December 22
1216 The Order of Preachers (Dominicans), founded by St. Dominic in 1216, officially approved by Pope Honorius III. The Dominican Order contributed many thinkers to the middle age and sent many missionaries to the Americas with the Portuguese and Spanish explorers.
1560 Julian “The Little” Hernandez, who rejected catholic teachings and distributed Bibles and Protestant literature in Spanish language, is burned to death in Seville, Spain.
1646 Demise of Peter Mogila, the Metropolitan of Kiev, who had established an educational program to defend the Orthodox teachings and had written many influential books, including a Russian catechism.
1770 Birth of Father Demetrius Gallitzin, a Dutch Catholic priest and a frontier missionary in America, and built up the Catholic church in parts of PA, MD, VA and WV. Gallitzin came to be known as the “Apostle to the Alleghenies.”
1837 Chartering of Mercer University in Penfield, Georgia by the Baptists.
1838 John Hunt arrives in the Fiji Islands as a missionary accompanied by his wife Hanna Summers. It was Hunt who converted a lot of Fijians and helped them to end the practice of cannibalism.
1850 Henry Budd ordained to the Anglican priesthood as the first from the First Nations ancestry. He worked in Western Canada and translated the Bible and Prayer Book into the Cree language.
1888 Repose of Isaac Hecker in New York City, an influential American convert to Roman Catholicism. He had founded the order of Paulists in the United States and served as the editor of Catholic World.
1917 Francesca Xavier Cabrini, the founder of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, breathes her last in Chicago. This nun of Italian origin was canonized in the Roman Catholic Church in 1946, becoming the first American citizen to be declared a saint.
1921 The National Presbyterian Church of Washington, D.C. assigned the first U.S. commercial radio license for a religious broadcaster.
1994 Gilberto Orellana, an El Salvadorean Christian is arrested along with five Muslims he had converted in Morocco. An international outcry facilitated his release after eight months of imprisonment.
2011 The civil authorities close a Baptist church in Neftechala, Azerbaijan, because it was not registered.
Edited by: T. Chempilayil MCBS
Courtesy: https://studylight.org