July 7th St. Willibald.

One of the most famous of the wave of English missionaries to Germany and the Low Countries, among whom was numbered St. Boniface. A native of Wessex, and brother of two other saints. Saint Walburga and Saint Winnibald, he was a monk of Bishops Waltham, only a few miles away from us, until he embarked on a great series of travels that took him to Rome, to the Eastern Mediterranean and to Constantinople, living with and learning from communities of monks and groups of hermits. He eventually arrived at Monte Cassino, the famous monastery founded by St. Benedict where he was responsible for initiating an important reform. He was sent to Germany at the orders of the Pope being ordained priest by St Boniface. He was later made bishop of Eichstatt and was responsible for the important religious foundation of Hildesheim, a great centre of evangelism, consisting of a double community of monks and nuns and where his brother was abbot and some years later his sister was abbess. He died in 787.