Santoral: which saints are celebrated this Thursday, March 2

Good deeds, deadly sacrifices, and even inexplicable occurrences arising from apparent divinity, are the reasons why different individuals have been beatified and canonized by the Vatican carry with him the name of saint.

Every daymarked on the calendar, commemorates the life and death of those beings, men and women, who have dedicated their lives to the same Catholic Church which has earned them the appointment.

It is the day of the saint Thursday March 2.

Born in Tivoli, in the countryside of Rome. He is the son of Castino. We see him being part of the Roman clergy and succeeding Pope Saint Hilary at the see of Rome, in March of the year 467.

He must live and be the Supreme Pastor in a difficult time due to heresy and calamity within the Church which seems to be awash with errors. In the West, Odaco has become master of Italy and is Arian like the Goths in Gaul, those of Spain and the Vandals in Africa; the prospects are not very consoling, no. The English are still in paganism. For the East, things are not better, although with other tones, in terms of the life of faith: the emperor Zeno and the tyrant Basilico favor the heresy of Eutyches; the patriarchs have proven ambitious for power, and the patriarchal seat is a coveted prey rather than a focus of Christian outreach. Regrettable general state of the Church which needs a good helmsman!

The new pope adopts a fundamental attitude in his pontificate: he gives preferential attention to the clergy. She seeks her reformation, detecting error and proposing the remedy for truth without the condescension that caresses her; he shows firm perseverance and iron tenacity when it comes to suppressing the ambition of the high ecclesiastical.

It moderates the Church which is in the East, being a retaining wall against the ambitions of power and domination displayed by Acacio, patriarch of Constantinople, when he claims the rights of Alexandria and Antioch. He did not yield to the claims of the usurper Timoteo Eluro, nor to those of the intruder Pedro the Dyer. He defended the canonical election of Juan Tabenas as patriarch of Alexandria against the pressures of Pedro Mingo, protected by Emperor Zenón.

He governed the Church in the West by sending letters to another Zenón -Bishop of Seville-, entrusting him with justice and praising his permanent devotion to the Christian family entrusted to him. He also wrote to Juan, bishop of Ravenna, in 482, on the occasion of illegal ordinations: “He who abuses his power – he told him – deserves to lose it”. In the year 475, he ordered the Gallic bishops Florencio and Severo to correct Gaudencio and deprive those whom he illegally commanded of episcopal exercise, while giving directives to distribute the goods of the Church and avoid abuses.

In his diocese of Rome, he behaves like an episcopal model, devoting himself to the care of his faithful as if he did not have the universal Church on his shoulders. Here, he takes particular care of the religious instruction of the faithful, facilitates the distribution of alms to the poorest and dictates standards to take care in the first place of the administration of baptism. He still had time to dedicate the first temple in the West to Saint Andrew, brother of the Apostle Peter, iuxta sanctam Mariam or iuxta Praesepe, on the Esquiline hill.

He also called a council to explain the faith in the face of the errors that Eutyches had disseminated, deceiving himself in the understanding of the truth, since, in his Monophysitism, he only admitted the divine nature in Christ, thus denying the Redemption.

The exact data of his death are not yet fully clarified, although it is known that it was in the month of February of the year 483. His relics are kept in Tivoli.

The contemporaries of the saint knew well the austerity of his life and his constant prayer to the point of asserting that he prayed like a monk and mortified himself like a solitary in the desert. Without these means, his work in the service of the Church would have been impossible.

With this character is other saints and martyrs which are also celebrated this Thursday, March 2, as follows:

Saint Absalom

Saint Basil Martyr

San Ceada

Saint Agnes of Prague

San Jovino

Saint Luke Casali of Nicosia

Saint Troad

Blessed Carlos Bono

Blessed Enrique Suso

The Catholic and Orthodox Church uses canonization to declare a deceased person a saint.which implies the inclusion of her name in the canon (list of recognized saints) and the authorization to venerate her, acknowledging her power before God.

During Christianity, people were recognized as saints without the need for a formal process; however, this changed in the Middle Ages.

In the case of Catholicism, the Church must make an exhaustive investigation of the life of the person to be sanctified and there are four ways to obtain the appointment: the path of heroic virtues; the path of martyrdom; that of exceptional causes, confirmed by an ancient cult and written sources; and the offer of life.

Moreover, it is an essential requirement who performed at least two miracles (or one in the case of being a martyr). Canonization is made in a solemn papal declaration and a feast day is assigned for liturgical veneration.

There is no set time limit for proceeding with the canonization of a character, since there is even cases like that of San Pedro Damián who was canonized up to 756 years after his death or, conversely, the case of San Antonio de Padua which was named up to 352 days after his death.

The last canonization took place in October 2019, when the pope declared Cardinal John Henry Newman and Sister Dulce of Brazil saints.