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.”

The two most significant Church councils of the last 500 years have been the Council of Trent and the Second Vatican Council.

But that is where the similarity ends.

After Trent, there was a tenacious insistence from Rome for reform on every level. High-living cardinals were expected to live simple lives. Bishops who abandoned their dioceses to live somewhere they found more congenial were ordered back to their cathedrals. Clergy and religious who had flouted their vows and the discipline of their order were commanded to amend their lives or ask to be dispensed from their vows.

Training in theology, liturgy and Sacred Scripture in the seminaries became much more intense. A new catechism was published for the laity, and parish priests were expected to teach from it. And a new missal was promulgated from which, Pope St. Pius V declared, there must be no deviations.

The aftermath of Vatican II was, in so many places, another story. Dissent from Church doctrine and moral teaching was rampant. Liturgical abuses in the Mass became so commonplace that faithful Catholics often found themselves going “church shopping” to find some parish where Mass was not a liturgical free-for-all.

In 1566, Michele Ghislieri, a devout Dominican friar, was elected pope. He took the name Pius V. He was the son of Italian aristocrats who had fallen on hard times — so hard that as a boy Michele had worked as a shepherd. In so many places in the pre-Counter-Reformation era, the Catholic Church was experiencing hard times, but there were still holy men and women to be found among the laity and the clergy.

Michele was fortunate enough to know a fervently religious Dominican friar who guided his spiritual life and became his inspiration for joining the Order of Preachers. Aft er his studies in theology and philosophy, and his ordination, Michele was sent to several Dominican houses where he served as master of novices or prior, and in each place he insisted upon a strict adherence to the rule set down by St. Dominic.

The troubles he oft en experienced in these houses, where too often the friars had been lax in their religious observance, prepared him for what he would experience as the pope entrusted with implementing the reforms of the Council of Trent.

As pope, Pius opened new seminaries and issued a new breviary, a new catechism and a new missal. This was different from the missals of the Middle Ages. It set out what prayers and rites must be said and performed at Mass, and it spelled out the rubrics precisely.

Furthermore, Pius commanded that there was to be no variation, except in the case of rites, such as the Milanese and the Carthusian, which the Church had recognized and approved centuries earlier. The uniform liturgy, combined with the intensified training of the new seminaries, as well as the new, zealous spirit encouraged by such new religious orders as the Jesuits and the Oratorians, advanced the reform in Catholic religious life for which the fathers of the Council of Trent had prayed.

It took time, and there were many challenges, but ultimately, the Church around the world became stronger and holier. Not in every case, of course, human beings being as frail and fallen as we are; but still, it was an improvement over the situation that existed in too many places when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Th eses to the door of Wittenberg’s Castle Church.

Blessed John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI had a great impact on the liturgical life of the Church. There is still work to be done, of course. Not every parish has embraced “the reform of the reform,” but it is spreading. Since the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the summit of Catholic spiritual life, it is essential that it be offered with all the reverence we can muster. St. Pius V understood this, and he is an excellent choice as patron saint of such an effort.

St. Pius V is the patron saint of Bosco Marengo, Italy, which is his birthplace. His feast day is April 30.

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. The 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.”

During the Middle Ages, love matches between royalty were rare. Princes and princesses were expected to marry in order to establish a political alliance, or secure for their families more territory, or to bring in a substantial dowry. Whether the royals liked — let alone loved — each other did not enter into the equation. But Matilda (895-968) and her husband, Henry the Fowler, loved and respected each other.

Matilda had always been charitable, but as empress of Germany she could be more generous than ever before. Her favorite charities were churches, monasteries and convents, but she also gave abundantly to the poor. Matilda’s kindness even extended to criminals and prisoners from her husband’s wars. If she could not persuade Henry to release them, then she comforted them in the cells with food, light and warm clothes. Henry never tried to limit Matilda’s acts of charity; rather, he attributed his victories to his wife’s prayers and good works. Over time, the couple had five children.

St. Matilda’s troubles with her children began the day Henry died. By right, the crown would pass to their eldest son, Otto. But Otto’s younger brother, Henry, wanted to be emperor, and what he could not have by right, he tried to take by force. Young Henry raised an army against his brother, but Otto defeated the rebels easily, captured his little brother and was trying to decide what to do with him when Matilda intervened, begging for clemency. Otto gave up any plans he may have had to execute Henry, and Henry swore allegiance to Otto.

With peace restored in the family, Matilda did what she loved best: endowed convents and monasteries and built new ones. She spent so lavishly that Otto insisted she stop. Then Henry the troublemaker stepped in. For once not only did he agree with his brother, but he suggested more drastic action to prevent their mother from squandering any more money on monks and nuns: The family should take charge of their mother’s finances, including the property she had inherited from their father, the late emperor. As her sons dispossessed her, Matilda, to blunt the pain of being persecuted by her own children, indulged in a little irony, saying how good it was to see her boys working in harmony at last. Then she packed her bags and went to live at the Engern convent.

But worse was to come for Matilda. Henry made another attempt to seize the throne, this time recruiting a team of assassins that included one of Matilda’s grandsons and one of her sons-inlaw. Otto survived the plot unharmed, and once again treated Henry with forbearance. It was just as well; not long after his final conspiracy failed, Henry died. As for Matilda, she spent the final years of her life in a Benedictine convent. There, after she had given to the poor absolutely everything she still owned, including her burial shroud, she died peacefully.

She is also the patron saint of parents with large families. Her feast day is March 14.

Thomas Craughwell is the author of many books, including “Saints behaving Badly” and “This Saint will Change Your Life”.