American missionary Horace Tracy Pitkin was beheaded when a mob burst into his Mission compound as part of the Boxer Uprising. This was an armed anti-Christian, and anti-imperialist insurrection in China between 1899 and 1901, towards the end of the Qing dynasty. During the latter part of the century, China’s borders had become more penetrable than ever before due to the disastrous Opium Wars of the 1840s and the inroads of the imperial foreign powers. In this climate, anti-f

Today we travel to Connecticut in the USA where Martha A. Marcellino was born in 1951. She is now known as Mother Noella Marcellino, a Benedictine nun who has become famous around the world because of her expertise in cheese making. The cheeses crafted by the Benedictine nuns at the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut are widely sought after. When Noella left home, in 1969, her name was Martha Marcellino. She was the youngest daughter in a family of gifted, heads

Today we travel to Florence in Italy where the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning died. Married to another poet – Robert Browning, she had become so highly regarded towards the end of her life and she died at a young age of 55, that by 1850, the year of Wordsworth’s death, she was prominently mentioned as a possible successor to the poet laureateship and was a popular a rival to Tennyson. She died in the morning of the 29th of June 1861 in the Casa Guidi in Florence, s

Today in 1906 Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson finished his dystopian science fiction novel called Lord of the World that centres upon the reign of the Antichrist and the end of the world. Writing that evening in his diary, "I have finished… and really there is no more to be said. Of course, I am nervous about the last chapter – it is what one may call just a trifle ambitious to describe the End of the World. But it has been done" Pope Francis has recommended Robert Hugh Benson’

year 2008 and travel to St Andrews in Scotland were the French polymath, Rene Girard was given honorary degree at St Andrews. Beginning his academic career as a literary theorist, Girard developed a theory of ‘Mimetic Rivalry’ which he first used to interpret literature, but became a theoretical tool to understand the development of human culture and particularly the role of religion. His influence in different academic fields as varied as anthropology, economics, sociology

Today in 1988 we remember the death of one of the greatest theological minds of the 20th Century. Hans Urs Von Balthazar died just two days before a ceremony in Rome would have formally granted him the position of Cardinal. This was quite a turnaround in his reputation within the Church, which had been damaged after leaving the Jesuits in 1950 to work with the Community of Saint John. As a Jesuit novice in the 1930’s, the young Hans Urs was studying theology at Fourvière, in

Today we remember how in a remarkable meeting in Rome Pope Pius XI missioned the American Jesuit John LaFarge to draft an encyclical on ‘racialism’ as he felt the topic was the "most burning" one of the time, particularly the rise in influence of the racist ideology of National Socialism in Germany. It was drafted during the summer and given to the Pope by the end of the year. However, it was never promulgated, as Pius XI died in early 1939. The Pope had already released an

It was in Flushing Meadows in New York where the American evangelist Billy Graham today began what he said would be his last North American crusade. What he called ‘crusades’ were effectively large-scale preaching missions, and had started in 1949 in Los Angeles. Because of these crusades, it is asserted that Graham preached the gospel to more people in person than anyone in the history of Christianity. This is a brief look at his life, his impact, his critics and his legacy

Today in 1941 we travel to Russia where the American Jesuit Walter J. Ciszek was arrested under suspicion of being a spy for the Vatican and sent to the Lubyanka prison in Moscow. He had slipped into Communist Russia to work as an underground priest. He would eventually be released, 22 years later. in a prisoner exchange. His memoir ‘With God in Russia’ which gives an account of his clandestine missionary work was originally published in 1964 and has been translated into nume