December 26
795: Leo III becomes the pope. He crowned Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor five years later.
1531: Martin Luther, German reformer, reflected, “The inner man is a saint; the outer man is a sinner. That is why we confess in the Creed that the church is holy but pray for forgiveness of sins in the Lord’s Prayer.”
1620: “Mayflower” colonists settle the Plymouth Colony , which later joined other neighbouring settlements and formed the royal colony of Massachusetts.
1790: Sattyanadan Pillai ordained as the first Tamil missionary of the Lutheran Church in India. This pastor-teacher became instrumental in mass conversion to Christianity in Tirunelveli, India.
1887: Birth of Charles Brandon Booth, who became an American social reformer and later headed the Volunteers of America from 1949-58.
1937: Isaac the Younger, a “holy father” of the Russian Orthodox Church shot at by the Bolsheviks. He and his church were associated with the teachings of the former Optina Monastery, eighty miles north of Moscow.
1948: Cardinal Josef Mindszenty, an outspoken critic of communism, arrested by the Hungarian authorities. He had to spend eight years in prison which followed another fifteen years of asylum at the embassy of the United States.
1968: Repose of historian Kenneth Scott Latourette in Oregon, who became famous with his work History of the Expansion of Christianity in seven volumes.
1994: Nigerian Christians, who were falsely accused of showing disrespect to the Koran, are dragged out of jail and murdered by a mob.
2004: A tsunami strikes towns with large Christian populations along India’s eastern shore.
Edited by: T. Chempilayil MCBS
Courtesy: https://studylight.org