NEW VENERABLE

 

On June 18, 2026, the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints promulgated the decree of Pope Leo XIV recognizing the heroic virtues of the Servant of God JULIO MARY De LOMBAERSE, making him Venerable.

He was a  Belgian Catholic missionary who became a naturalized Brazilian, of the Congregation of the Missionaries of the Holy Family, founder of the Daughters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary , the Missionaries of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament and the Sacramentarian Sisters of Our Lady.

Julio Emilio was born in Beveren-Leie, Belgium in 1878. At the age of seventeen, as a boarding student at St. Joseph’s College in Torhout, he heard a bishop’s sermon about the missions in Africa. 

As soon as he finished his studies, he joined the Society of the Missionaries of Africa, known as the White Fathers, and in 1895 he left for Algeria as a lay brother. Stricken with a fever that did not subside, he felt an inner urging to become a priest, promising Our Lady that if she granted him a cure, he would enter the seminary. The fever soon left him and he returned to Europe, joining the Congregation of the Missionaries of the Holy Family in Grave, Netherlands.

He was ordained on January 13, 1908. In 1912, he was sent to Brazil, where he would spend spent 16 years in the North and Northeast, preaching missions, serving as a parish priest, and founding a religious congregation. He also dedicated himself to education and basic sanitation as a way to improve the health conditions of the local population. 

“It really is the country of dreams. “Everything grows on trees here: bread, sugar, [cane] juice and even milk. There are only two things missing, perhaps I will discover them yet: a tree that produces ham, and another that produces eggs. After all this, and despite the heat, everyone will be shouting: long live Brazil!”

In 1928, he left for Manhumirin, in eastern Minas Gerais, with the full support ofDom Carloto Fernandes da Silva Tavora, bishop pf Caratinga. There he spent the last 16 years of his life, serving as parish priest, seminary formator, and master of its religious congregations. He also dedicated himself to journalism, with his newspaper O Lutador (Fighter). 

In many areas what really worried him was the state of souls: the practice of religion was restricted to certain ceremonies and external acts, without devotion or true piety, and there was a deep corruption of customs, which had become truly pagan and even anti-Christian. Furthermore, since there were no priests to instruct the people, men appeared who offered to preside over the ceremonies and prayers, drawn by the desire to profit at the expense of the needs of the faithful, thereby diverting them even further from the truth.

Fr. Julio Maria  visited the villages, teaching catechism to the children and personally attending to the sick. To better evangelize the youths who were given over to a meaningless life, he founded a school for boys. “He was the doctor. He was the pharmacist. He was the schoolmaster par excellence,” which quickly won him not only the trust of the people, who started attending church again, but also the recognition of the public authorities.

For the young women, he decided to finally realize an inspiration that he had long cherished in his heart: the foundation  of the Congregation of the Daughters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

The new venerable died with a reputation for holiness on Christmas Eve,1944, in a car accident. His mortal remains reside in the sanctuary of Senhor Bom Jesus de Manhumir.

THE SAINT NEXT DOOR

 

Another foreign born woman, who immigrated to the USA, giving her life for the work of Christ’s people was VENERABLE SR. MARIA THERESA  of the MOST HOLY TRINITY YSSELDIJK.

Born on November in 1897 in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, Teresa was raised in a devout Catholic family and grew in her love of the Sacred Heart.

Her father died when she was young and her family moved to Germany. She wanted to enter a convent, but her frail health initially prevented her from entering.

 When her health improved, she entered the Congregation of the Sisters of the Carmelites of the Divine Heart of Jesus, in Tilburg on October 2, 1917, at age 19, taking the name Sr. Maria Theresa of the Most Holy Trinity.

 The Carmelite convent she entered was not a cloistered one, as the sisters blended contemplative prayer with active apostolates in the world, such as teaching and caring for the sick and elderly.

 Having a zeal for missionary work, Sr. Maria Theresa gladly accepted the assignment of traveling with seven sisters to the United States in 1919, just two years after her entrance.

 When she reached the United States, her health quickly began to deteriorate again. She was diagnosed with a a severe kidney disease that was not caught in time. This led to a grueling five years of suffering in a convent in St. Charles, Missouri.

Her patience and joy in the midst of suffering was an inspiration to all her sisters. While she was never able to do any active missionary work in the United States, she united her suffering to Jesus Christ on the cross and bore everything with a smile, thereby winning untold graces for the missions.

In 1925, the year that St. Thérèse of Lisieux was canonized, the Carmelite sisters prayed a novena asking for Sister Theresia to recover. After the novena, Sister Theresia experienced, in prayer, a seemingly devastating message from the French saint: “You will only live a short time, but suffer much.” The young sister accepted the message as God’s will, saying she went “very gladly” to her father in heaven.

She died at the age of 28 on March 10, 1926 at St. Mary’s Hospital in St. Louis. Many began to pray for her intercession shortly after her death and healings were soon reported.

Sister Theresia’s fellow Carmelites never forgot her, but the effort to officially open and advance her sainthood cause took somewhat of a back seat to the promotion of the cause of their order’s foundress, Blessed Mother Maria Teresa of St. Joseph, who died in 1938 and was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2006. Sister Theresia’s cause was officially opened in 2010 in the Diocese of Roermond, Netherlands, the location of the order’s motherhouse. 

Pope Leo XIV recently recognized the "heroic virtue" of Sr. Maria Theresa of the Most Holy Trinity, naming her, "venerable," one of the first steps on the road to canonization. She joins a growing list of "venerables" who worked in the United States. She would become the second woman to achieve sainthood while serving in the St. Louis region, after St. Rose Philippine Duchesne.

“I think a message that a lot of us need to really see and know and believe is that our hidden sufferings really do draw us into deeper communion with the Lord and intimacy with Him, if we let Him do that in us,” said Carmelite Sister Mary Michael, provincial vicar for the Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus South Central Province. ( interview with the Natl. Catholic Register)..

UPDATE- AMERICAN HOLY PEOPLE

 

Father Philip Nolan, editor of Magnificat, says,"If you want to understand Scripture, look to the saints; if you want to understand tthe saints, look to Scripture."  This is very true of the American women whose path to sainthood has been furtheed along .

Today, June 18, Pope Leo XIV declared American religious SISTER MARY TERESA TALLON venerable ( Blog 7/30/2017). She was the foundress of the Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate in New York.

The new venerable was born in 1867, in Hanover, New York, as the daughter of Irish immigrants.

In 1887, at the age of 19, Tallon joined the Sisters of the Holy Cross, despite her family’s disapproval. She remained part of the congregation for the next 33 years, teaching in Catholic schools in South Bend, Indiana.

She went on to establish a new congregation dedicated to contemplation and to preaching the Gospel to the neglected. In 1920, she left the Sisters of the Holy Cross and, on Aug. 15, established the Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate (PVMI). She gave it the motto “Make every soul count.”

A gifted scholar, Venerable Tallon authored a report documenting the first decade of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine in New York for the National Catechetical Congress in 1936.

She died on Feb. 10, 1954, after a prolonged illness.

PERU IN NOVEMBER

 

My Peruvian friends in Piura are ecstatic, as they have just learned that the Holy Father will visit their city in the first half of November of this year.  He will also visit Lima, Chiclayo, Pucallpa, and Cusco.  He will land in Lima and from there fly north to Chiclayo, from Chiclayo to Piura, from Piura to Pucallpa, in the jungle, and finally head south to Cusco. There is also a possibility of a stop in Arequipa.

The Pope met with Peruvian President José María Balcázar June 18. The president offered the pontiff several suggestions. Among them, he proposed that after his visit to Chiclayo, he could travel by helicopter “to the Andean area of Incahuasi and Cañaris, which is a very poor, Quechua-speaking region that he knows very well.

“We have offered him a helicopter to reach any place he wishes quickly, because he wants to cover as many small towns as possible in the north and also in the jungle and Cusco.”

This year marks the 300th anniversary of the canonization of Saint Toribio de Mogrovejo who served as Archbishop of Lima from 1579 until his death in 1606.

MANIFESTING COMPASSION

 

Another American woman is up for canonization, having lived in a very hard time in the United States. SERVANT OF GOD MARGARET MARY HEALY-MURPHY was born  in 1833, to Jane Murphy Healy and Richard Healy in Cahersiveen, County Kerry, Ireland. When she was only five years old her mother died in childbirth, and over the next few years, Margaret watched her family and the rest of Ireland struggle to survive the ravages of famine.

Amazingly, Margaret Mary was a relative of Daniel O'Connell, who worked politically to end slavery through the British Parliament system, as her own family would later own slaves in America. Her father was a doctor who helped the poor in the neighboring regions of Cahirciveen.

Margaret immigrated to America with her father when she was 12. Her father died shortly after their arrival. She accompanied her brothers, aunts, and uncles when they made their way across several southern states and eventually to Mexico, where they operated a hotel.

 She met John Bernard Murphy in Matamoros, Mexico. He had been stationed there while working as a volunteer in General Zachary Taylor's army. They married in Matamoros in 1849 in the Matamoros Cathedral. In 1850 the couple settled in Corpus Christi, where John owned a ranch and worked as a lawyer. The Murphys also owned slaves who worked on the ranch. 

 While her husband was traveling for business, Margaret Mary ministered to the pastoral and material needs of her neighbors, reportedly even riding 35 miles on horseback to secure medicine for Yellow Fever victims.

 With the Civil War brewing and her husband away, most likely for safety, Margaret moved to Corpus Christi, Texas, helping her neighbors with chores and cooking meals for those in need. After the war, Margaret volunteered at St. Patrick’s Parish, even as the Yellow Fever epidemic reached the city. She worked alongside the pastor, Reverend John Gonnard, who later died from the illness. 

One of the patients Margaret tended to was Mrs. Delaney who entrusted her daughter, Minnie, to Margaret’s care. Margaret and John Bernard adopted Minnie and sent her to a boarding school in New York with the Sisters of St. Mary of Namur. They also adopted Margaret’s goddaughter, Lizzie, who had lost her mother as well. Upon graduation, both girls entered the religious life with the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament Sisters. 

 In 1875, John was invited as a representative at the First Constitutional Convention for Texas, held in Austin. When he returned, he was persuaded to run for mayor of Corpus Christi, which he held from 1880 to 1884.

When John died in1884, he left Margaret Mary with a fortune, which she decided to put to good use, helping others. She started a tuberculosis hospital in Corpus Christi. After a few years, she moved to San Antonio. In 1887, responding to a plea from the bishops during the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, she was inspired to use her own finances to build the first black Catholic Church and school in the city.

With racial prejudice prevalent, she struggled with securing finances to sustain her project and maintain a stable faculty. In 1893, with the blessing of Bishop John C. Neraz, Margaret founded a new religious congregation, the Sisters of the Holy Ghost, now known as the Sisters of the Holy Spirit and Mary Immaculate. These sisters supported Margaret’s mission of working with the poor and people of color.

Mother Margaret Mary Healy-Murphy died on August 7, 1907, leaving behind 15 sisters, two postulants and three missions. Even today, her congregation continues “manifesting the compassion of Jesus to the poor” in the United States and Zambia.

On June 28, 2022, Archbishop García-Siller announced his intention to formally open the diocesan phase of investigation into the life of Mother Margaret Mary Healy-Murphy.

SACRED HEART IN THE USA

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Today, the vigil of the feast of the SACRED HEART OF JESUS, the U.S. Bishops Consecrated the United States of America to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

 

O Most Sacred Heart of Jesus: You know the longings of our hearts, and You desire that we enjoy friendship with You. From Your pierced side, You have poured out the wellspring of life, for which we thirst. Your heart burns with a love for all people to return to a right relationship with You. 

We celebrate the abundant gifts You have given this nation, founded on the self-evident truths that our Creator has endowed all people with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

We make reparation for the offenses against You and against human dignity that have taken place in this nation. 

 May our hearts be united to Yours, so that our families and communities enjoy peace and happiness; may broken relationships be reconciled, injustices repaired, and the wounds of our land be healed. 

May Your holy Catholic Church serve as a sign, pointing all people to Your infinite love. May your holy Catholic Church serve as a sign, pointing all people to your infinite love. 

O Desire of Nations and Center of History, we ask you to bless these United States of America. Who live and reign with God the Father  in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

 

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us! 

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

 

BIRDS WITH HUMOR

 

It seems to be the time for birds. Everyday I see a large calendar over my desk featuring the fun art of CHARLEY HARPER, who was a Cincinnati-based American Modernist artist, best known for his highly stylized wildlife prints, posters, and book illustrations. I love his work because of his great sense of humor and his sometimes play on words. For example, his  pileated woodpecker pecking for ants he titled “Antypasto". 

Charley was born in Frenchton, West Virginia, in 1922 into a farming family. On his family farm, he developed an early appreciation and love of animals as well as design  which influenced his work to his last days. 

He attended West Virginia Wesleyan College and graduated from the Cincinnati Art Academy, where he also taught for many years

Supposedly on the first day, Charley met fellow artist Edie McKee*, whom he married shortly after graduation in 1947. 

After a WWII tour of duty with the 104th Infantry in Europe, aided by an art scholarship,  he went on a four-months' painting tour of the country with his bride. He worked in a Cincinnati studio as a commercial artist by day and in his home as a fine artist by night."

Charley returned to the Art Academy of Cincinnati as a teacher and also worked for a commercial firm before working on his own. He and his wife worked out of their Roselawn and Finneytown homes, and later, with their only child, Brett Harper, formed Harper Studios.

Charley Harper died of pneumonia in Cincinnati on Sunday, June 10, 2007, at age 84.

During his career, Charley Harper illustrated numerous books, notably The Golden Book of Biology, magazines such as Ford Times, as well as many prints, posters, and other works. As his subjects are mainly natural, with birds prominently featured, Charley often created works for many nature-based organizations, among them the National Park Service, Cincinnati Zoo, Cincinnati Nature Center, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Hamilton County (Ohio) Park District, and Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania. He also designed interpretive displays for Everglades National Park.

In a style he called "minimal realism", Charley Harper captured the essence of his subjects with the fewest possible visual elements. When asked to describe his unique visual style, Charley responded: 

When I look at a wildlife or nature subject, I don't see the feathers in the wings, I just count the wings. I see exciting shapes, color combinations, patterns, textures, fascinating behavior, and endless possibilities for making interesting pictures. I regard the picture as an ecosystem in which all the elements are interrelated, interdependent, perfectly balanced, without trimming or unutilized parts; and herein lies the lure of painting; in a world of chaos, the picture is one small rectangle in which the artist can create an ordered universe.”

He began his career by creating very realistic pictures but began to lose his interest in this approach. This skill wasn't wasted, however, for as he said “You’ve got to know how to put everything in before you will know what you can leave out successfully.”

"I felt shackled by the laws of perspective and shading and decided that the constant attempt to create the illusion of three dimensions on the two-dimensional plane of the picture was limiting me as an artist. Realistic painting persuades the viewer that he is looking into space rather than at a flat surface. It denies the picture plane, which I affirm and use as an element of design. Wildlife art has been dominated by realism, but I have chosen to do it differently because I think flat, hard-edge and simple."

Charlie said it was the difference between painting the thing itself or painting a picture of the thing. "I didn’t start out to paint a bird – the bird already existed. I started out to paint a picture of a bird, a picture which didn’t exist before I came along, a picture which gives me a chance to share with you my thoughts about the bird.

Once you accept this seemingly simplistic but really quite profound premise, you will appreciate the many varied approaches to the making of pictures, all of which start where realism leaves off, but all of which require an understanding of realism for their successful execution.”

He contrasted his nature-oriented artwork with the realism of John James Audubon, drawing influence from Cubism, Minimalism, Einsteinian physics and countless other developments in Modern art and science. His style distilled and simplified complex organisms and natural subjects, yet they are often arranged in a complex fashion.

His serigraphs were large expanses of rich color, which gave the viewer a very different perspective on the animal kingdom. He was a conservationist as well as an artist, revealing the unique aspects of  wildlife subjects through highly stylized geometric reduction. 

 He said he was "the only wildlife artist who has never been compared to Audubon," yet his wildlife art was just as instructive - the only difference was that he laced his lessons with humor.Charlie believed that humor made it easier to encourage changes in our attitudes and awareness of environmental concerns.

On the subject of his simplified forms, Charley noted:

"I don't think there was much resistance to the way I simplified things. I think everybody understood that. Some people liked it and others didn't care for it. There's some who want to count all the feathers in the wings and then others who never think about counting the feathers, like me.”

The results are bold, colorful, and often whimsical. The designer Todd Oldham wrote of him, "Charley's inspired yet the accurate color sense is undeniable, and when combined with the precision he exacts on rendering only the most important details, one is always left with a sense of awe." Charley, on numerous examples, also went outside the medium of graphic art and included short prose poems for the artwork he made.    

In his art work Charlie  imaginatively investigated the similarities between human and wild animal behaviors, but completely without anthropomorphism. "I learn as much as I can about the creatures that interest me, and they all do. I observe them and find out how they interact with each other and their environments and ask myself, 'What if?'"

In 2002 his artwork was selected for the International Migratory Bird Day conservation theme- Exploring Habitats.

*EDIE McKee HARPER was an American photographer, artis and wildlife conservationist, working in many mediums, including sculptures, paintings, textiles, jewelry and lithographs for 60 years. She died 3 years after Charlie.

Birds: top- Pileated woodpecker

 Left-  Clair de Loon

Right- Barn swallow

Left- Goldfinch

Right- "His eyes are on the sparrows"

Left- Scissortail flycatcher

Rigt- Rosebreasted  Grosebeak