St. Laurence Justinian, Bishop and Confessor, First Patriarch of Venice
Bishop and first Patriarch of Venice, born in 1381, and died 8 January, 1456.
He was a descendant of the Giustiniani, a Venetian patrician family which numbered several saints among its members. Lawrence’s pious mother sowed the seeds of a devout religious life in the boy’s youth. In 1400 when he was about nineteen years old, he entered the monastery of the Canons Regular of St. Augustine on the Island of Alga near Venice. In spite of his youth he excited admiration by his poverty, mortifications, and fervour in prayer. At that time the convent was changed into a congregation of secular canons…
