October - 2021

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Oct 23, 2021
3 min

Oct 10 The First Millenial Saint?

We remember today how in Monza in Italy a 15 year old boy Carlo Acutis died of leukaemia. He was a remarkable young man. He stated that "To always be close to Jesus, that's my life plan. As he was dying he offered his suffering for the pope and for the Church, his heroic virtues were recognized by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints when he was beatified on 10 October 2020. An enthusiastic web designer who documented Eucharistic miracles around the world. He may become

Oct 9 Father Gabriel Fallopio - Rennaisance Anatomist

Pearl of Great Price

Oct 22, 2021
3 min

Oct 9 Father Gabriel Fallopio - Rennaisance Anatomist

Today in 1562 we remember the death of Father Gabriel Fallopio the most illustrious of 16th-century Italian anatomist died. He contributed greatly to early knowledge of the ear and of the reproductive organs His exhaustive observations, made during dissection of human cadavers lead to the discovering the tubes that connect the ovaries to the uterus (now known as fallopian tubes) and several major nerves of the head and face. He described the semi-circular canals of the inner

Pearl of Great Price

Oct 22, 2021
5 min

Oct 8 Japans Shindler's List

Mrs. Yukiko Sugihara, who had helped her husband, Chiune, rescue thousands of Jews from Lithuania during World War II. They were a diplomatic family in Lithuania and were able to issue visas to Jews, many of whom, as the heads of family, could then transport their entire families to Japanese territory. Thanks to the Sugihara’s actions, thousands of Jewish refugees found themselves in Japan where they were safe even though Japan was allied to a virulently anti-Semitic Germany.

Oct 6 Tennyson - Faith and Doubt In Memoriam

Pearl of Great Price

Oct 22, 2021
5 min

Oct 6 Tennyson - Faith and Doubt In Memoriam

Queen Victoria, the longest reigning British monarch, after the death of her beloved Prince Albert was undergoing prolonged and painful grief. Experiencing despair and doubt, in the face of her beloved’s absence, Victoria wrote that she was "soothed & pleased" by Tennyson’s poem In Memoriam. She later requested a meeting with Tennyson because she was so impressed by the poem, and when she met him in 1883, she told him what a comfort it had been. In Memoriam expresses the inte

Pearl of Great Price

Oct 22, 2021
6 min

Oct 7 - Mother Teresa founds her order

Today in 1950, Mother Teresa founded the religious order the Missionaries of Charity. Today she received permission from the Holy See to canonically found the order, originally as a diocesan congregation, whose work would be restricted to the diocese under the authority of the local bishop. Their primary task was to love and care for those persons nobody was prepared to look after. In 1965 the Society became an International Religious Family by a decree of Pope Paul VI. Teres

Pearl of Great Price

Oct 18, 2021
4 min

Oct 5 Uganda -Ecumenism of Blood

Today Christians took control of the government after enduring years of persecution which had triggered a rebellion. The victory was in large part to the courage of an Anglican, Hamu Mukasa, the son of a minor chief in and had converted to Christianity at a young age and suffered a serious injury during the 1886 massacre of Christians by King Mwanga II. Mwanga had increasingly regarded the greatest threat to his rule as coming from the Christian missionaries and his father

Pearl of Great Price

Oct 18, 2021
5 min

Oct 4 Rembrandt - painter of the soul

Today in 1669 we travel to Holland where we remember the death of the great Dutch painter Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn. Rembrandt was known as the “painter of the soul” for his Christian art. During the Renaissance, much of present-day Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg were part of the duchy of Burgundy. This region, called the Burgundian Netherlands, experienced a great flowering of the arts in the 1400s and early 1500s. Wealthy patrons such as Margaret of Austria promoted t

Oct 3 Zionism in Africa and John Alexander Dowie

Pearl of Great Price

Oct 18, 2021
3 min

Oct 3 Zionism in Africa and John Alexander Dowie

Today we look at the figure of John Alexander Dowie suffered from a stroke in Chicago on Oct 3rd. Dowie was a Scottish / Australian Christian leader with an unusual entrepreneurial talent and a dubious personal morality. With a following of some approximately 6,000, he had founded the city of Zion, Illinois, where he personally owned all the land and established many businesses. Zionism is now the largest religious group in southern Africa with 15 million followers, compared

Pearl of Great Price

Oct 15, 2021
3 min

Oct 2 Mindzenty of Hungary

Today in 1945 we travel to Hungary where Josef Mindzentsy was appointed Archbishop and leader of the Catholic Church - a position with which he would hold for a tumultuous thirty years, bravely opposing both fascism and then communism in his country at some personal cost. During World War II, he was imprisoned by the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party. After the war, he opposed communism and was tortured and given a life sentence in a show trial that generated worldwide condemnation

Pearl of Great Price

Oct 14, 2021
4 min

Oct 1 Guardini - The Lord

Today we are Munich in Bavaria, where one of the most creative theologians of the 20th Century, Romano Guardini died in 1968. His pastoral leadership, particularly in the liturgical and youth movements would play a significant influence on the Church in Europe. His legacy of more than 75 books and 100 articles are massively important for the Church, and he exercised a profound influence on both of the last two popes Benedict XVI and Francis, who have both highly praised hi

Pearl of Great Price

Oct 14, 2021
5 min

Sep 30 George Tyrell and Modernism

Today in 1907 and a letter in the Times from the priest George Tyrell, and publisjed in London, which was against the papal encyclical Pascendi would result in his excommunication for his robust criticisms. The encyclical letter Pascendi Dominici gregis (Feeding the Lord's Flock) was subtitled "On the Doctrines of the Modernists", and had been promulgated by Pope Pius X twenty two days before Tyrell’s letter was published in the Times. Pius X had viewed the church as under

Sep 29 Pope Leo the great and Atilla the Hun

Pearl of Great Price

Oct 14, 2021
3 min

Sep 29 Pope Leo the great and Atilla the Hun

Today Leo was consecrated bishop of Rome becoming the pope. His papacy was very significant, famous for his meeting with Attila the Hun and persuading him to discontinue his invasion of Italy, he also suppressed the Manichean heresy and strengthened the authority of the church. He had assumed the papacy at a time of increasing barbarian invasions and decreasing imperial authority in the West, and so was one of the first bishops of Rome to promote papal primacy based on succ

Sep 28 The Obelisk that 'witnessed' St Peters Death

Pearl of Great Price

Oct 12, 2021
5 min

Sep 28 The Obelisk that 'witnessed' St Peters Death

We go back to year 1586 and travel to Rome where a large pink granite obelisk known as "The Witness", was moved to its present location in St Peters Square by order of Pope Sixtus V. At over 25 metres high is the second largest standing obelisk in Rome after the one at the Lateran. In all there are eight Egyptian obelisks standing in Rome, meaning there are more erect obelisks from Egypt in Rome than anywhere else in the World, including Egypt. They were all brought to Rome

Sep 27 Teresa of Avila declared the first female doctor of the church

Pearl of Great Price

Oct 2, 2021
5 min

Sep 27 Teresa of Avila declared the first female doctor of the church

Today in 1970 and travel to Rome where Pope Paul VI finally named the Spanish Mystic and reformer, Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada, a doctor of the church. She was the founder of the discalced Carmelites and is widely known as Teresa of Avila and is now acknowledged as a theologian of the contemplative life and of mental prayer She became the central figure of a movement of spiritual and monastic renewal borne out of an inner conviction and honed by ascetic practice. She w

Sep 26 Abraham Lincolns call for prayer and fasting

Pearl of Great Price

Oct 2, 2021
3 min

Sep 26 Abraham Lincolns call for prayer and fasting

1861 and travel to Washington DC in North America where today President Abraham Lincoln recommended a day of public humiliation, prayer, and fasting to be observed by the people of the United States with religious solemnities and the offering of fervent supplications to Almighty God “for the safety and welfare of these States, His blessings on their arms, and a speedy restoration of peace:” It was at the beginning of the American Civil War which would last for another four ye

Sep 25 Rudolph Otto and the Idea of the Holy

Pearl of Great Price

Oct 2, 2021
4 min

Sep 25 Rudolph Otto and the Idea of the Holy

Today in 1869 we remember the birth near Hannover in Germany of Rudolph Otto. He is now regarded as one of the most influential scholars of religion in the early twentieth century and is best known for his concept of the numinous, a profound emotional experience he argued was at the heart of the world's religions. He elaborated this in his wide selling book ‘The idea of the Holy’ , written during World War One created an immediate sensation, and it was quickly translated in

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