Wednesday, July 30
St. Leopold Mandic, Apostle of Confession (1866-1942)
Happy St. Leopold's and...uh, St. Peter Chrysologus's Day...again
Well, I think I slipped up liturgically and accidentally advanced St. Peter the Golden-Worded ahead in the calendar. I did the same thing with the Norwegian king St. Olaf the Fat, incidentally, about which see below. Serves me right for blogging in a hurry. So today's their big day. A happy and blessed feast day to all preachers and all inhabitants of Ravenna (buona festa!) and anyone in Oslo who's reading this (imagine I just said something polite in Norwegian). And while you're at it, check out one of the homilies that made St. Peter famous. Today is also the feast of the Italo-Croatian Capuchin St. Leopold Mandic, who was about four-and-a-half feet tall (perhaps breaking the record set by St. John the Dwarf in the fifth century, aka "Grumpy") and who was famous for his great love of the sacrament of Confession. Read this bio of him, with words taken from Paul VI's beatification homily. Under the terms of beatification then in force, he was a real speed case: people then didn't get their process opened until after 50 years after his death, but he was beatified in under thirty. Pretty cool, considering it sometimes takes hundreds of years. We also commemorate today Saint Abdon, a Persian martyr who, with his brother St. Senan, is patron of barrel-makers. Today is also the feast of Blessed Manes de Guzman, who was St. Dominic's big brother, the son of Felix de Guzman and Blessed Joan of Aza. He was one of the sixteen original Dominicans, and that, to use a hagiographic term, is totally sweet. Today is also the feast of St. Julitta or Juliette, who was martyred with various tortures, "all horridly painful" with her baby St. Cyriacus during one of the early persecutions. Though some calendars say she's commemorated on June 16 or July 15). That and she seems to have a web ring dedicated to her. A very small one, mind you. And, by the way, in the Eastern churches, at least according to one of their competing calendars, this is the feast of St. Timon the Martyr.
![[SMMMHDH]](http://www.mgilleland.com/music/smmmhdh.png){kind=small}
