IN TODAY’S LIVES OF THE SAINTS AND MARTYRS A PATRON SAINT OF YOUTH

Winchester, VA – Born in 1568, Saint Aloysius was a spiritually precocious child. As the firstborn son, he stood to inherit his father’s high status and title, but due to his experience in the Spanish royal court, he rejected that life and studied lives of the saints to console himself. At eleven he catechized children, fasted, and lived an ascetic life. For four years his father unsuccessfully fought his vocation. He entered the Society of Jesus and endured the mortification of having his spiritually zealous practices tempered; Saint Robert Bellarmine was his spiritual advisor. Saint Aloysius later cared selflessly for plague victims in Rome and himself caught the plague. He recovered slightly, but as had been revealed to him, he died during the octave of Corpus Christi 1591. Saint Aloysius, pray for us!