(CNS photo/Vatican Media)
February 21, 2021
Speaking to pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the Sunday Angelus, Pope Francis explained how the Word of God shows us the path to live fruitfully the 40 days of Lent we have just embarked upon.
Friday, February 19, 2021
Feast of St. Boniface of Lausanne (1183-1260 AD)
St. Boniface was born in 1183 (in almost the same year that St. Francis of Assisi was born, 1181) in Brussels, Belgium.
Thursday, February 18, 2021
Traditional Feast of St. Bernadette Soubirous of Lourdes, France (born in Lourdes on January 7, 1844, died in Nevers, April 16, 1879, age 35) [Note: her Feast was originally on February 18, that is, today, the anniversary of the day Mary promised to make her happy, “not in this life, but in the next,” but her Feast has come to be observed in most places on April 16, the day of Bernadette’s death]. She is Patroness of bodily illness, of Lourdes, France, of shepherds and shepherdesses, against grinding poverty, and of those ridiculed for their faith. Today is also the Feast of Blessed Fra Angelico (1395-1455), Patron of All Artists
Bernadette Soubirous (January 7, 1844-April 16, 1879), also known as St. Bernadette of Lourdes, was the firstborn daughter of a miller from Lourdes, in the department of Hautes-Pyrénées in France, and is best known for receiving Marian apparitions, seeing over several months a “young lady” who asked for a chapel to be built at the nearby cave-grotto at Massabielle. These apparitions occurred between February 11 and July 16, 1858, when Bernadette was 14, and the woman who appeared to her identified herself as the “Immaculate Conception.”