Born Francisco Febres Cordero on November 7 in the city of Cuenca, 7,000ft up in the Andes in Ecuador, he belonged to a family heavily involved in the dangerous politics of that country.

His father, who earned his living as professor of English and French at the seminary college in Cuenca, inclined to despair when Francisco was born with crippled legs.

His mother, however, retained her faith in the boy’s destiny and educated him at home before sending him at nine to the school which the Christian Brothers had recently established in Cuenca, their first in South America.

Francisco immediately felt at home. “From the moment I entered,” he later wrote, “God gave me a burning desire to be clothed in the holy habit of their Institute.”

His family thought otherwise, and packed him off to the seminary of Cuena. There, however, Francisco’s health deteriorated to such an extent that he was allowed back to the Brothers’ school. 

On March 24 1868, still only 14, he officially joined the Institute, taking the name of Miguel in religion.

He proved a brilliant teacher, and at 19 published a Spanish grammar that became a standard textbook. With the help of President Moreno of Ecuador the number of pupils in the Brothers’ school topped the 1,000 mark in 1879.

In 1888 Miguel represented the Ecuadorian branch of the Christian Brothers at the beatification of John Baptist de La Salle in Rome.
Back at home a new Spanish grammar consolidated the academic respect in which he was held. In 1892 he was elected to the Academy of Ecuador.

For a while he taught at an Institute for Adult Education which the Brothers opened in Quito, but this closed after opposition from the now anti-clerical government. Miguel, for all his reputation, was quite content to return to primary school teaching and preparing children for their First Holy Communion.

Sent again to Europe in 1907, Miguel was too modest to make any impression in Paris, where he was set to translating French textbooks into Spanish.

A spell at Lembecq, the Institute’s mother house in Belgium, did nothing for his health, and he was sent to recuperate on the coast of Spain near Barcelona.

Forced by riots to abandon his lodging Miguel returned to find the statue of the Virgin which he had placed in the window still standing guard. 

His health, though, continued to deteriorate, and he died on February 9 1910. 

In 1937, to avoid depredations during the Spanish Civil War, his remains were returned to Ecuador, and taken in procession to Quito. Several miracles were reported along the way.

Miguel Cordero was canonised in 1984.

Although Aquinas had little knowledge of Greek or Hebrew, as a theologian he was unrivalled in intellectual power, capable of dictating to four secretaries at the same time.

Yet he showed absolute single-mindedness in pursuing his fundamental aim: to use Aristotelian methods of scientific rationalism to support the doctrines of Christian faith and revelation.

The son of the count of Aquino, which lies on the ancient border of the papal states, mid-way between Rome and Naples, Thomas could claim kinship with the kings of Aragon, Castile and France, as well as with the Emperors Henry VI and Frederick II.

When, at 19, he joined the mendicant Dominicans his family was so shocked that his military brothers kidnapped him. Released after a
year, Thomas studied in Paris and Cologne. A contemporary described him as “tall, erect, large and well-built, with a complexion like white wheat, and a head which early grew bald”.

“We call this man a dumb ox,” said his teacher St Albert, “but his bellowing in doctrine will one day resound throughout the world.” Yet Aquinas the man always remained modest and unassuming, as rich in spirit as in mind.

From 1252 he taught in Paris. There is a story of him dining at the court of Louis IX (St Louis) and passing the meal sunk in abstraction while the social butterflies gossiped around him. Then suddenly Thomas concluded his lucubrations, brought his great fist crashing down upon the table, and declared: “That will settle the Manicheees.”

In 1259 his superiors sent Aquinas back to Italy, where he remained for 10 years, organising Dominican schools, and teaching in Anagni, Orvieto, Rome and Viterbo.

Around 1266 Aquinas began his Summa Theologica, the systematic expression of his mature thought. Although he never finished this work it became over the centuries, pace the Scotists, the bedrock of Catholic orthodoxy.

From 1269 to 1272 Aquinas was again in Paris, before being recalled to Naples. There, in 1273, he experienced a vision of such intensity that he abandoned writing.

“All I have composed,” he said, “seems to me like so much straw compared with what I have seen and what has been revealed to me.”

Summoned to the Council of Lyon in 1274, Aquinas died at Fossa Nuova, south of Rome. Let G K Chesterton conclude his mortal history: “He confessed his sins and he received his God; and we may be sure that the great philosopher had entirely forgotten philosophy. The confessor ran forth as if in fear, and whispered that his confession had been that of a child of five.”

The Venerable Bede records that Fursey experienced a vision, in which angels carried him out of his body to a great height. Looking down into a gloomy valley, he saw four fires. The first, an angel explained, was Falsehood; the next Covetousness; the third Discord and the last Injustice. Gradually these fires drew together into one mighty conflagration.

Fursey became alarmed. The angel, though, reassured him: “It will not burn you because you did not kindle it; for although it appears as a great and terrible fire, it tests everyone according according to his desert, and will burn away sinful desires.” Fursey did not entirely escape, for one of the demons who tortured fallen spirits in the flames thrust a victim against him, causing him to be burnt on his (presumably ghostly) shoulder and jaw.

Fursey recognised the man, and remembered that he had appropriated some of his clothes after he died. Restored once more to his body, he found that he had a permanent scar on his shoulder and jaw.

Bede heard this story from a monk who had met Fursey. His informant recalled that, although it was a bitterly cold day when he saw the saint, who was but thinly clad, the holy man was sweating profusely – “either”, as Bede suavely observes, “because of the consolation or the terror of his recollections”.

Around 637 Fursey crossed the Irish Sea to begin his life as a missionary. His first field of endeavour was in East Anglia, where King Sigbert wanted to restore Christianity after the depredations of the pagan Redwald.

Inspired by another vision, Fursey built a monastery on some land given him by Sigbert at Cnobheresburg (Burgh Castle in Suffolk). Soon, though, he turned over the administration of the monastery to his brother Fullan, and went to live with another brother, Ultan, who had become a hermit.

After he had spent some 10 years in East Anglia the kingdom was attacked by the paganissimus Penda of Mercia. Fursey fled across the Channel, where he was welcomed by the Frankish King Clovis II.

The King’s wife Balthild was an Anglo-Saxon aristocrat who had been sold into slavery in Gaul. Whether or not through this contact, Fursey was able to found another monastery at Lagnac, near Paris on the River Marne, before dying on a journey in 649.

Disputes over where he should be buried testified to the high regard in which he was held. Finally he was laid to rest in Péronne, where his cult continued to grow.

She was born at Almenara, about 20 miles north of Valencia, the youngest of six children of poor, extremely devout parents. Death stalked the family, so that by the age of eight she was an orphan with only one brother left. This was José, a taciturn and aloof figure, for whom she was obliged to skivvy. Perforce, Genevieve left school so that her formal education was confined to catechism classes on Sundays.

At 13 she developed a tumour in her left leg which turned gangrenous. The leg was amputated in her own home without anaesthetic. The terrible suffering of that operation was followed by a lifetime of pain from a wound which never properly healed.

From 1885 to 1894 Genevieve lived in an orphanage run by Carmelite Sisters, where she became steeped in the works of St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross. She wanted to join the Carmelites, only to be told that her handicap rendered this impossible.

Undaunted, Genevieve determined to find her own charitable way. At first she lived in a small house in Valencia with two other women. While supporting themselves by working they began taking other impoverished women into their home. Their good deeds gradually expanded, attracting the attention and the support of the Jesuits in Valencia, who drew her attention to the plight of genteel women reduced to straitened circumstances. Genevieve afforded them a communal life where poverty was irradiated by prayer. In 1911 her loose organisation became a more formal community, the Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Holy Angels, soon christened the Angelicas.

Women flocked to their care. Those who could pay did did so; those who could not were equally welcome. Genevieve herself took to the road, establishing houses at Saragossa, Madrid, Bilbao, Barcelona, Santander and Seville.

Despite setbacks under Republican governments, and the subsequent chaos of
the Spanish Civil War, her work continued to flourish. For herself, perhaps, she would have preferred solitary contemplation and prayer; she continued, however, to lead the Angelicas with calm determination and indefatigable industry.

“Self-love is horrible,” she once wrote, “for it conceals itself in the tissues of our heart under the seductive guise of well-being.

“Let us make war upon this shark that it may obscure neither our ability to hear, nor the oppression which lays upon our hearts.”

Genevieve Torres Morales was canonised in 2003. Pope John Paul II described her as “an instrument of God’s tender love for lonely people in need of love, comfort and physical and spiritual care”.

He was born in Rome on January 6, the son of Antonio Quarterione, cook to the Altieri family, whose palace was close to the Church of the Gesù. His birthday being the feast of Epiphany he was named after all three Magi; Gaspar, however, prevailed.

Through his mother Annunziata, the boy became fascinated by St Francis Xavier, “the Apostle of the Indies”, whose relics are displayed in the church of the Gesù. At seven he ran away from school with the ambition of being martyred while converting the heathen.

Instead he studied at the Collegio Romano. A minor seminarian at 12, he began to organise works of spiritual and material relief to the poor.

This charity was extended after Gaspar was ordained in 1808, when he began to concentrate his care upon the carters and peasants in the Campagna Romana.

The Roman church of S Nicola in Carcere possessed a piece of cloth supposedly from the cloak of the Roman centurion who had pierced Christ’s side while He was on the Cross. 

In 1808 one of Gaspar’s friends, Francesco Albertini, made this fragment of cloth, with its blood stains, the object of his special devotion. Gaspar became swept up in Francesco’s enthusiasm, and from that time the Precious Blood became the guiding inspiration of his life.

After Napoleon’s troops entered Rome in 1809, and Pope Pius VII was deported, Gaspar refused to take the oath of allegiance to the new regime. For four years he was imprisoned.

After Napoleon’s fall, Gaspar made his way back to Rome and placed himself at the service of the Pope. Pius VII delegated to him the not inconsiderable task of restoring religion and morality to Italy. It was after a preaching mission in Giano, near Spoleto, that Gaspar formed his Congregation of missionary priests, which would be formally approved by Pope Pius VII in 1815.

The Congregation was at first based on the church of St Felice at Giano. A second foundation was created in 1819, and a third soon afterwards at Albano, near Rome. Gaspar wanted a house in every diocese in Italy.

The Pope asked him to give especial attention to the Kingdom of Naples and the Papal States, where brigands were rife. As time passed, however, Gaspard made an enormous impression throughout Italy. 

His preaching was described as “a spiritual earthquake”, which brought multitudes of conversions, not least among Freemasons. He also helped to inspire Blessed Mary de Mattias to found a parallel Congregation for women. 

After his death the fame of Gaspard del Bufalo spread beyond Italy, especially among the ultramontanists in France. He was canonised in 1954.    

She was born near Pavia, the 10th of 11 children of an Italian farmer and his wife. The family was not poor; it was, however, singularly unfortunate.

Seven of Francesca’s brothers and sisters died in childhood, and another was brain-damaged. Francesca herself was physically frail, and under 5ft tall; her determination and spirit, by contrast, were boundless.

Having qualified as a primary teacher, she began work at a school in Vidardo. The secular inspector of schools had forbidden the teaching of Christian doctrine. Francesca, though, soon persuaded the mayor to lift this ban.

Eager to take the veil, she applied to two convents; neither, though, would admit a woman in such doubtful health. Her parish priest, by contrast, did not hesitate to recommend her as the director of an orphanage.

The venture proved insufficiently funded to succeed, and Francesca now explored the possibility of founding a house devoted to foreign missions, especially in China.

At first she came up against a seemingly implacable prejudice that women should not run missions abroad. She was, however, allowed to join with seven others to create the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart.

The aim was to combine the rescue of the poor with regular periods of prayer, meditation and silence. Otherwise there were no prescribed austerities: Sister Francesca believed that a proper discharge of the Christian duty to the unfortunate would be quite testing enough.

Under her guidance the Missionary Sisters were soon doing outstanding work, and by 1867 they had houses in both Milan and Rome. As it happened, though, this was just the period when Italian emigration to America was beginning to take off.

Soon not merely New York, but also other towns such as Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago and Detroit had a considerable Italian population. Many of these immigrants, uneducated countrymen, found life desperately hard in American cities. 

By the 1880s the Archbishop of New York was calling for “good Italian priests” to provide religious support. So when, in 1887, Mother Cabrini had an audience with Pope Leo XIII, the Holy Father directed her attention across the Atlantic.

Arriving in New York in 1889, Francesca proved herself a tireless worker and a shrewd businesswoman. After performing outstanding rescue work in the slums of New York, she extended the Missionary Sisters’ parish to New Orleans and Chicago, even to Valpairaiso, Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro in South America.

By the time of Mother Cabrina’s death in 1917 the Missionary Sisters numbered over 1,500 nuns. Having changed citizenship in 1909, in 1946 she became the first American to be canonised.  

When Daniel was 12 he was told that monastic discipline would be beyond him. Evidently he took this as a challenge.

Later, he went to see St Simeon, the doyen of stylites, who allowed him the rare privilege of columnar ascent. For some years thereafter, however, Daniel lived as a hermit outside Constantinople.

When Simeon died in 459 he left his cloak to the Emperor Leo I. Unsurprisingly, the disciple charged with its delivery was unable to gain access to the Emperor. He therefore gave the cloak to Daniel.

Daniel now determined to imitate Simeon’s way of life. Helpful friends provided a pillar, “about the height of two men”, and fitted with a balustrade. It seems that this was a permitted extra; certainly there are no reports of stylites taking a tumble.

The Emperor’s steward at first complained that Daniel was committing a trespass. When Daniel cured a sick boy, however, the steward rewarded him with a higher column and a broader platform.

The saint also interceded to satisfy Leo I’s desire for a male heir, after which he graciously permitted the Emperor to ascend and touch his feet. 

Leo discovered, in Fats Waller’s phrase, that the saint’s pedal extremities were just obnoxious. He ordered two more, rather higher, columns, linked by a bridge held together with iron.

Soon afterwards this new construction almost collapsed in a thunderstorm. While Daniel’s disciples, at the foot of the columns, gave themselves up to despair, the saint calmly pursued his prayers and survived the ordeal. 

Leo threatened to have the architect executed; Daniel, though, persuaded the Emperor to grant a pardon.

Inevitably the stylites suffered dreadfully from heat and cold. On one occasion Daniel’s followers had to ascend with warm water to thaw him out, after which the Emperor insisted that an iron shelter should be constructed on the top of the column.
Daniel remained a total of 33 years and three months on his pillar, attracting large crowds. Though the sick and troubled might be permitted to ascend to the saint, Daniel descended but once.

This was after Leo’s death, when one Basilicus usurped the imperial throne and lent his support to heresy. In his alarm Daniel returned to earth, albeit with the greatest difficulty, owing to the pain in his feet.

He remained on the ground for no longer than it took to administer a severe rebuke to Basilicus, and forthwith regained his perch. One is not amazed to learn that Basilicus’s affairs did not prosper. 

Daniel, however, survived to the age of 84, which shows what a waste of time it is to go to the gym. 

If, however, his early career was dedicated principally to secular affairs, there is no question of his devotion to religion in the latter part of his life as Bishop of Salisbury.

A monk at Malmesbury called him “an orthodox bishop, a man of humility, worthy to be honoured and praised for his wisdom and holiness”.

Osmund has been held responsible for the introduction of the Sarum Rite, based on Norman models. With its elaborate attention to ceremony and its particular prayers, this Rite was widely used in southern England, Wales, Scotland and even in parts of Ireland until formally abolished by Elizabeth in 1559. Its influence, however, may still be detected in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.

Nothing is certainly known of Osmund’s origins and life in Normandy before the Conquest. A 15th-century tradition held that he was William I’s nephew, the son of an otherwise unrecorded sister of the king called Isabella, and her husband Henry, Count of Séez.

As William’s chancellor from 1070 to 1078, Osmund oversaw the adoption of Latin for royal writs. Even after he became Bishop of Salisbury in 1078 he remained involved in royal administration, and appears to have overseen the Domesday enquiry in the south-west of England.

The Diocese of Salisbury had recently been created by amalgamating the sees of Salisbury and Ramsbury. The building of a cathedral was already in progress at Old Sarum. 

Osmund, though, oversaw the main part of the construction. The building was consecrated in 1092, only to be partially destroyed by lightning five days later.

In 1089 Osmund had founded a community of canons, which he generously endowed from episcopal lands. Its constitution became a model for other English cathedrals.

Salisbury was also an important centre for the storage and copying of manuscripts, some scribes being imported from the continent. Osmund himself took part in this work, both transcribing and binding material.

At a time when Anglo-Saxons were being obliterated from influence and power in England, the Bishop of Salisbury forwarded the cult of St Aldhelm, abbot of Malmesbury in the late seventh century. 

While Osmund exercised rigorous authority and discipline over the priests in his diocese, he was equally hard on himself. Having initially supported the King in the investiture crisis, in 1095 he recognised his error and apologised to Archbishop Anselm for not having offered his support.

After Osmund’s death he was buried at Old Sarum in an elaborate tomb, which in 1226 was translated to the new cathedral in Salisbury.

By that time Osmund was already being called a saint. Nevertheless, it required much lobbying and expenditure by bishops of Salisbury before Pope Callistus III was finally induced to canonise him in 1457.

Yet there is some discrepancy between the accounts of his calling given in the synoptic gospels, and that given in St John.
In Mark 1:16-20 Jesus is walking beside the Sea of Galilee when he sees two fishermen, Simon and Simon’s brother Andrew, casting a net into the sea. With startling directness Jesus says: “Come and follow me; I will make you fishers of men.” Even more surprisingly, they immediately dropped their nets and followed him.

In John 1:35-42, by contrast, Andrew and a companion (not Simon Peter) are first introduced as disciples of John the Baptist, who hears John exclaim, as Jesus walks by: “Look, this is the Lamb of God.”

Intrigued, the two of them follow Jesus, who asks: “What would you have of me?”

“Rabbi,” they replied, “where dost thou live?”

“Come and see,” Jesus tells them. So they went and saw where he lived, and stayed with him for the rest of the day.

On leaving Jesus, Andrew, clearly bursting with excitement, rushes to find his brother Simon Peter to tell him of the stunning revelation: “We have found the Messiah.” And so Andrew takes Simon to Jesus, who, we are told in a striking detail, “looked closely” at the newcomer before calling him Cephas – that is, “the rock” in Aramaic, and Petros in Greek.

At the feeding of the 5,000 it was Andrew who told Jesus of the boy with with barley loaves and the five fishes. One might perhaps discern here an echo of his role in the calling of Simon Peter.

According to Eusebius, Andrew later preached in Scythia (the Ukraine), while other traditions tell of his having been in what are now Turkey and Greece. There are claims that he reached Byzantium, but these may have been attempts to boost the prestige of the Eastern Church against Rome.

Andrew is said to have been martyred around 60 AD at Patras in the Peloponnese. The story that he was bound to a saltire, or diagonal cross, is not found before the 10th century, and did not become widespread until the 14th century.

The Emperor Constantius II (337-61) moved Andrew’s relics to Byzantium. When the Crusaders captured Constantinople in 1204 the remains were taken to Amalfi cathedral. The skull was kept at the Vatican from 1461, and finally returned to Constantinople by Pope Paul VI (1963-78).

Alternatively, St Regulus took the saint’s bones to Scotland in the fourth century, which is why the English lost the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. Andrew is also a patron saint of Russia.

Yet Hugh possessed a peppery temperament, and showed little patience with far-fetched miracle stories. Rather, he combined fierce ascetic discipline with strong practical acumen, predominantly exercised on behalf of the poor.

He possessed at once the moral courage to confront kings Henry II, Richard I and John, and the charm to turn aside the royal wrath.

The youngest of three brothers, Hugh was born into an aristocratic family near Grenoble. When he was about 10, his mother died and his father decided to enter an Augustinian monastery, taking Hugh with him. The boy was professed as a canon at 15, and developed a reputation as a preacher. Seeking a sterner existence, however, at 23 he joined La Grande Chartreuse, north of Grenoble.

Subsequently he was appointed procurator of the monastery, responsible for looking after the lay brothers and visitors. It was work for which his warm nature was well suited so that even from that fastness his fame began to spread.

Meanwhile, King Henry II of England had determined to found three monasteries in penance for the murder of Thomas à Becket – a project he pursued with both reluctance and economy. Indeed, the Carthusian house which he founded at Witham in Somerset seemed likely to fail altogether until a French aristocrat suggested the appointment of Hugh as prior.

Arriving in 1179, Hugh immediately showed that he knew how to handle the volcanic monarch. Having used the King’s money to buy up some peasant holdings which had cluttered up the site, he disarmed Henry with bluff humour: “See, my lord, how I, a poor stranger, have enriched you in your own land with many houses.”

While Hugh never scrupled to rebuke the King in defence of the Church, the two men got along splendidly. Indeed, the false rumour began to spread that the prior was an illegitimate son of Henry.

Witham Abbey flourished and in 1186 the King arranged Hugh’s election as Bishop of Lincoln, the largest diocese in the country. Hugh discovered his cathedral damaged by an earthquake in 1185 and employed the brilliant French architect Geoffrey de Noyers to rebuild it.

The bishop never became expert in the English vernacular. Nevertheless, he travelled continually around his diocese, defending the poor and needy against the powerful and insolent. 

“Fearless as a lion in any danger”, he excommunicated the King’s chief forester for his depredations, defended the Jews against mob fury, ate with lepers, and became the first person to dare to refuse a money grant directly demanded by the Crown.

In 1199 Hugh revisited the Grande Chartreuse but took ill on his return journey and died in London at the Temple.