Saints with Waller family names

2003 is the 750th anniversary of the death of St Richard who was Bishop of Chichester. During the year an icon specially made to celebrate the occasion will be escorted through the diocese. The itinerary includes St Andrew's Church at West Tarring, which has a stained-glass window depicting St Richard. The parish church at Maybridge is also named for St Richard. There is a book on St Richard.

There are 21 St Richards listed. This is the local one. Richard was ordained in 1242 and two years later he was elected Bishop against the wishes of King Henry III, who installed his own men in Chichester. For two years Richard was homeless and tramped the highways and byways of Sussex, stopping on occasion at the house of Simon, the priest of Tarring.

Eventually, King Henry accepted Richard, who proceeded to give away much of his income to relieve poverty. He also sold gold and silver plate belonging to the church because he thought it was wrong to own such treasures while so many poor people were suffering.

Richard was credited with performing several miracles but he was also a disciplinarian who ordered his priests to cut their hair and wash their robes. He strongly supported two Crusades to the Holy Land and many men of Sussex who heard him preach set off for the Holy Land to fight for Christianity.

Richard was canonised on June 16, 1276, nine years after his death and he was buried in Chichester Cathedral. However, centuries later Henry VIII ordered his shrine to be destroyed and nobody knows what happened to his remains.

St. Laura
Feastday: October 19
Martyr of Spain, an abbess. She was born in Cordoba, Spain, and became a nun in Cuteclara. Died 864 when the Moors threw her into a vat of molten lead.
http://saints.catholic.org/saints/laura1.html

St. Julia
Feastday: May 23
St. Julia was born of noble parents in South Africa. When she was still quite young, her city was conquered by barbarians. Julia was captured and sold as a slave to a pagan merchant. One day her master decided to take her with him to France. On the way, he stopped at an island to go to a pagan festivsl. Julia did not want to have anything to do with those superstitious ceremonies. The governor of that region was very angry with her for not joining in the pagan feast, and when the merchant was asleep he had her struck on the face and her hair torn from her head. She was next put on a cross to hang there until she died.
http://saints.catholic.org/saints/julia.html

St Simon
Feastday: February 18
There are four Saints named Simon or Simeon. The best known was St Simon, our Lord's first cousin and was about eight years older than He. He was one of those brethren of Christ who are mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles as having received the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.
We have chosen to mention St. Simeon Metaphrastes (fl. X Century) who was a civil servant who became a monk when he was old. Little is known about his life. When he was secretary of state, he compiled the ten volumes of the Menologion at the request of Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. Simeon collected the lives of the saints from oral tradition and written collections. He copied some lives as written and rewrote others. He arranged the lives in the order of the saints' feast days, and his work became so popular that many earlier hagiography has been lost. He also wrote a history of the world and a collection of the sayings of the church fathers. Simeon is sometimes identified as Simeon Logothelite.

Saint Katharine Drexel
Feast Day-March 3
There are six St Catherines but only one St Katharine with a K. Born in 1858, into a prominent Philadelphia family, Katharine became imbued with love for God and neighbor. She took an avid interest in the material and spiritual well-being of black and native Americans. She began by donating money but soon concluded that more was needed - the lacking ingredient was people.
Katharine founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People, whose members would work for the betterment of those they were called to serve. From the age of 33 until her death in 1955, she dedicated her life and a fortune of 20 million dollars to this work. In 1894, Mother Drexel took part in opening the first mission school for Indians, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Other schools quickly followed - for Native Americans west of the Mississippi River, and for the blacks in the southern part of the United States. In 1915 she also founded Xavier University in New Orleans. At her death there were more than 500 Sisters teaching in 63 schools throughout the country. Katharine was beatified by Pope John Paul II on November 20, 1988.

Bl. Anne Mary Taigi
Feastday: June 9
(1769 - 1837) Born at Siena, daughter of a druggist named Giannetti, whose business failed, she was brought to Rome and worked for a time as a domestic servant. In 1790 she married Dominic Taigi, a butler of the Chigi family in Rome, and lived the normal life of a married woman of the working class. In the discharge of these humble duties and in the bringing up of her seven children she attained a high degree of holiness. Endowed with the gift of prophecy, she read thoughts and described distant events. Her home became the rendezvous of cardinals and other dignitaries who sought her counsel. Beatified in 1920.

St. Robert Lawrence
Feastday: May 4
One of 19 St Roberts most of whom seem to have been hung drawn and quatered at Tyburn.
St. Robert Lawrence is one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. After joining the Carthusians, he served as prior of the Charterhouse at Beauvale, Nottinghamshire, at the time when King Henry VIII of England broke with Rome and launched the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Robert went with St. John Houghton to see Thomas Cromwell, who had them arrested and placed in the Tower of London. When they refused to sign the Oath of Supremacy, they were cruelly tortured and executed at Tyburn, making them among the first martyrs from the order in England. Died 1535. Beatified in 1886, Robert was canonized by Pope Paul VI with the other martyrs in 1970.

St George
Feast Day April 23. 2003 will be the 1700th anniversary of his death.
Pictures of St. George usually show him killing a dragon to rescue a beautiful lady. The dragon stands for wickedness. The lady stands for God's holy truth. St. George was a brave martyr who was victorious over the devil.
He was a soldier in the army of the Roman Emperor Diocletian, and he was one of the Emperor's favorite soldiers. Now Diocletian was a pagan and a bitter enemy to the Christians. He put to death every Christian he could find. George was a brave Christian, a real soldier of Christ. Without fear, he went to the Emperor and sternly scolded him for being so cruel. Then he gave up his position in the Roman army. For this he was tortured in many terrible ways and finally beheaded.
So boldly daring and so cheerful was St. George in declaring his Faith and in dying for it that Christians felt courage when they heard about it. Many songs and poems were written about this martyr. Soldiers, especially, have always been devoted to him.
We all have some "dragon" we have to conquer. It might be pride, or anger, or laziness, or greediness, or something else. Let us make sure we fight against these "dragons", with God's help. Then we can call ourselves real soldiers of Christ.

The Cross of St George badge was first used by Richard the Lionheart about 1188 at the Third Crusade. English soldiers started using it about 1277. St George became the English Patron Saint in 1348 when Edward III founded the Order of the Garter. The Royal Navy adopted the badge as the White Ensign at the time of the Armada. In recent times the emblem has been hijacked by neo-Nazis. But the English have bought over 30 million St George's flags to wave for the 2002 World Cup, and we think this enthusiasm for things English will now continue.
http://saints.catholic.org/saints/stindex.php