September 8
70: Titus’ Roman army captures Jerusalem after a six-month siege. Over a million Jewish citizens lost their lives while defending the city, and almost 97,000 were sold as slaves following the city’s fall.
1565: Foundation of the St. Augustine`s parish in Florida by Father Don Martin Francisco Lopez de Mendozo Grajales, the first and the oldest Roman Catholic parish to be established in America. He was the chaplain of the Spanish forces, which conquered the city.
1636: Establishment of the Harvard College (later University) by the Massachusetts Puritans at New Towne, making it the first institution of higher learning established in North America, although it was originally founded to train ministers.
1741: Johann Philipp Fabricius, a Lutheran missionary, arrives in India to work among the Tamil people, where he revised the Tamil Bible and published a hymn-book.
1845: John Henry Newman, a leader of the Oxford Movement leaves the Church of England and becomes a Roman Catholic, because the former had, in his view, distanced itself from its ancient Episcopal moorings and true apostolic succession.
1890: Thérèse of Lisieux makes her first religious profession and becomes a Carmelite nun.
1907: Pope Pius X declares modernism a heresy.
1928: Pius XI issues the encyclical “Rerum Orientalium,” promoting the study of the history, doctrine and the liturgy of Eastern Orthodoxy. He recommended priests to enroll themselves in the Oriental Institute in Rome, founded in 1917 by Benedict XV, for higher studies.
1943: A council of the Russian Orthodox Church elects Sergius as Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia, after a long gap without a patriarch due to Communist suppression for many years. Since Stalin required support in his war with Hitler, he had authorized the council to do so; the council also reopened the seminaries.
1947: Time magazine presents C. S. Lewis on its cover page.
1955: Ignatius Kung, the Bishop of Shanghai, along with forty priests, and three hundred lay leaders from the Chinese church are arrested for two days.
2012: Release of Youcef Nadarkhani from Iranian prison, who was originally accused of apostasy for his own conversion from Islam to Christianity; following international criticism, he is charged instead with evangelizing Muslims.
Edited by: T. Chempilayil MCBS
Courtesy:Â www.studylight.org