23 October

. . . .in the Pauline calendar is the feast of the great Capuchin crusader St. John of Capistrano. He was a lawyer who traded his bar card for the Franciscan habit. He accompanied John Hunyadi throughout his campaign against the Turks and was present at the battle of Belgrade. The Mission San Juan Capistrano in California was named after him by the Blessed Fray Junipero Serra. The Mission’s official website is here.
If you click on the “Historic Mission” link and then on the “Tour” link you’ll find some streaming videos on the mission. The one entitled “The Great Stone Church” shows in its opening scenes the magnificent sanctuary, including the golden reredos of the Serra Chapel. The Serra Chapel is where one of the two traditional indult Masses in the Diocese of Orange is celebrated. The narrator doesn’t tell you it’s the Serra chapel, but it is. Off to the right of the chapel you can catch a glimpse of the nicest statue of St. Teresa of Avila I’ve ever seen. The mission itself has been "tourist-ized", if you will, although still very much worth a visit. But the Serra Chapel is pristine. The jewel of Orange County.

On the traditional calendar today is the feast of St. Anthony Mary Claret, Archbishop of Havana and founder of the Claretians (officially the “Congregation of the Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary”). The delightful and saintly Fr. Bishop who celebrates the indult Mass in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles is a Claretian.

Finally, in France this is (or at least was) the feast of the Blessed Marie Clotilde and the other Ursulines of Valenciennes. I found nothing on-line about them. So here is what Omer Engelbert has to say:

“For more than two centuries Valenciennes possessed an Ursuline convent. On September 30th, 1790, municipal officials came to make the inventory prescribed by law and to ask the thirty-two sisters present if they wished to re-enter the world. Following the example of their superior Mother Marie Clotilde, they unanimously expressed their wish to remain nuns. In August 1792 they were deprived of the right of teaching and ordered to vacate their house. On September 17th, with the exception of five who were sick and their bursar, all were furnished with regular passports and reached Mons in carriages This Belgian town was then in the power of Austria. The sisters stayed there until November of the following year at which time they returned to Valenciennes, which had just been seized by the Austrians. The latter gave the congregations the right to remain and to teach, and the Ursulines took advantage of it. It was then that three former nuns, deprived of shelter, joined them: two Brigittines and a Poor Clare.

“However, the Austrian army evacuated Valenciennes in August 1794, and the victorious French, re-entering as liberators, immediately drove out those of their compatriots who were suspected of connections with the former regime. Numbered among the ‘fanatics, traitors, and emigrants,’ the Ursulines were confined to their convent. Two-thirds of them escaped their persecutors; eleven from choice or necessity remained in their hands. It was these who, in two groups, mounted the scaffold in the great marketplace on October 17th and 23rd, 1794. All died courageously, happy, they told their executioners, to have come back to Valenciennes ‘to teach the Catholic, apostolic, and Roman religion.’ “