Saint of the day: September Martyrs

On September 2, the Church remembers the group of 191 Catholics who were killed in the French Revolution for their faith on September 2 and 3, 1792.

After they refused to take oaths in support of the civil constitution of the clergy, an act condemned by the Vatican, which would place Catholic priests under the control of the state, these priests and religious brothers were imprisoned in a Carmelite convent. In the space of two days, they were massacred by revolutionary mobs.

Among the martyrs were Louis and Francis de la Rouchefoucauld, the bishops of Saintes and Beauvais, Apollinaris of Posat, John Francis Burte, Charles de la Calmette, Augustine Ambrose Chevreux, Andrew Grasset de Saint Sauveur, John Mary de Lau, Severin Girault, Julian Massey, and Louis Barreau de la Touche.

In 1926, Pope Pius XI beatified the martyrs.