Curated playlist
Roman Catholic mystics
- Pope John Paul IIPope John Paul II visited the man who shot him in 1981 and called him a brother.
- Ignatius of LoyolaA cannonball broke Ignatius of Loyola's leg and ended his soldiering. The Spanish knight later founded the Jesuits.
- John of the CrossJohn of the Cross wrote poetry on scraps of paper in a Toledo prison cell. Fellow Carmelites had seized him in 1577.
- Teresa of ÁvilaAt age seven, Teresa of Ávila ran away to seek martyrdom fighting the Moors.
- Joan of ArcJoan of Arc was convicted of heresy in 1431, but a second court overturned every word of that verdict in 1456.
- Anneliese MichelAnneliese Michel weighed just 30 kilograms when she died at home in Bavaria on the 1st of July 1976. In the year before her death, priests had performed 67 Catholic exorcism rites over her. She was 23 years old. Her parents had stopped…
- Blaise PascalBlaise Pascal rediscovered geometry on a tile floor as a boy. His father had tried to keep math from him.
- Padre PioPadre Pio, born Francesco Forgione, was an Italian Capuchin friar whose hands and feet bore wounds said to echo the crucifixion of Jesus. Such wounds are called stigmata, and his followers believed they lasted for half a century. A few…
- Thérèse of LisieuxThérèse of Lisieux spent her adult life inside a Carmelite convent in Normandy, and almost no one outside its walls knew her name. Now the Basilica of Lisieux ranks second among the pilgrimage sites of France, behind only Lourdes. Pope…
- Nicholas of CusaNicholas of Cusa said the earth is not the center of the universe. This was before Copernicus published.
- Giovanni Pico della MirandolaAt 23, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola offered to pay any scholar's way to Rome to debate his 900 theses.
- Luis de LeónLuis de León, a Spanish friar, poet and professor, is said to have returned to his Salamanca classroom on the 29th of January 1577. He began with a Latin line, Dicebamus hesterna die, meaning "As we were saying yesterday." The words skip…