Saint Mennas of Santomenna November 11

 Saint Mennas of Santomenna

Profile

Sixth century hermit in Santomenna, Abruzzi, Italy.

Born

Asia Minor

Patronage

Santomenna, Italy

Saint Veranus of Vence November 11

 Saint Veranus of Vence

Also known as

Veran, Weran

Profile

Son of Galla, who became a nun in later life, and Saint Eucherius of Lyon; brother of Saint Salonius of Geneva. Educated at Lérins Abbey where he became a monk. Bishop of Vence, France.

Died

c.480

Saint Bertuin of Malonne November 11

Saint Bertuin of Malonne

Also known as

Bertuinus, Bertwinus, Berthuin

Profile

Raised in an English monastery. Monk at Othelle. Missionary bishop in Belgium. Founded the monastery of Malonne near Namur, Belgium.

Born

England

Died

c.698

Saint Turibius of Palencia November 11

 Saint Turibius of Palencia

Profile

Founder of the Saint Martin of Tours monastery in Liébana, Asturias, Spain, and served as it's first abbot, a house that became a noted Benedictine stronghold.

Born

Palencia, Spain

Died

c.528 of natural causes

Saint Marina of Omura November 11

 Saint Marina of Omura

Profile

Dominican lay tertiary in the archdiocese of Nagasaki, Japan. Martyred in the persecutions of Tokugawa Yemitsu.

Born

in Omura, Nagasaki, Japan

Died

burned alive on 11 November 1634 in Nagasaki, Japan

Canonized

18 October 1987 by Pope John Paul II

Saint Mercurius the Soldier November 11

 Saint Mercurius the Soldier

Profile

Son of a Scythian officer in the imperial Roman army. Soldier in the same army, he distinguished himself in the defense of the city of Rome. During the persecutions of Decius, Mercurius was ordered to sacrifice to an idol; he refused. Martyr. Reported to appeared and fought with the Christian forces in the First Crusade.

Born

224

Died

beheaded in 250 in Caesarea, Cappadocia, Asia Minor (in modern Turkey)

Blessed Alicja Maria Jadwiga Kotowska November 11

 Blessed Alicja Maria Jadwiga Kotowska

Also known as

Alice Kotowska

Profile

Nun, member of the Sisters of the Resurrection. Superior of her house and director of training for her sisters. One of the 108 Polish Martyrs of World War II.

Born

20 November 1899 in Warsaw, Poland

Died

shot on 11 November 1939 in the forest near Piasnica, occupied Poland

Beatified

13 June 1999 by Pope John Paul II at Warsaw, Poland

Saint Theodore the Studite November 11

 Saint Theodore the Studite

Also known as

• Theodore of Stoudios

• Theodore of Studion

• Theodore of Studium

• Theodorus Studita

Profile

Monk at the monastery of Saccudion, Asia Minor in 781. Ordained c.787. Abbot of the Saccudion monastery in 794. Abbot of the Stoudios monastery outside Constantinople in 799, which caused him to be the spiritual teacher of many wise and holy men. His writings include the first recorded stand against slavery. Fought iconoclasm. These opinions and writings put him in conflict with imperial authorities, which led to him being exiled three times.

Born

759 in Greece

Died

11 November 826 on the peninsula of Tryphon, near the Akrita promontory in Asia Minor

Saint Bartholomew of Rossano November 11

 Saint Bartholomew of Rossano

Also known as

• Bartholomew of Grottaferrata

• Bartholomew the Younger

• Bartolomeo il Giovane

Profile

Son of Greek immigrants to Italy. Spiritual student of Saint Nilus of Rossano. Monk at the monastery of Grottaferrata, Frascati, Italy, a house with Greek Rites and Basilian Rule. Abbot at Grottaferrata for forty years, completing the construction and other work started by Nilus, work that turned the monastery into a center of education and manuscript copying, and so extensive that he is often listed as the founder of the house. Hymn writer. Skilled calligrapher. Responsible for persuading the corrupt Pope Benedict IX to resign the papacy, reform his life, become a monk, and do penance at Grottaferrata.

Born

c.970 in Rossano, Calabria, Italy

Died

11 November 1065 at Grottaferrata Abbey, Frascati, Italy of natural causes

Blessed Luigia Poloni November 11

 Blessed Luigia Poloni

Also known as

Mother Vincenza Maria

Additional Memorial

10 September (Sisters of Mercy of Verona as the anniversary of the profession of the first Sisters)

Profile

Baptized on the day of her birth, the youngest of the twelve children, she was raised in a pious family, the daughter of a small businessman who ran a combination pharmacy and grocery in the heart of Verona, Italy. When her fathers died, Luigia took over the family finances. Spiritual student of Blessed Charles Steeb. Nun. Co-founder, with Blessed Charles Steeb of the Sisters of Mercy of Verona to work with the elderly and with abandoned girls; the first group of sisters organized on 2 November 1840, and made their first profession on 10 September 1848. The Sisters continue their good work today in Italy, Germany, Portugal, Albania, Tanzania, Angola, Burundi, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and have been joined by the affiliated Laity of Mercy.

Born

26 January 1802 in Verona, Italy

Died

11 November 1855 in Verona, Italy of cancer

Beatified

• Sunday 21 September 2008 by Pope Benedict XVI

• beatification recognition celebrated at Verona, Italy presided by Cardinal Angelo Amato

Saint Menas Kallikelados November 11

 Saint Menas Kallikelados

Also known as

• Aba Mina

• Menas of Egypt

• Menas of Constantinople

• Menas of Cotyaes

• Menas of Cotyaeum

• Menas of Kotyaeum

• Menas of Mareotis

• Menas the Martyr

• Menas the Miracle Maker

• Menas the Miracle Worker

• Menas the Soldier

• Menas the Wonder Worker

• Mena, Mennas, Mina, Minas

Profile

May have been a camel driver in civilian life. Soldier in the imperial Roman army, serving under Firmilian. During the anti-Christian persecutions of Diocletian and Maximian, Menas left the army for his own safety, and so he would not in any way support such a regime. He retired for a while as a mountain hermit. During a great pagan festival, Menas came down from the mountains to preach Christianity in Cotyaes, Phrygia. He was tried for his faith before the Roman prefect Pyrrhus, scourged, tortured and martyred.

His grave in Egypt became known as a place of miracles, and a basilica built over his grave became one of the great sanctuaries of Christendom; it was called the glory of the Libyan desert. Merchants travelling through the area spread stories about him, and churches built in his honour at Cotyaeus and Constantinople gave rise to local legends about him. The basilica was destroyed and his tomb lost in the seventh century, and was rediscovered in an archeological expidition in 1905.

Born

Egyptian

Died

• beheaded c.300 at Cotyaes, Phrygia

• buried at Mareotis, Egypt

Patronage

• falsely accused people

• peddlers

• travelling merchants

Representation

• man with his hands cut off and his eyes torn out

• man with two camels

• young knight with a halberd, an anachronistic depiction of his time in the Roman army

Bl. Kamen Vitchev November 11

 Bl. Kamen Vitchev

Feastday: November 11

Birth: 1893

Death: 1952

Beatified: May 26, 2002., Plovdiv by John Paul II

Image of Bl. Kamen VitchevPeter Vitchev, of Strem, Bulgaria, entered the Assumptionist congregation at the age of seventeen, taking the name Kamen. Eleven years later, he was ordained a Byzantine-Slavonic Rite Catholic priest. After earning a theology doctorate, he became a faculty member of a Catholic college at Plovdiv, Bulgaria, serving in various capacities, including the office of rector. Taking his responsibilities seriously, he instructed and governed the students authoritatively, earning their respect. During his tenure at the college, students of different religions, including those of the Orthodox and Armenian Churches, Jews, and Moslems, were welcomed into this Catholic school and interacted in a harmonious atmosphere. In 1948, the Russian Communists occupying Bulgaria closed the school. Thereafter, Father Vitchev was made provincial vicar of his Assumptionist congregation in Bulgaria. But in July of 1952, he was arrested by the Communists, falsely charged with heading a "Catholic conspiracy" against the government. On November 11, 1952, he was executed by gunfire.

Peter Vitchev, also known as Kamen Vitchev, was a Bulgarian Eastern Catholic and an Assumptionist priest who was martyred by the Bulgarian communist regime. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 2002.

Contents

1 Biography

1.1 Early life and priesthood

1.2 Bulgarian communist regime

1.3 Death

2 Beatification

3 References

4 External links

Biography

Early life and priesthood

Vitchev was born on May 23, 1893 at Srem, near Topolovgrad, Bulgaria and came from a peasant Orthodox family. He joined the Catholic congregation known as the Assumptionists, or Augustinians of the Assumption, in 1910, beginning his novitiate in Gempe, Belgium, and later taking the name Kamen. He pursued his studies of philosophy and theology in Louvain, Belgium. He was ordained a priest in Constantinople (Istanbul) on December 22, 1921. After a brief period teaching at St. Augustine College in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, and at a high school seminary in Kumkapı, Turkey, he returned to Strasbourg and Rome, to complete his studies and obtained a doctorate in theology in 1929.

Bulgarian communist regime

Very knowledgeable in the history of the Bulgarian church, Vitchev published several articles in the review known as Échos d'Orient. In 1930 he was appointed professor of philosophy and Dean of Studies at St. Augustine College in Plovdiv and maintained this position until the school was closed by the Communist regime on August 2, 1948.

After this prestigious institution founded and maintained by the Assumptionists was closed, Vitchev became superior of the Assumptionist seminary in Plovdiv which housed a small number of students. That same year all foreign members of religious orders were expelled and Vitchev was named Vicar-Provincial of the remaining Bulgarian Assumptionists. They numbered 20 and staffed 5 Oriental and 4 Latin rite parishes.

As a Soviet satellite, Bulgaria suffered from the wave of anti-Church legislation that swept the bloc in the years after World War II (e.g. the arrest of Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac in Yugoslavia in 1946, of Cardinal József Mindszenty in Hungary in 1948, of Archbishop Josef Beran in Czechoslovakia in 1950, and of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński in Poland in 1953).

Death

Highly esteemed and respected by the influential young graduates of St. Augustine College, Vitchev posed a threat to the Communist authorities in Bulgaria and was arrested on July 4, 1952. After what international organizations universally considered a show trial which began on September 29, 1952 and ended with a guilty verdict and a death sentence on October 3, Vitchev, two of his Assumptionists companions, Josaphat Chichkov and Pavel Djidjov, and a Passionist bishop, Eugene Bossilkov, were shot to death, without public notice, at approximately 11:30 PM the evening of November 11, 1952.

Beatification

Vitchev was declared a martyr for the faith and beatified by Pope John Paul II in Plovdiv on May 26, 2002. On July 28, 2010, the Bulgarian parliament passed a law officially rehabilitating all of those who had been condemned by the People's Republic of Bulgaria in 1952, including Vitchev.

St. Columba the Virgin November 11

 St. Columba the Virgin

Feastday: November 11

Death: 6th century

The patroness of two parished in Cornwall, England. The heather king there put her to death.

St. Athenodorus November 11

 St. Athenodorus

Feastday: November 11

Death: 304

Martyr in Mesopotamia in the reign of Emperor Diocletian. The details concerning his martyrdom state that Athenodorus was tortured cruelly but remained steadfast in the faith. Condemned to die, Athenodorus started praying. His executioner collapsed and no one dared strike him.Athenodorus died while praying.

St. Aba Mina November 11

 St. Aba Mina

Feastday: November 11

of near Alexandria. Aka Mena of Kemet (Egypt). Known as Menas of Cotyauem, Menas of Cotyaes; Menas of Cotyaeum; Menas of Egypt; Menas of Kotyaeum; Menas of Mareotis; and Mennas.

I drove camels early in life, but I became a solider for Caesar.

Firmilian was my primicerius. The reign and terror of the persecutions of Diocletian, and co­ruler Maximian erupted.

I left the Imperial Army of Rome, and became a hermit. I was led to preach on one occasion. Through the authority of Pyrrhus, the local prefect, I was arrested for professing and teaching Christ, severely beaten, tortured, martyred at Cotyaes, Phrygia.

Miracles through the grace of God were ascribed to my place of repose. A large church building (called Basilica), became known as the

"Glory of the Libyan Desert". Christian faithful buried me in Mareotis, Kemet(Egypt).