Angelus was born in Florence or near there; the year is unknown but it was before 1386. He was the first member of the reformed observance of Our Lady of the Wood, was many times prior of various houses and noted for his work in preaching the Word of God. He died in Florence in 1438.
Bartholomew Fanti was born in Mantua: the year is unknown, but in 1452 he was already a Carmelite priest of the Congregation of Mantua. For thirty-five years at the Order's church in Mantua he was spiritual father and rector of the Confraternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, for which he composed a rule and statutes. He is especially remembered for his love of the Eucharist. He died in 1495.
Frances was born in 1427, probably in Thouars in France. She was the wife of Peter II, Duke of Britanny. After his death, and under the direction of Blessed John Soreth, the prior general, she took the habit of the Carmelite Order in the monastery she had previously founded in Bondon. Afterwards she transferred to another foundation in Nantes, also erected by her, where she held the office of prioress and nourished the sisters with wise teaching. She is considered the foundress of the Carmelite nuns in France. She died in 1485.
Hilary Januszewski was born on 11 June 1907 in Krajenki (Poland). In 1927 he entered the Order of Carmel and was ordained on 15 July 1934. In 1939, Poland was occupied by the Germans and one year later, Fr. Hilary decided to present himself in exchange for an older and sick friar. He was sent to Dachau, where he was a model of prayer life, encouraging others and giving hope for a better tomorrow. He died from typhus on 25 March 1945, a few days before the liberation of the concentration camp. Fr. Hilary Januszewski was beatified by John Paul II on 13 June 1999.
Bl. Jacques Retouret was born at Limoges in France on 15th September 1746 to a merchant family. He was a serious young man, a lover of books and greatly gifted. At fifteen years of age, he entered the Carmelite house in his native city. After ordination, his zeal and learning were widely admired and large crowds of people were attracted by his way of preaching.
The French Revolution did not spare him. Like the majority of his fellow clergy, Jacques refused to accept the civil law, unilaterally introduced by the state. He was arrested and condemned, together with many other priests and religious, and sentenced to exile in French Guinea in South America. Jacques died at Madame Isle on 26th August 1794 at the age of 48 years. He was beatified, together with 63 other priests and religious, as martyrs for the faith, on 1st October 1995 by Pope John Paul II.
Mother Euphrasia was born on October 17, 1877. Her pious mother taught her to pray the rosary and to participate in the Holy Mass. She had a vision of Mother Mary at the age of nine and she offered her virginity to God eternally. Her father was opposed to her entering the Convent but eventually gave her permission to go to the Carmelite Convent in 1888. For the rest of her life she was immersed in prayer, in contemplation or praying the Rosary. People began to call her “The Praying Mother.” She was most devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and had a great longing to be with the Eucharistic Lord and participate in the Holy Mass and adore the Blessed Sacrament. She was canonized by Pope Francis on November 23, 2014 in Vatican City.
Saint Kuriakos Elias Chavara, co-founder and first prior general of the congregation of the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate, was born at Kainakary in Kersala, India, February 10, 1805. He entered the seminary in 1818, and was ordained priest in 1829. He made his religious profession in 1855, in the congregation he founded. Throughout his life he worked for the renovation of the church in Malabar. Above all, he was a man of prayer, zealous for the Eucharistic Lord and devoted to the Immaculate Virgin Mary. He died at Koonammavu in 1871. Kuriakose Kathanar was beatified on February 8, 1986 and canonized on November 23, 2014.
Born about 1305 in southern Perigord in France, Peter Thomas entered the Carmelites when he was twenty-one. He was chosen by the Order as its procurator general to the Papal Court at Avignon in 1345. After being made bishop of Patti and Lipari in 1354, he was entrusted with many papal missions to promote peace and unity with the Eastern Churches. He was transferred to the see of Corone in the Peloponnesus in 1359 and made Papal Legate for the East. In 1363 he was appointed Archbishop of Crete and 1364 Latin Patriarch of Constantinople. He won a reputation as an apostle of church unity before he died at Famagosta on Cyprus in 1366.
Raphael Kalinowski was born to Polish parents in the city of Vilnius in 1835. Following military service, he was condemned in 1864 to ten years of forced labor in Siberia. In 1877 he became a Carmelite and was ordained a priest in 1882. He contributed greatly to the restoration of the Discalced Carmelites in Poland. His life was distinguished by zeal for Church unity and by his unflagging devotion to his ministry as confessor and spiritual director. He died in Wadowice in 1907.
Letter to the Carmelite Family for the Celebration of the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel – July 16, 2013
Fr. Fernando Millán Romeral, O. Carm., Prior General of the Carmelites
Dear brothers and sisters in the Carmelite Family,
The feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is approaching. As we do every year, we are now getting ready to celebrate joyfully this feast which is so important for the worldwide Carmelite Family. In different places, with a variety of religious events, we will honour the woman that we call, “Mother and Ornament of Carmel”. Processions, novenas, the giving of the Scapular, devotions, exchanges of good wishes and so on, will adorn the Carmelite landscape throughout the world. In many places, like Spain, my own country, devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel is associated with the sea (sailors and fishermen) and her image shines on the waves, as a sign of hope and protection in the oftentimes more furrowed and tempestuous seas of life.
As one who shares in the joy, I offer you my best wishes: may these celebrations give life to our devotion to Mary our Mother, under the enduring and ever popular title of Mount Carmel. May she accompany us and lighten our way as an Order and as the Carmelite Family.
This year it occurs to me to ask you to reflect on one of the most popular images with which we represent Our Lady of Mount Carmel: the image of the Blessed Virgin from her place in heaven setting souls free from purgatory directly or through the mediation of the angels, and those who are to be set free, engulfed in flames and a pleading look on their faces. Without wishing to dwell on the theology or on the baroque imagery and its limitations, it would be good to remember that the faithful see in this image the motherly protection of Mary, or, even more, the way in which true devotion to the Blessed Virgin leads to a life of grace and faith.
At this time of profound economic crisis, of unceasing violence, of flagrant inequalities, …. I believe that we too, as people devoted to Our Lady of Mount Carmel, are called to bring freedom to those who suffer the purgatories of our times — hunger, unemployment, war, terrorism, drugs, depression, loneliness, poor education, exploitation and abuse …. Our devotion to Mary makes us more sensitive to the needs of the least of our brothers and sisters, to the most forgotten, and it makes us more human, more compassionate and understanding, more in solidarity with others. Compassion is perhaps the greatest test of the authenticity of our devotion to Mary which can never be limited, as the Second Vatican Council reminds us (on its fiftieth anniversary) to a sterile or transitory affection or a certain vain credulity, (LG 67)
I also invite you to make of the celebrations in honour of Our Lady of Mount Carmel an opportunity for a serious evangelisation, and not just a propping up of traditions and practices from another age. Let us celebrate our novenas and the giving of the scapular, with conviction, affection and pastoral care and attention, with a sense of liturgy and a sense of catechesis, in a way that makes true what Bishop Oscar Romero said in his famous homily of the 16th of July, 1978: our people know that Mary, under the title of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, is the great missionary of the people.
A Happy Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel to you! May Mary, our Mother and Sister, walk with you always.
With fraternal affection,
Fernando Millán Romeral, O.Carm.
Prior General
Photo of Fernando Millán Romeral, O.Carm: By Jtthoc - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0 Wikimedia
