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Catholic Sprouts,

the daily podcast for Catholic kids that strives to plant seeds of faith.

Hey there, Spouts.

Today is Tuesday, April 23, 2024.

Today is the feast day of the legendary St. George the Dragon Slayer.

It is also the feast day of a young woman from Italy who lived in the 1900s. Her name

was Blessed Maria Gabriela. So she lived in Italy. She was the fifth of eight children and she was

notoriously stubborn, obstinate, and impatient as a child. Just not who you would think would grow up to be a saint.

However, when she was 18 years old, her youngest sister died tragically, and this spurred a deep

conversion in Maria. She began to grow closer to Jesus, eventually discerned a calling to be

a trappist nun. And even while she was

there, she still struggled with being stubborn and obstinate. And then one lent, shortly after

she'd entered, one of her superiors challenged her and the rest of the community to make sacrifices

for Christian unity.

Now, as you likely know, there are many people in this world that love Jesus,

but not all of them are Catholic.

There are Protestants in many different forms.

And so they dedicated them to prayer that we can all be united as we once were when

Jesus first founded our church. Now, Maria really reflected on this and felt that God was calling

her to make this a central part of her vocation, her prayer. And so she offered her life to Jesus in prayer if it could bring about greater

Christian unity. Immediately after she made that prayerful vow, she contracted tuberculosis,

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