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Paul Delaroche’s Joan of Arc being Interrogated (1824) / Public Domain

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 29, 2022 / 15:30 pm (CNA).

Catholics and people worldwide celebrate St. Joan of Arc — a heroine who fought for both God and country — on her feast day, May 30. On that day, nearly 600 years ago, the Maid of Orléans was condemned to death after being convicted of heresy.

The French peasant was burned at the stake in Rouen in 1431, at just 19 years old. She died while crying out one name: “Jesus.”

Joan of Arc — known in her home country as Jeanne d’Arc — fought in the Hundred Years’ War against England and is celebrated as the warrior who liberated Orléans and led Charles VII of France to the throne. She did this, she said, while guided by the voices or visions of St. Catherine of Alexandria, St. Margaret of Antioch, and the archangels St. Michael and St. Gabriel.

A rehabilitation trial was held 1455-56, and her conviction of heresy was nullified.

She was canonized in 1920. Shortly after, English translations of the transcripts from her trial were published.

“Joan of Arc did not know how to read or write, but the depths of her soul can be known thanks to two sources of exceptional historical value: the two Trials that concern her,” Benedict XVI said in 2011. The first, the Trial of Condemnation, contains the transcript of the interrogations she endured in her final months.

“Joan’s judges were radically incapable of understanding her or of perceiving the beauty of her soul,” the pontiff said. “They did not know that they were condemning a Saint.”

Here are 15 quotes taken from her trial and examinations, edited by T. Douglas Murray. Other translations, including the first unabridged English translation by W.P. Barrett, are also available online. 

1. Asked whether she knew she was in God’s grace, the saint answered: “If I am not, may God place me there; if I am, may God so keep me. I should be the saddest in all the world if I knew that I were not in the grace of God.”

2. “Without the grace of God I should not know how to do anything.”

3. “Take care what you are doing; for in truth I am sent by God.”

4.  “All I have done is by Our Lord’s command…I have done nothing in the world but by the order of God.”

5. “The poor folk came to me readily, because I never did them any unkindness: on the contrary, I loved to help them.”

6. “I do not know if I am in mortal sin, and, if it please God, I will never so be; I do not believe I have done its works; nor, please God, have I ever done or ever will do deeds which charge my soul!”

7. “I never said that Jesus had failed me.”

8. “As to that passage in my answer of which you remind me, ‘All that I did, I did by the counsel of Our Lord,’ it should be completed thus: ‘All that I did well.’”

9. “I have a good Master, that is God; it is to Him I look in everything and to none other.”

10. “I rely upon God, my Creator, for everything. I love Him with all my heart.”

11. “God must be served first.”

12. “And that which God hath made me do, hath commanded or shall command, I will not fail to do for any man alive.”

13. “​​I would rather die than revoke what God has made me do.”

14. “My words and deeds are all in God’s Hands: in all, I wait upon Him.”

15. “I believe firmly what my Voices have told me, that I shall be saved; I believe it as firmly as if I were already there.”

[…]

Dublin, Ireland, Apr 26, 2017 / 05:04 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Father John Sullivan was a prominent Irish Catholic convert who was known for his healing prayers, his consolation for the troubled, and his devotion to God.

Now he is set to be the first ever person to be beatified in Ireland.

The beatification will take place May 13 at St. Francis Xavier Church in Dublin, where the Jesuit priest’s body was interred. Cardinal Angelo Amato of the Congregations for the Causes of Saints will be involved in the ceremony. Church of Ireland leaders will also attend.

In a Feb. 18 homily at the church, the Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said Fr. Sullivan was “a man of learning” who was “always aware of his responsibility to care for those around him and especially the poor.”

Archbishop Martin reflected on the Gospel story of the rich young man who asked Jesus what was needed to attain eternal life. After telling the man to follow the Law of Moses and the Commandments, Jesus told him to sell all his goods and follow him.

“John Sullivan, faced with the same call, placed his life totally at the service of Jesus, renouncing wealth and worldly ambition and living the simplicity of life as a Jesuit,” Archbishop Martin said.

“His life would not just be marked by a rejection of outward wealth, but by a special concern for the poor and especially for the sick and the dying.”

The priest spent much of his life teaching at Clongowes Wood College in Ireland’s County Kildare.

“By many accounts he was not a great teacher but the boys loved him,” according to Sullivan’s biography on the website of the Irish Jesuits, written by historian Thomas Morrisey, S.J.

He would often visit the sick, the dying, and people who were troubled.

Even while he lived, many people attributed their healings to his prayers, including the nephew of Irish Free State founder General Michael Collins. The three-year-old boy, who had the same name as his famous uncle, had infantile paralysis that bent his leg in intense pain. After lengthy prayers with the priest, he was healed.

Not long after Fr. Martin’s ordination, he visited the Royal Hospital for Incurables at Donnybrook, he visited a woman who was suffering from lupus. The condition had begun to affect her mind and she was being prepared for a move to a mental hospital. Father Sullivan stayed with her for a long time and prayed over her.

The next day she had returned to full mental health, a state which lasted until her death, and she was able to re-establish disrupted friendships.

People also attributed to him a gift for knowing the future, and a gift for ministering to those with scruples, obsessions or compulsions.

“When God forgives me my sins, he buries them beneath a large stone. It is desecration to root them up again,” he would say in response to such cases.

The priest was known for ascetic practices: sleeping on the floor instead of his bed, placing stones in his walking boots, eating the plainest food, and sleeping for only a few hours a night so that he could pray late into the night and early in the day.

Father Sullivan was born in 1861 on Dublin’s Eccles Street, not far from the church where he is buried. He was raised in the Protestant Church of Ireland.

His father, Edward Sullivan, was a successful barrister who became Lord Chancellor of Ireland. His mother, Elizabeth Bailey, was a devout Catholic from a prominent County Cork family.

He attended elite Protestant schools in Ireland before studying law in London. For a time, he stopped going to church. His father passed away when he was 24, providing a great shock to him.

By the early 1890s he appeared to have no clear religious views, but was moved by the Confessions of St. Augustine. He began to sit in on religious instruction classes and read a catechism and Butler’s Lives of the Saints.

In 1895 the U.K. government appointed him to a commission to investigate widespread massacres of Armenians in Asia Minor. He taught English in Greece and spent time at Mount Athos, a center of Orthodox Christian monasticism.

He was received into Catholic Church in 1896, at the age of 35. The event was a surprise to his family, and though it drew some criticism from some Protestants, Sullivan’s reputation was such that he was supported by both Protestant and Catholic friends.

He entered the Society of Jesus four years later.

Father Sullivan died Feb. 19, 1933, aged 71. His death prompted outpourings of appreciation and affection and his funeral turned into a procession through the streets of Dublin.

His vault at St. Francis Xavier Church has served as a place of prayer for many people, especially those seeking healing. The monthly Mass said for his canonization regularly draws over 200 people.

He was declared a Servant of God in 1960 under Pope John XXIII and declared Venerable by Pope Francis in November 2014.

A Dublin woman’s healing from cancer in 1954 after praying for his intercession was recognized as Father Sullivan’s first miracle by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in 2016.

[…]

null / Daniel Ibáñez/CNA.

Terrassa, Spain, Mar 31, 2022 / 13:36 pm (CNA).
The Saint Joseph Youth charitable association has invited the faithful to join a procession and Mass on May 1, the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker, to honor and ask for … […]