Brief Lives (VI)

Mary-Margaret d’Youville

(French Canada, 1701–1771)

The widow of a swindler who traded alcohol for furs with the Iroquois, she founded the Grey Nuns, who built hospitals and orphanages with the large number of slaves the congregation owned.

Benedict Joseph Labre

(France, 1748–1783)

Rejected by various monasteries as unsuitable, he wandered homeless to the major pilgrimage sites of Christendom, dressed in rags and rarely speaking; in his last years he slept in the ruins of the Roman Colosseum.

Dominic Savio

(Italy, 1842–1857)

A schoolboy who died of tuberculosis, he had a vision of a multitude of people groping their way across a dimly lit plain; then the pope appeared holding a torch, and a voice proclaimed: “This torch is the Catholic faith which shall bring light to the English people.”

Stephen-Theodore Cuénot

(France, 1802–1861)

A missionary in Vietnam, he died of neglect in the imperial stables, chained to the elephants.

Mary-of-Jesus Deluil-Martiny

(France, 1841–1884)

She founded the Association of the Guard of Honor of the Sacred Heart, now known as the Association of the Presence of Christ, and the Daughters of the Heart of Jesus, and was shot to death by the convent gardener, considered an anarchist, on Ash Wednesday.

Francis and Jacinta Marto

(Portugal, 1908–1919 and 1910–1920)

They were aged nine and seven, guarding the family sheep when the Virgin Mary appeared to them in the hills outside of Fátima; nevertheless, he died at eleven and she at ten.

Francis Dachtera

(Poland, 1910–1944)

A priest, he died from the medical experiments performed on him at Dachau.