Feast days for next week

There are a number of feast days next week

Monday, July 13 St. Henry
Henry II, successively Duke of Bavaria, King of Germany and Emperor, devoted himself to the spread of religion by rebuilding churches and founding monasteries. Until the end of his life he displayed the virtues of a great saint. Together with his wife, St. Cunegunda, he founded the bishopric of Bamberg and, at his death in 1024, was buried in the cathedral there; his holy wife was laid by his side fifteen years later.


Tuesday, July 14 Bl. Kateri Tekakwitha, virgin
Kateri was born in 1656 near the town of Auriesville, New York, the daughter of a Mohawk warrior. She was baptized by Jesuit missionary Fr. Jacques de Lambertville on Easter of 1676 at the age of twenty. She devoted her life to prayer, penitential practices, and the care of the sick and aged in Caughnawaga near Montreal (where her relics are now enshrined). She incurred the hostility of her tribe because of her faith. She was devoted to the Eucharist, and to Jesus Crucified, and was called the "Lily of the Mohawks." She died in 1680 and was beatified June 22, 1980 — the first native American to be declared "Blessed." — Magnificat, July 2003

Wednesday, July 15 St. Bonaventure, bishop and doctor
St. Bonaventure was born in Italy in 1221. He joined the Franciscan Order and went to Paris for his studies. He was made General of his Order and deserves to be reckoned its second founder for his work in consolidating an institution that was as yet ill-defined in nature. St. Bonaventure died at Lyons in 1274 during the general Council between Greeks and Latins held in this city. Dante had already included him among the inhabitants of his "Paradise". He is known as the Seraphic Doctor.


Thursday, July 16 Our Lady of Mount Carmel
Devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel is worldwide, and most Catholics are familiar with the Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, also known as the Brown Scapular. Mary appeared to St. Simon Stock on July 16, 1251, and gave him the scapular with the following words, which are preserved in a fourteenth century narrative: "This will be for you and for all Carmelites the privilege, that he who dies in this will not suffer eternal fire." The feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel was instituted for the Carmelites in 1332, and extended to the whole Church by Benedict XIII in 1726


Saturday, July 18 St. Camillus de Lellis
St. Camillus, entirely without means of existence and from his early youth suffering from an incurable wound in his foot, experienced the horrors of the Roman hospitals in the sixteenth century in which the nursing and other staff were drawn from the dregs of the population. He effected a great change for the better, not content with making himself a slave of the sick and diseased he established for them a congregation of Clerks Regular pledged to this work, even when it involved those suffering from the plague, and whatever their state of life or disease. St. Camillus died in Rome on July 14, 1614. Leo XIII proclaimed him patron of hospitals and the sick and Pius XI declared him the protector of all nuns who care for the sick. His name is in the Litany for the dying.