In July 1936, Angel Prat Hostench along with other religious were discovered while trying to escape persecution at the Tarrega railway station. Together with Prat were three priests, five students, one lay brother and two novices. Later in August, Carmelite nun Sister Maria del Patrocinio — after escaping her burning monastery — was shot by militia. Further Carmelites brothers and priests were killed in October and November following inhumane interrogations and treatment. These Carmelites were among 498 martyrs of the Spanish civil war, beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007.
Angelus was one of the first Carmelites to come to Sicily from Mount Carmel. According to trustworthy sources, he was killed by unbelievers in Licata during the first half of the thirteenth century. Acclaimed as a martyr, his body was placed in a church built on the site of his death. Only in 1632 were his relics transferred to the Carmelite Church. Veneration of St.
Hilary Januszewski was born on 11 June 1907 in Krajenki (Poland). In 1927 he entered the Order of Carmel and was ordained a priest on 15 July 1934. On 1 November 1939, Fr. Eliseus Sánchez-Paredes, Provincial, appointed him prior of the community. At that time, Poland had already been occupied by the Germans a few weeks earlier.
As the French Revolution entered its worst days, sixteen Discalced Carmelites from the Monastery of the Incarnation in Compiegne offered their lives as a sacrifice to God, making reparation to him and imploring peace for the Church. On June 24, 1794, they were arrested and thrown into prison.
Born at Bolsward (The Netherlands) in 1881, Saint Titus Brandsma joined the Carmelite Order as a young man. Ordained a priest in 1905, he earned a doctorate in philosophy in Rome. He then taught in various schools in Holland and was named professor of philosophy and of the history of mysticism in the Catholic University of Nijmegen, where he also served as Rector Magnificus.
Edith Stein was born to a Jewish family at Breslau on October 12, 1891. Through her passionate study of philosophy she searched after truth and found it in reading the autobiography of St. Teresa of Jesus. In 1922 she was baptized a Catholic and in 1933 she entered the Carmel of Cologne where she took the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.
Bl. Isidore Bakanja, a member of the Boangi tribe, was born in Bokendela (Congo) between 1880 and 1890. In order to survive, even as a boy, he had to work as bricklayer or in farms. He was converted to Christianity in 1906. He was working in a plantation run by a colonialist in Ikili and was forbidden by the owner to spread Christianity among his fellow-workers.
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.
Denis of the Nativity, a priest, called in the world Pierre Berthelot, was born in Honfleur in France in 1600. He was a cartographer and naval commander for the kings of Portugal and France before he joined the Discalced Carmelites in Goa in 1635.
