On July 5, the Church in the US honors Saint Elizabeth of Portugal, the 14th-century queen consort who is remembered for her work to promote peace in her family and in her nation. She is remembered in Canada on July 4. Why Do People Speak Portuguese in Brazil? explains how European colonization influenced South America, why not everyone there speaks Spanish, and what the Catholic Church had to do with it.
Image credit: Filipo Tardim, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons