Feast Day
2 saints in our library are celebrated on April 30.
January 17, 1504 — May 1, 1572
Born Antonio Ghislieri to a poor family in Bosco, he entered the Dominican Order at fourteen and served as a reforming inquisitor before being elected pope in 1566. He standardized the Latin liturgy through the Roman Missal of 1570, excommunicated Elizabeth I, and organized the Holy League whose defeat of the Ottoman fleet at Lepanto he credited to Marian intercession — establishing what became the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.
October 28, 1599 — April 30, 1672
Marie of the Incarnation left a thriving transport business to enter the Ursulines at thirty-two, drawn by a mystic vision of a wilderness she would later recognize as Canada. She sailed to Quebec in 1639, founded the first girls' school in the New World, mastered four Indigenous languages, and wrote some 8,000 to 20,000 letters — the richest firsthand chronicle of colonial New France that survives.