Sunday 7 July 2013 14th Sunday of the year About Today Psalm week: 2. Other saints: Blessed Peter To Rot He was born in 1912 at Rakunai, a village on the Melanesian island of New Britain, today part of Papua New Guinea. His parents belonged to the region’s first generation of Catholics. He was a pious boy and the parish priest thought that he should study for the priesthood, but his father felt that the tradition of Catholicism in the region was too short and none of the people were yet ready for the priesthood, so Peter became a catechist. He married in 1936 and had three children. When the Japanese occupied the island during the war, all the missionaries and mission staff were imprisoned in a concentration camp and Peter was the only spiritual guide that Catholics had. He organized prayer services, gave religious instruction, baptized children, preserved the consecrated Hosts and administered them to the sick and dying, and gave help to the poor. The Japanese had destroyed the church when they arrived, so Peter built a new one out of the branches of trees. After a quiet start, repression grew violent. The Japanese banned all Christian worship, public and private, and decided to reintroduce polygamy among the people. Peter was arrested in April or May 1945 and savagely “questioned” by officials. He was sentenced to two months in prison. A Japanese doctor came and injected him with poison, stuffed his ears and nose with cotton wool, and held him down and suffocated him until he died. An immense crowd attended Peter’s burial, at which no religious rite was permitted. He has been increasingly revered as a martyr ever since that day. Other saints: Saint Maelruain (- c.791) In 769 he founded the monastery at Tallaght, in County Dublin, Ireland. Together with St Aengus he wrote a detailed Rule for the community, which is an important document in the history of early monasticism.
Posted on: Sat, 06 Jul 2013 22:07:51 +0000