Not only did Fra Giovanni paint like an angel; he was, in his personal life, an angel himself. The friar’s “angelic” style and “rare and perfect talent,” Vasari informs us, were the result of a “simple and devout life.”

I had planned to stay a few months, but was pretty quickly hooked and remained for five years - the last five years of Dorothy’s life, as it turned out.

At the time of his violent death, Charles de Foucauld had had founded no congregation nor attracted any followers. And yet his witness endured.

I can’t imagine what led me to focus my childish desires on St. Jude and spend in excess of three weeks’ allowance on a plastic statue instead of, say, another Archie comic book.

It always disappoints me a bit when the celebrant at Mass chooses Eucharistic Prayer 1 (the Roman Canon) and skips the invocation of the saints, that resonant list of early martyrs recited before and after the institution narrative. The omission is all the more disappointing since one of those lists

Garnished with stories of saintly figures and their teachings, Robert Ellsberg's book consists of eight chapters that are like interlocking facets of happiness and holiness.