April 24
387: Baptism of Augustine of Hippo on this Easter Eve at the age of 32.
858: Election and consecration of Pope Nicholas I, who with his integrity, iron will, faith, and masterful defenses of marriage and the papacy, became one of the strongest medieval popes. He supported missions, exercised authority over remote churches and communicated Christian doctrine to Bulgaria. Since the Pope had demanded King Lothair II of Lotharingia to return to his legal wife, the King advanced against him with an army and confined him to St. Peters for two days without food.
1576: Birth of St. Vincent de Paul, a French Catholic priest and the founder of several religious orders, including the Lazarists (or Vincentians) in 1625.
1585: Election of Pope Sixtus V, who administered stern justice during his papacy, clearing the countryside of brigands that had flourished under his predecessors. He was also the founder of the Vatican library and of various colleges.
1603: Death of James Beaton, archbishop of Glasgow, in Paris, a Roman Catholic, who had left Scotland during the Reformation but was appointed as the ambassador to France by the Scottish monarchs. The protestant Scottish parliament held him in such high esteem that they restored all his honors and dignities before his death.
1625: Jean de Brebeuf sails for New France; he was the only Jesuit who could remain there for the longest time; he was martyred in his early fifties.
1844: Death of Asahel Grant, the pioneer missionary to Persia, in Mosul.
1870: The dogmatic constitution “Dei filius” is published at the Vatican I Ecumenical Council; while dealing with the relationship between faith and reason, it declared that God could be known by human thought processes.
1901: Protestant missionaries in the Philippines gather for a three day conference to form an evangelical union to advance the gospel in the islands.
1915: More than two hundred and fifty prominent Armenians in Turkey, including civic and political leaders, teachers, writers, and members of the clergy, are cornered and imprisoned, as a part of the Turkish efforts to eliminate all Armenian Christians. Many of them were tortured and killed; Armenians and others observe this das as Armenian Genocide Day.
1920: Demise of Eliza P. Hewitt, American Presbyterian S.S. teacher and hymn-writer, whose best known hymns include “More About Jesus,” Sing the Wondrous Love of Jesus” and “Sunshine in My Soul.”
1944: In a final verdict in the “United States v. Ballard,” arbitration, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the general principle that “the truth of religious claims is not for secular authority to determine.”
2011: Courageous Chinese Christians, who had lost their churches, meet at the Zhongguancun public square in Beijing to hold Easter worship services, leading to the detaining and imprisonment of hundreds, including their worship leaders and pastors.
Edited by: T. Chempilayil MCBS
Courtesy: www.studylight.org