Free Republic

Tehran, Iran – Iran has started human trials of Fakhravac, the third domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine, named after nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was assassinated in late November near Tehran in an attack Tehran blamed on its regional foe Israel. Authorities at the time had said a team under Fakhrizadeh was working on a vaccine against the coronavirus, which has killed 61,000 people since it broke out in the country in February 2020. Fakhravac, previously referred to as the “Martyr Fakhrizadeh” vaccine, was unveiled during a ceremony broadcast live on state television. Defence Minister Amir Hatami, Health Minister Saeed Namaki,...

Post by Franciscan Media Saint Berard and Companions Saint of the Day for January 16 (d. January 16, 1220) Audio Player Saint Berard and Companions’ Story Preaching the gospel is often dangerous work. Leaving one’s homeland and adjusting to new cultures, governments and languages is difficult enough; but martyrdom caps all the other sacrifices. In 1219, with the blessing of Saint Francis, Berard left Italy with Peter, Adjute, Accurs, Odo and Vitalis to preach in Morocco. En route in Spain, Vitalis became sick and commanded the other friars to continue their mission without him. They tried preaching in Seville, then...

On December 2, Christians commemorate Saint Bibiana, a Roman martyr of the 4th century AD. Unfortunately, the facts about Bibiana's martyrdom are few as the surviving account of her passion is considered unreliable, recorded as it was centuries after her death. We know for sure that Bibiana was an early martyr as a shrine was built for her in Rome which exists to this day. Sadly, the present-day Church of St. Bibiana sits adjacent to the Termini train station in a shabby section of Rome, complete with graffiti, even on the exterior walls of the Church itself. We know that...

Saint Cyprian of Carthage is little remembered today, and that is a shame. For those familiar with the traditional Canon of the Roman Mass, Cyprian’s name is there, preserved for posterity in between Cornelius and Lawrence, two other martyrs of the mid-3rd century. But if the words and deeds of many of the saints from that era are obscure to us today, the life of Cyprian can not be classified as such. He wrote voluminously and many of his works have come down to us from antiquity—enough to fill the 600 page tome known as The Complete Works of Saint...

According to a July 22, 2020 article on PMW: Since the Palestinian Authority started its terror campaign — the second Intifada — in 2000, it has been promising terrorist Martyrs that as Muslims they will be rewarded in Paradise with 72 Dark-Eyed Virgins. The promises are given in religious lessons, statements by political figures, and poems and music videos, while funeral notices are worded as "wedding" announcements. As a recent example, the article cites a Palestinian music video that "reminds viewers that death as a 'Martyr' is really a 'wedding' to the 72 Virgins of Paradise." Another video shows a...

King Charles II and the British passed the Conventicle Act of 1664, making it illegal to hold church meetings of over five people. It prohibited "... more than five persons in addition to members of the family, for any religious purpose not according to the rules of the Church of England." The word "conventicle" is derived from the word "convenant" and referred to gatherings of church members according to Jesus' promise in Matthew 18:20, "Where two or three are met together in my name." The English Book of Canon Law, Article 11, stated: "All conventicles and secret meetings ... have...

St. Corona, Pray for Us!Michael J. Lichens The last few weeks have been difficult for many of us living in the new reality brought on by COVID-19. While the virus threatens our vulnerable friends, family, and neighbors, you don’t have to be sick to feel its effects. The material and economic realities are hitting us from all sides. In such moments, it’s easy to let our anxieties overcome our spiritual hope.  As a relatively anxious person with a myriad of health problems, my experience over the last few weeks has been rough. This time of quarantine has also been a...

Teens discover 1500-year-old church that redefines Israeli history The church was discovered near Israel’s Ramat Beit Shemesh neighbourhood. An excavation, largely completed by teens, unearthed the church which dated back to 543 AD during the time of Emperor Justinian. After three years of detailed digging, archaeologists came across mosaics, pillars, still-intact crypts, and frescoes that at one time came together to form a beautiful church. An inscription indicated the building was complete thanks to the financial support of the Emperor. Excavation director Benjamin Storchan, on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, told CBN News: “Numerous written sources attest to imperial...

Andrew Kim Taegon was the first native-born Catholic priest in Korea. He was sired in a family that had supplied numerous martyrs to the glory of Jesus Christ, including his father, Saint Ignatius Kim, and his uncle, Saint Paul Chong Hasang. As a child, Andrew's intelligence impressed a French missionary priest in Korea, and he was sent by his father to Macao to learn Latin and other Western subjects. He later studied for the priesthood and would be ordained in 1844 in Shanghai. After his ordination, he secretly returned to Korea to serve the Catholic community there—a dangerous mission considering...

John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" - "The monster was hideous to behold...scales...wings like a dragon, feet like a bear...out of his belly came fire & smoke" What would it be like to be imprisoned for 12 years just for preaching the Gospel without a license from the government? This was the fate of John Bunyan, author of the world renown book Pilgrim's Progress. John Bunyan was born in Bedford, England, in 1628, nearly a century before the Europe's Age of Enlightenment. He worked as a poor, unskilled tinker by trade. In 1644, at the age of 16, Bunyan joined the Puritan...

Yes, thanks and honor to the man who demonstrated manly and courteous sacrifice in this sad incident. His courage inspired others to step forward as well and lives were spared. Hail, Mr. Castillo!

A.D. 327. King Sapor, in the eighteenth year of his reign, raised a bloody persecution against the Christians, and demolished their churches and monasteries. Jonas and Barachisius, two brothers of the city Beth-Asa, hearing that several Christians lay under sentence of death at Hubaham, went thither to encourage and serve them. Nine of that number received the crown of martyrdom. After their execution, Jonas and Barachisius were apprehended for having exhorted them to die. The president mildly entreated the two brothers to obey the king of kings, meaning the king of Persia, and to worship the sun, moon, fire, and...

Saint Polycarp was bishop of Smyrna in Asia Minor in the second century AD. A disciple of Saint John the Evangelist, Polycarp died martyr in AD 155 or 156 for refusing to renounce Christianity. His martyrdom was marked by various miraculous prodigies, but foremost among them, perhaps, is the incredible fortitude of the man--who was at least 86 at the time of his trial--and his willingness to speak the truth to power even with the threat of immediate death hanging over his head. Here is an excerpt from the account of his martyrdom, recorded by Saint Irenaeus, in which Polycarp...

The feast day of Saint Flavian, martyr, falls on February 18. Flavian was archbishop of Constantinople from AD 446 through 449. Though he lived long after the traditional age of Christian martyrs, Flavian is nonetheless accounted one of their number, though he was slain by men calling themselves Christians--indeed, he died either during or in the immediate aftermath of a Church Council. As one of the principle parties at the so-called Robber Council of Ephesus, Flavian found himself on the wrong side of the powerful Patriarch of Alexandria, Dioscorus, and a veritable army of monks led by the Syrian archimandrite,...

February 13 is the feast day of yet another victim of the persecution of Decius, Saint Polyeuctus of Melitene in Roman Armenia. Though practically unknown today, Polyeuctus was renowned in antiquity as a soldier-martyr. An epitome of his acts was recorded by Symeon Metaphrastes in the 10th century, though it is likely that Symeon was working from a much older tradition. Indeed, Polyeuctus was revered in antiquity from at least the time of the Empress Eudocia (mid 5th century AD) who built a shrine dedicated to him in Constantinople. Here is an English translation of MetaphrastesÂ’s acts of Saint Polyeuctos...

Louis XVI, King, Martyr: a Catholic going to death and His Last Will and Testament Louis XVI, King, Martyr: a Catholic going to death and His Last Will and Testament Procession to eternity On January 20, 1793, the National Convention condemned Louis XVI to death, his execution scheduled for the next day. Louis spent that evening saying goodbye to his wife and children. The following day, January 21, dawned cold and wet. Louis arose at five. At eight o'clock a guard of 1,200 horsemen arrived to escort the former king on a two-hour carriage ride to his place of...

Red Double JOSAPHAT KUNCEWICZ, contemporary with St. Francis de Sales and St. Vincent de Paul, might have been taken for a Greek monk of the eleventh century, or an ascetic of the Thebaid. A stranger to the intellectual culture of the West, he knew only the liturgical books and sacred texts used in his own church; as a priest, an archimandrite, a reformer of his order of St. Basil, and lastly as Archbishop, he combated all his life against the consequences of the schism of Photius, and closed the struggle by culling the palm of martyrdom. Yet all this...

Red Demidouble WHILE THE CONCOURSE OF PILGRIMS to the sepulchre of the Bishop of Tours induced his third successor Perpetuus to raise over his precious remains the basilicas, in which so many prodigies were to be wrought all through the middle ages, Rome herself was dedicating to St. Martin one of her noblest churches, uniting with him as joint titular her own illustrious Pontiff and Confessor Sylvester. Adorned with this twofold glory, St. Martin-on-the-hill worthily inaugurated in the eternal City the cultus of Confessors side by side with that of the Martyrs. But another honor awaited the venerable sanctuary....

Red Simple THE BELOVED DISCIPLE had just received the long-promised visit of our Lord inviting him to heaven when the Church, under Evaristus, completed the drawing up of the itinerary for her long pilgrimage to the end of time. The blessed period of the apostolic times was definitively closed, but the eternal City continued to augment her treasure of glory. Under this pontificate the virgin Domitilla, by her martyrdom, cemented the foundations of the new Jerusalem with the old. Then Ignatius of Antioch brought to the “Church that presides in charity” the testimony of his death; he was the...

Red Simple CHRYSANTHUS WAS UNITED, in his confession of our Lord, with her whom he had won to Christianity and to the love of the angelic virtue. Our forefathers had a great veneration for these two martyrs who, having lived together in holy virginity, were together buried alive in a sand pit at Rome for refusing to honor the false gods. Dying like the seed in the earth, they yielded the fruit of martyrdom. On the anniversary day of their triumph, numbers of the faithful had gathered in the catacomb on the Salarian Way for the liturgical Synaxis, when...