Italian Carmelite Antonio Maria Sicari's vibrant biographies of saints--from Augustine to Catherine of Siena to Faustina Kowalska--have been read across Europe for decades. In How Saints Die, Sicari turns to the most difficult challenge in the life of a Christian: the hour of death.
What he uncovers in this darkest moment, however, is not desolation, but inexplicable joy. I have recounted the death of many saints, he writes, but all of them have confirmed for me the truth of this ancient Christian intuition: in the death of a saint, it is death that dies!
With in-depth research and a flair for storytelling, Sicari brings before our eyes the gracious last hours of one hundred men and women--lovers and martyrs, thinkers and workers, ancients and moderns, old men and teens. Included are Kateri Tekakwitha, Maximilian Kolbe, Mother Teresa, Thomas Aquinas, Josephine Bakhita, J