Sixty-three Saints of the Western Church from the 1st to the 20th Century

Saints are the men and women who best love Christ and His Church. They may be kings or queens, statesmen or soldiers, scholars, visionaries, workmen or beggars. They teach us the real meaning of human history, and they show us how to live in any walk of life or set of circumstances.

Included in this anthology are famous saints Francis of Assisi, Dominic, Joan of Arc, Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila but also more obscure ones, such as Raymond Lull and Hugh of Lincoln.

Many of these saints were martyrs, killed in periods of persecution. Others died trying to bring the knowledge of Christ to pagan tribes. Yet others built up the Church through their example and their teaching, but were never called upon to shed their blood.

At a time when there is renewed interest in the Extraordinary Rite, Hugh Ross Williamson's classic exposition of the Roman Canon provides a superb commentary to provide priest and people alike with a deeper devotional understanding of the Mass. The very considerable learning, both historical and theological, which stands behind his writing is never obtrusive, but always serves the main purpose of the book which is devotional. Every paragraph of the Canon is given, both in Latin and in English translation. The prayers which compose the Canon of the Mass in the Extraordinary Rite are exactly those, without any alteration, which St Augustine said the first time he celebrated Mass in Canterbury when he came to England in the year 597. I commend this book to all who wish to discover afresh the riches of the Church's Liturgy and thus to renew her life. + Alan S Hopes Titular Bishop of Chester le Street Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster Hugh Ross Williamson (1901-1978) wrote nineteen plays and more than fifty books, entertaining and informing a wide public from 1933 until the time of his death. Journalist, historian, novelist, theologian and playwright, he had been an Anglican clergyman from 1940 - 1956 before converting to Catholicism. One of the first to explore the thesis that Shakespeare was a Catholic, much of his work was concerned with the rehabilitation of Catholicism in our understanding of England's history - a process that continues to this day. His popular introduction to St Bernadette and the Apparitions of Our Lady at Lourdes, The Challenge of Bernadette, is also published by Gracewing.

In 1858 Our Lady appeared to Bernadette, a girl of fourteen, the eldest of the four children of Louise and Francois Soubirous, a miller who had fallen on hard times. The first apparition was on Thursday February 11th, the last on Friday July 16th. Bernadette saw the Blessed Virgin in a grotto at Massabielle, near Lourdes, a little Frnech township at the foot of the Pyrenees that is now one of the most important centres of pilgrimage in the Christian world. On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in the Holy Year of 1933 Bernadette was herself canonized. In this highly readable book, Hugh Ross Williamson helps us to explore St Bernadette's life and, becoming familiar with the time and place in which she lived, understand her Challenge - to those amongst whom she lived and to us today.