Saints and Biographies

Father Hardon’s writings on saints and biographies explore the lives and spiritual witness of holy men and women throughout Church history. These articles examine virtue, conversion, sacrifice, sanctity, and the example the saints provide for faithful Christian living.

Ignatian Spirituality Today

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. It is just five hundred years since his birth in 1491 at the Castle of Loyola, Spain. During this half millennium, the Church has been under the most severe pressure since her foundation: to conform to the world to which her Founder said He did not belong. Ignatius set […]

St. Maximillian Kolbe, Apostle of Mary

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. GREAT CATHOLIC BOOKS NEWSLETTERVolume II, Number 3 St. Maximillian Kolbe Issue St. Maximillian Kolbe was born in Poland in 1894, and baptized under the name Raymond. In 1910, he entered the novitiate of the Conventual Franciscans and was given his religious name Maximillian. He took his final vows in […]

St. Therese of Lisieux

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Two years before her death, Sister Therese of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face wrote to her aunt, Isidore Guerin: I love to read the lives of the saints very much. The account of their heroic deeds inflames my courage and spurs me on to imitate them. […]

The Meaning of Virtue in St. Thomas Aquinas

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Until modern times the relationship of morals to religion was taken for granted, and writers as far different in philosophy as Plato and Avicenna, or in theology as Aquinas and Luther, never questioned the basic truth expressed on Mt. Sinai when Yahweh gave the Jews the Decalogue, the first […]

St. Robert Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Great Catholic Books Newsletter Volume I, Number 9 St. Robert Bellarmine was born in 1542 in the tiny village of Monte Puciano. He died at the age of 79 in Rome in 1621. Canonized in 1930 and a year later made a Doctor of the Church, Bellarmine’s, along with […]

St. Peter Julian Eymard, Apostle of the Real Presence

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Great Catholic Books Newsletter Volume I, Number 7 In the providence of God, different saints are raised up by Him in different periods of history to provide the world with solutions to the deepest problems of their age. The deepest problem of the modern age is alienation from God. […]

St. Louis de Montfort, Apostle of Mary for Today

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Great Catholic Books NewsletterVolume I, Number 6 On the occasion of the second millennium of Mary’s birth, Pope John Paul II emphasized the importance of a true devotion to the Blessed Virgin. He singled out St. Louis de Montfort as a prime example of what this means. He proposes […]

Saint Aloysius Gonzaga – Jesuit Saint

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. … have our conference on St. Bernard today, but I’ll do the next best. We do have our own great mystic, St. Aloysius. St. Aloysius Gonzaga is the correct pronunciation, the first syllable, was born on March the 9th, 1568 in Lombardy, in Italy and he died around midnight […]

Saint Alphonsus Rodriguez – Jesuit Saint

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. We have so far been reflecting mainly on priests. We should have at least one lay brother. He is the outstanding lay brother among the Jesuits by the name of St. Alphonsus Rodriguez. His feast day is October 31st. He was born in Spain in 1533 and died in […]

Saint Edmund Campion – Jesuit Saint

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. While this is the last conference of the Jesuit saints, I should add there are more to go, but time runs out. I thought we might take on St. Edmund Campion. He was born in 1540 in London, a very talented person, especially skilled in oratory. It seems that […]

Eucharistic Saints

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. In our closing conference on the Holy Eucharist, we address ourselves to the immense subject of Eucharistic saints. The very title is misleading. Every saint of the Catholic Church has been deeply devoted to the Blessed Sacrament. In fact, there is no sanctity without the Eucharist. We have no […]

Saint Francis Xavier – Jesuit Saint

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Just to get my direction straight, this is the kind of a Holy Hour from four to five, in other words I talk and then, you sing and pray and we close with Benediction. We spoke yesterday on St. Ignatius and the logical second Jesuit saint to speak about […]

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