The Church celebrates this day in English Margaret Wardwho refused to reveal the hiding places of priests in 16th century London during the Elizabethan period. He was arrested and hanged together with the blessed Richard Leigh, priest, and the laymen Edward Shelley and Richard Marti, John Roche, Irish, and Richard Lloyd, from Wales.
Today the liturgy also commemorates the Catalan Blessed Maria Rafols. Born in Barcelona in 1781, she continued her apostolate in Zaragoza at the Nuestra Señora de Gracia hospital with the sick, abandoned children and disabled people.
During the sieges of Saragossa in the War of Independence, the Mother Rafols helped many people with a group of young people. He also went to the French and Spanish authorities to intercede for the sick, wounded and prisoners.
Defender of freedom, denounced persecutions
Blessed Cardinal Schuster was born in Rome in 1880 and began his novitiate in the Benedictine monastery of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome. He was ordained a priest in 1904 and cultivated the study of liturgy, sacred art, Christian archaeology and history and the Benedictine monastic tradition. In 1918 he was elected abbot of his monastery.
Pius XI appointed him Archbishop of Milan in 1929, and created him a cardinal. He demanded that the States renounce totalitarian pretensions over youth and education, and denounced the religious persecutions and racist legislations of his time. In World War II he helped the victims and led an austere and penitent life. He died in the seminary of Venegono on August 30, 1954. He was beatified by St. John Paul II in 1996.
