and Joachim grieved that they had no children. This is a problem that afflicts many married couples who long for a child, yet find that infertility has made difficult, if not impossible, to conceive. In such cases, St. Anne is the saint to turn to.

One day when Joachim brought an offering to the temple, a fellow worshipper named Rueben mocked Joachim saying anyone who had not added to the number of the people of Israel by producing children had no business making sacrifices. Anguished and humiliated, Joachim went out to the desert where he fasted and prayed for 40 days, begging God to bless him and Anne with a child. Suddenly an angel came down from heaven and said, “Joachim! The Lord has heard your prayer. Go home, for your wife Anne shall conceive.”

Meanwhile Anne was venting her grief in her garden when an angel appeared to her. “Anne! Anne! You shall conceive,” he said, “and your seed shall be spoken of in all the world.”

In her eagerness to share this news with Joachim, Anne left her garden and stood at the city gate waiting for her husband. When she saw him in the distance she hurried out to meet him and kissed him. “Now I know the Lord God has blessed me exceedingly,” she said. “I, the childless, shall conceive.”

Nine months later Anne gave birth to an infant girl whom she named Mary. When Mary was 3 years old, Anne and Joachim led her to the temple and offered her to the Lord. Mary remained in the temple until she was betrothed to Joseph.

Th e cult of St. Anne began in the East. It was already well established by 550, when the Emperor Justinian built a church in her honor in Constantinople. Devotion to St. Joachim developed more slowly, but by the eighth century he was venerated in both the East and the West. It is interesting to note that the feast of the Immaculate Conception, which celebrates the day Our Lady was conceived in the womb of her mother, was originally known as the feast of the Conception of St. Anne.

In Europe, St. Anne’s primary shrine is at Auray in Brittany (France), which claims to possess her relics, while Ste.-Anne-de-Beaupre in Canada’s Quebec province is the great center of devotion to Our Lord’s grandmother in the New World. Today in Jerusalem, the Church of St. Anne stands near St. Stephen’s Gate. Archaeologists have excavated beneath the church and found the remains of what appears to be a house. Whether it was the home of St. Anne, St. Joachim and their holy child Mary, we will never know.

St. Anne is the patron saint of grandmothers, miners, women in labor, as well as Brittany, Canada and the Archdiocese of Detroit. Her feast day is July 26.

Craughwell is the author of more than 30 books, including “Saints Behaving Badly” and “This Saint Will Change Your Life.”

Ignatius of Loyola was born into a family of Basque nobility in the family castle of Azpeitia. He was the youngest of the 13 children of Beltran de Loyola and Marina Saenz de Licona. From his earliest years, Ignatius was enchanted by dreams of chivalry and adventure. His own father had performed deeds of valor in the final years of the Reconquista, the Christian reconquest of Spain from the Moors. His oldest brother, Juan, had sailed with Columbus on the discoverer’s second expedition to the New World. With these models before him, it is no wonder that Ignatius longed to sacrifice himself for a great king, to serve faithfully a beautiful lady and to win immortal fame in the eyes of the world.

As a young man he tried to live out his notion of the gallant cavalier: He was ambitious, vain, prickly about his honor, a gambler, a fighter and a sexual adventurer. At age 26, he fought against a French army in his first — and last — battle. A cannonball struck Ignatius’ legs, shattering the one and wounding the other. Ignatius and his comrades surrendered to the French commander, who spared their lives, sent his own doctors to treat Ignatius, then provided an escort to carry him home to Azpeitia.

To help him pass the time during the long weeks of convalescence Ignatius read the only two books in the house — a life of Christ written by Ludolph the Carthusian and “The Golden Legend,” Jacobus de Voragine’s collection of saints’ lives. As he read these books, Ignatius’ heart was touched by grace: He became ashamed of the vanity, pride and lust that had ruled his life thus far. Ignatius had undergone a conversion, but he had not abandoned his chivalric ideals of suffering and self-sacrifice — instead, he had shifted his focus from winning honor in this world to winning souls for God.

Ignatius’ conversion came during one of the greatest crises the Catholic Church has ever faced: the Reformation. The Protestant revolt had split Europe into two religious camps, shattered the unity of western Christendom and cost the Church hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of souls.

To restore and revitalize the Church, Ignatius envisioned a new community of priests and lay brothers who would be deeply educated in the Catholic faith, in theology and in sacred Scripture. They would be skillful teachers, wise spiritual directors and gifted preachers. He would send out these men across Europe to reclaim Christians who had left the Catholic Church and to bolster the faith of Catholics who were perhaps uncertain about or poorly educated in the essentials of their faith.

Ignatius’ method worked. Jesuits schools and colleges became the pride of the Catholic world — it was not unusual for Protestant families to enroll their sons in them. Jesuit preachers attracted large crowds and brought countless souls back to the Church. And Jesuit missionaries were fearless, traveling into Protestant lands where some, such as St. Edmund Campion, met a martyr’s death, or much farther afield, to the New World or to Asia.

Today, much of the Western world is once again in a spiritual crisis. Religious practice is shrinking in Western Europe, Canada, the United States, even in Latin America. To reverse the trend, Blessed John Paul II called for a New Evangelization, a new missionary spirit to reclaim souls for God. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI tried to advance John Paul’s vision, and Pope Francis is doing the same. A model for the New Evangelization is St. Ignatius of Loyola, whose Jesuits did so much to revitalize the Church and save souls.

St. Ignatius of Loyola is the patron saint of retreats, soldiers, the Society of Jesus and of the Basque country. His feast day is July 31.

Craughwell is the author of more than 30 books, including “Saints Behaving Badly” and “This Saint Will Change Your Life.”

The sexual revolution of the 1960s dramatically altered the moral landscape of the Western world. But of course, sexual promiscuity was not invented in the 1960s; it has always been with us, although it may have been more rampant in some places and some periods of history than others.

St. Mary of Egypt was born into a family of Egyptian Christians. At age 12, she ran away from home and went to live in Alexandria, the most cosmopolitan, most sophisticated and in many ways one of the most corrupt cities in the Mediterranean world. She supported herself as a singer and dancer. At some point, we don’t know when, she lost her innocence.

Mary’s sexual appetite took over her personality. She cruised the streets of Alexandria, looking for partners. Her favorite diversion was to corrupt innocent young men. But many years later, as she told St. Zosimus — the monk who wrote down her autobiography — she never accepted money from the men she slept with, she never became a prostitute.

Once, while walking along the wharves at the harbor, she saw a group of men boarding a ship. She asked one of the sailors who the men were, and where were they going. He said they were all pilgrims, heading to Jerusalem to celebrate there the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. On impulse, Mary decided to go, too. By the time the ship reached the Holy Land, Mary had seduced every pilgrim and every member of the crew.

In Jerusalem she continued her usual routine of looking for new partners. On the holy day, a throng of pilgrims made their way through the narrow streets of Jerusalem to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Mary, out of curiosity, joined them. But when she reached the threshold of the church, some invisible force held her back. She could not enter. All at once the wickedness of her life overwhelmed her, and she began to cry.

Near the door was a carving of the Blessed Virgin. Turning to the sacred image, Mary prayed for the first time in years, “Help me,” she begged Our Lady, “for I have no other help.” With that, the power that had kept her from entering the church withdrew and Mary went in. She found a priest and made a full confession.

After the Mass and veneration of the Holy Cross, Mary left Jerusalem, crossed the Jordan River and headed out into the desert. There she became a hermit, living a life of prayer and penance for nearly 50 years.

Toward the end of her life she encountered the monk Zosimus, to whom she told her story. Then she begged him to return to her on Holy Thursday with the Blessed Sacrament — it had been decades since she had been able to receive holy Communion. Zosimus returned, as he had promised, but he found that Mary had died. He buried her, then went back to his monastery and began to make known the story of Mary of Egypt.

Craughwell is the author of more than 30 books, including “Saints Behaving Badly” and “This Saint Will Change Your Life.”