Catholic nerd pilgrimage: St Bernardine

St Bernardine holds the title for the closest Catholic church I’ve never been to (until today). Daily Mass here is at 6.30a which is a heavy lift for someone who’s not so much not a morning person, but I forced myself out of bed and made the short drive over to the church. 

I’d always assumed Bernardine was a woman’s name, but it turns out that Bernardine (of Sienna) was a Franciscan priest (and also, I’ve since realized, the namesake of the California city of San Bernardino). Reading the Wikipedia page on him, he seems kind of retrograde socially and not that admirable in 21st-century terms.