From Season to Season

Marie Rose Julie Billiart was born in Picardy in 1751. An intelligent and devout child, she was forced to perform heavy manual labor to support her impoverished family. After making a private vow of chastity when she was fourteen, she worked among the poor children within her parish, teaching catechism and visiting the sick. In 1773, she witnessed the attempted murder of her father, and as a result she developed a nervous paralysis that gradually prevented her from walking and caused her severe pain. She was an invalid by the age of thirty, but from her bed she carried on an apostolate of prayer and spiritual counsel to the many men and women who sought her advice and direction. During the French Revolution she was accused of harboring priests, but she was saved from the authorities by friends who helped her escape to Compiègne. Her illness continued to worsen, and for several months she was unable to speak. Following the end of the Revolution, Julie resumed her teaching and, gat...

On September 2, the Church commemorates 191 martyrs, commonly known as the "Martyrs of September," who were killed in four prisons in Paris, France, between September 2 and 3, 1792.  The Massacre of the Priests by H. de la Charlerie   Following the promulgation of the 'Civil Constitution on the Clergy' by the National Constituent Assembly (the government of the first stages of the French Revolution) in 1790, any cleric who refused to deny Papal authority and affiliate with the state-sponsored church in France was imprisoned as a traitor. All religious communities were dissolved by the government on August 15, 1792. Later that month, the citizens of Paris heard rumors of a possible invasion of the city by the Duke of Brunswick and of a mass breakout of those in its prisons, where the hundreds of clerics who refused to take the oath of allegiance were being housed alongside common criminals. Enflamed by revolutionary zeal, and unchecked by government authorit...