26 November - Jean Berchmans is born on 13 March 1599 into a prominent bourgeois family from Diest. He is by nature joyful and aspires from his adolescence to become a priest. He studied at the Jesuit College in Mechelen.

An excellent student, his parents hoped to see him pursue a remunerative ecclesiastical career, but John preferred to enter the novitiate of the Society of Jesus on 24 September 1616. Sent to Rome in 1619 to study philosophy at the Roman College, he astonished both his teachers and his fellow students: an exquisite charity and conviviality combined with a brilliant intelligence and great emotional maturity.

At the beginning of 1621, his health showed signs of deterioration, to which little attention was paid. On 8 July, he passed his final exam in philosophy with flying colours. Shortly afterwards, he found himself in the infirmary, struck down by a serious attack of dysentery which took him away on 13 August of the same year. Jean Berchmans lived his religious vocation and his relationships with others with intensity and passion. Popular devotion led to his beatification in 1865 and his canonisation in 1888 by Leo XIII. His body lies in a baroque sarcophagus under the altar in the left transept of the Church of St. Ignatius in Rome.

Blessed James Alberione

James Alberione, born on April 4, 1884 in Fossano, is an Italian priest, founder of the Pauline Family, which includes many congregations. Very early on, he confided to his parents his wish to become a priest. It was at the end of 1900 that he had his first mystical experience. Praying for several hours before the Blessed Sacrament, he then felt "deeply obliged to do something for the Lord and for the men of the new century" and decided to serve the Church with the new means offered to him. On 29th June 1907 he was ordained priest. In the seminary he was spiritual director of the seminarians and professor.

James Alberione imagined a new way of preaching the Gospel, with the spirit of St. Paul, but with the help of modern means of communication. With the help of a young girl, Teresa Merlo, he founded the Congregation of the Daughters of Saint Paul in 1915. Other congregations that followed him were: the Pious Disciples of the Divine Master, the Institute of Mary of the Annunciation, Saint Gabriel the Archangel, the Institute of Jesus the Priest, the Holy Family Institute... Between 1962 and 1965, he took part every day in the sessions of the Second Ecumenical Vatican Council. Don Alberione died at the age of 87 on 26 November 1971 in Rome. He was declared venerable on 25 June 1996 by Pope John Paul II and beatified in Rome on 27 April 2003, also by Pope John Paul II.