Oct. 16 Friday of the Twenty-Eighth Week of Ordinary Time; Optional Memorial of St. Hedwig, religious; St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, virgin; St. Marguerite d’Youville (Canada), Opt. Mem.

Hedwig (1174-1243), the aunt of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, was married at an early age to Henry, Duke of Silesia. After their six children had been born, they both strove to advance in sanctity and to enrich Silesia and Poland with monasteries, hospitals, and leper asylums. When Henry died in 1238, Hedwig took the habit of the Cistercian nuns at Trebnitz (where one of her daughters was the abbess), but retained the administration of her property so that she could give personal relief to the suffering.