We are accustomed to seeing new names appear in the fields of business, film, and sports. It is the same way with the elite of the Church, the saints. Here too, new fixed stars are always appearing in the heavens. In this volume a master of hagiography presents thirty-seven new blesseds and five saints beatified and canonized by Pope John Paul II. These are new faces, some of them our contemporaries, who followed Christ under circumstances that were completely different from those of the saints of earlier ages who had the privilege of living in a world that was still more or less whole. The short biographies each include an illustration of the saint, and part of the homily given by the Pope at the canonization or beatification.

In this volume you well meet men and women who come from eras of great conflict, who in a heroic way remained faithful to Christ and to His Church, and so have become, as Vaticn II says,, "companions of our human condition." When the prophet Elijah on his forty-day journey to Mount Horeb collapsed in exhaustion, an angel came to him and strengthened him. The saints have the power and the duty to help us, to set us aright and teach us strategy for our battle with the powers of darkness. Let us get to know them, so that we can call on them by name. Christ Himself admonishes us: "Make friends for yourselves...in heaven" (Luke 16:9). We can rest consoled: every age has its saints.