Chapter 21

Ten (Plus One) Popular Catholic Saints

In This Chapter

Discovering the stories behind beloved Catholic heroes

Getting inspired by their faith

Catholics do not worship saints, but the saints are near and dear to Catholic hearts. Catholics respect and honor the saints and consider them to be the heroes of the Church. The Church emphasizes that they were ordinary people from ordinary families, and they were totally human. They weren’t born with halos around their heads, and they didn’t always wear a smile, either. What separated them from those who weren’t given the title of saint was that they didn’t despair; they kept right on honing their souls for heaven come hell or high water. Get the full Catholic perspective on saints in Chapter 18.

In this chapter, we share some tidbits about the lives of 11 such ordinary people who became popular saints. We’ve listed them in chronological order.

St. Peter (Died around a.d. 64)

The brother of Andrew and the son of Jona, St. Peter was originally called Simon. He was a fisherman by trade. Biblical scholars believe that Peter was married because the Gospel speaks of the cure of his mother-in-law (Matthew 8:14; Luke 4:38). But whether he was a widower at the time he met Jesus, no one knows for sure. Scholars believe it’s likely that his wife was no longer alive because after the Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ, Peter became head of the Church (the first pope) and had a busy schedule and itinerary. He also never mentioned his wife in his epistle. (An epistle is a pastoral letter written by one of the apostles and found in the New Testament, immediately after the Four Gospels and the Book of Acts and just before the Apocalypse or Book of Revelation. These letters were composed to give the early Christian communities encouragement and/or instruction.)

According to the Bible, Andrew introduced Peter to Jesus and told his brother, “We have found the Messiah!” (John 1:41). When Peter hesitated to follow Jesus full time, Jesus came after him and said, “I will make you fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19).

The faithful believe that Peter’s confession of faith made him stand out in the crowd, even among the 12 apostles. Matthew 16:13–16 tells the story: Jesus posed the question, “Who do men say that the Son of man is?” The other 11 merely reiterated what they’d heard others say: “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others say Jeremiah or one of the Prophets.” Jesus then asked directly, “But who do you say that I am?” Only Peter responded, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” His answer received the full approval of Jesus, which is why Peter was made the chief shepherd of the Church and head of the Apostles. Matthew 16:17–19 says:

“Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter (Petros), and on this rock (petra) I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

The Greek language, in which the Gospel was first written, uses the word Petros as the proper first name of a man and the word petra to refer to a rock. Peter means rock, but in Greek, as in most other languages except English, nouns have gender. Petra is the word for rock, and it’s feminine, so you wouldn’t call a man petra no matter how “strong as a rock” he may be. We believe that had Jesus used petra instead of petros for Peter, the other apostles and disciples would never have let Peter live it down because using a feminine ending would have been inappropriate. (These were sailors and fishermen, after all.)

St. Jude (Died during the first century a.d.)

St. Jude, not to be confused with Judas, was believed to be a relative of Jesus and was the brother of St. James the Less (as opposed to St. James the Greater, the brother of St. John the Evangelist. The Greater and the Less were simply indications of which James was called to be a disciple before the other: James the Greater was a disciple first.)

Jude is also known as Jude Thaddaeus, Patron Saint of Hopeless Cases. One reason is that the effort to find information about him is almost hopeless. In fact, we like to call him St. Jude the Obscure. But another reason he is invoked for hopeless cases could be that his name is so close to Judas, who betrayed Christ.

It’s conjectured that Jude’s father was Clopas, who was murdered for his support of Jesus, and that his mother was Mary Clopas, who was mentioned in the Gospel as being at the cross (John 19:25). Jude was allegedly martyred by being clubbed to death. (See Chapter 16 to read a popular novena to St. Jude.)

Famous American actor Danny Thomas, who was a Lebanese-American Catholic, visited a church in Detroit named after Saint Jude during the beginning of his career in the 1950s. He left his last seven dollars in the collection basket and prayed that Saint Jude would intercede for him. He needed more work to support his new bride and their new child. Very soon afterward, he got many steady and lucrative gigs. In appreciation, Thomas helped establish a fund to build a children’s hospital under the protection of Saint Jude. The Saint Jude Children’s Research Hospital was built in 1955 thanks to Thomas and with the support of many of his fellow Arab-Americans.

St. Benedict (480–circa 543)

Benedict of Nursia, the founder of Western monasticism, was the son of a Roman nobleman and the twin brother of St. Scholastica, foundress of the Benedictine nuns. He grew up and studied in Rome until the age of 14, when he decided to leave the city for a quieter life of prayer and work.

He developed a structure for monastic life called a Rule, which is a set of laws, customs, and practices for all members of a religious community that continues to this day and is the basis for many religious communities. Living a simple life of poverty, chastity, and obedience in community with others and devoting oneself to sanctity and holiness is the main objective of Benedictine life. Known for their hard work and their love of the Sacred Liturgy and Sacred Scripture and dedicated to study and learning, the Benedictines were role models for many religious communities that came later, such as the Dominicans. The Benedictine monks fled the morally decaying cities of the disintegrating Roman Empire and preserved culture, language, heritage, art, and learning.

The famous Benedictine monasteries of Monte Cassino and Subiaco, Italy, date back to the time of Benedict and still house members to this day. A hallmark of Benedictine life, besides work and prayer, is the vow of stability: Unlike diocesan priests who get transferred frequently, after a man joins a Benedictine monastery, he usually stays on-site for the rest of his life unless special circumstances require him to join another abbey.

St. Dominic de Guzman (1170–1221)

St. Dominic was a contemporary of St. Francis of Assisi, whom we discuss next. The faithful believe that when St. Dominic’s mother, Joanna of Aza (the wife of Felix de Guzman) was pregnant, she had a vision of a dog carrying a torch in his mouth, which symbolized her unborn son who would grow up to become a hound of the Lord. The name Dominic was thus given to him, because in Latin Dominicanis can be Domini + canis (dog or hound of the Lord).

Dominic lived at a time when some followers of Christ believed only in his divine nature; they denied his human nature. These believers couldn’t accept a god who would suffer and die for humankind’s sins. Their beliefs were called the Albigensian heresy. Catholics believe that Mary gave the rosary to Dominic to help him conquer Albigensianism. Dominic promoted devotion to Mary and the practice of praying the rosary (see Chapter 16) around Western Europe.

Dominic also established the Order of Friars Preachers (shortened to Order of Preachers), called the Dominicans. Along with their brother Franciscans (whom we discuss in the next section), the Dominicans re-energized the Church in the 13th century and brought clarity of thought and substantial learning to more people than ever before. The motto of St. Dominic was veritas, which is Latin for truth.

St. Francis of Assisi (1181–1226)

The son of a wealthy cloth merchant, Pietro Bernadone, Francis was one of seven children. Today, people would say that he grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth.

Even though he was baptized Giovanni, his father later changed his name to Francesco (Italian for Francis or Frank). He was handsome, courteous, witty, strong, and intelligent, but very zealous. He liked to play hard and fight hard like most of his contemporaries. Local squabbles between towns, principalities, dukedoms, and so on were rampant in Italy in the 12th century. Francis was a playboy of sorts but wasn’t a nasty or immoral one. After spending a year in captivity with the rival Perugians, who fought their neighbors the Assisians, Francis decided to cool his jets for a while. One day, he met a poor leper on the road whose stench and ugliness repulsed him at first. Remorseful, Francis turned around, got off his horse, embraced the beggar and gave him clothes and money. The man immediately disappeared, and Francis believed it was Christ visiting him as a beggar. He then went to visit the tomb of St. Peter in Rome, where he gave all his worldly possessions — money, clothes, and belongings — to the poor and put on the rags of a poor man himself. Lady Poverty was to be his bride.

His dad wasn’t happy about the embarrassment Francis caused, so he dragged, beat, and locked up Francis in attempts to make him come to his senses. His mother helped Francis escape to a bishop friend of his, but his father soon found him. Because he was on church property, however, Signor Bernadone couldn’t violate the sanctuary and force his son home. Francis took what little clothing he had from home still on his person and threw it at his father and said: “Hitherto I have called you my father on earth; henceforth I desire to say only ‘Our Father who art in Heaven.’”

Sometime around 1210 he started his own religious community called the Order of Friars Minor (OFM), which today is known as the Franciscans. They took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, but unlike the Augustinian and Benedictine monks who lived in monasteries outside the villages and towns, St. Francis and his friars were not monks but mendicants, which means that they begged for their food, clothes, and shelter. What they collected they shared among themselves and the poor. They worked among the poor in the urban areas.

Catholics believe that in 1224, St. Francis of Assisi was blessed with the extraordinary gift of the stigmata, the five wounds of Christ imprinted on his own body.

St. Francis of Assisi loved the poor and animals, but most of all he loved God and his Church. He wanted everyone to know and experience the deep love of Jesus that he felt in his own heart. He is credited with the creation of two Catholic devotions: the Stations of the Cross (see Chapter 16) and the Christmas crèche.

St. Anthony of Padua (1195-1231)

St. Anthony was born as Ferdinand, son of Martin Bouillon and Theresa Tavejra. At the age of 15 he joined an order of priests called the Canons Regular of St. Augustine. Later he transferred to the newly formed Order of Friars Minor (OFM), or Franciscans, where he took the religious name of Anthony.

He is famous for being an effective orator. Anthony’s sermons were so powerful that many Catholics who strayed from the faith and embraced false doctrines of other religions would repent after hearing him. This skill led to his nickname, “Hammer of Heretics.”Anthony got so disgusted one day with the locals who obstinately refused to listen to his preaching that he went to the river and started preaching to the fish. So many fish gathered at the bank that the townsfolk got the message and began to heed his instructions.

St. Anthony is invoked as the patron saint of lost items. On one occasion, a little boy appeared in the town square, apparently lost. Anthony picked him up and carried him around town looking for the boy’s family. They went to house after house, but no one claimed him. At the end of the day, Anthony approached the friary chapel. The boy said, “I live there.” Once in the oratory, the child disappeared. It was later discerned that the child was in fact Jesus. Since then, Catholics invoke St. Anthony whenever they lose something, even car keys or eyeglasses.

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274)

The greatest intellect the Catholic Church has ever known was born of a wealthy aristocratic family, the son of Landulph, Count of Aquino, and Theodora, Countess of Teano. Thomas’s parents sent him at the age of five, which was customary, to the Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino. It was hoped that if he didn’t show talents suited for becoming a knight or nobleman, he could at least rise to the rank of abbot or bishop and thus add to his family’s prestige and influence.

However, ten years later, Thomas wanted to join a new mendicant order, which was similar to the Franciscans in that it didn’t go to distant monasteries but worked in urban areas instead. The new order was the Order of Preachers (O.P.), known as Dominicans.

His family had other ideas, putting him under house arrest for two years in an effort to dissuade his Dominican vocation. He didn’t budge. While captive, he read and studied assiduously and learned metaphysics, Sacred Scripture, and the Sentences of Peter Lombard. (Lombard was the premier theologian of the 12th century, and his “sentences” comprised a theology primer.) His parents finally relented, and at the age of 17 he was put under the tutelage of St. Albert the Great, the pride of the Dominican intelligentsia. Albert was the first to bridge the gap between alchemy and chemistry, from superstition to science. Thomas learned much from his academic master.

Thomas Aquinas is best known for two things:

His monumental theological and philosophical work, the Summa Theologica, covers almost every principal doctrine and dogma of his era. What St. Augustine and St. Bonaventure were able to do with the philosophy of Plato regarding Catholic Theology, St. Thomas Aquinas was able to do with Aristotle. (Philosophy has been called the handmaiden of theology because you need a solid philosophical foundation in order to understand the theological teachings connected to it.) The Catechism of the Catholic Church has numerous references to the Summa some 800 years later.

He composed hymns and prayers for Corpus Christi at the request of the pope, and he wrote Pange Lingua, Adoro te Devote, O Salutaris Hostia, and Tantum Ergo, which is often sung at Benediction. (See Chapter 16 for more on Benediction.)

He died while on the way to the Second Council of Lyons, where he was to appear as a peritus (expert). For more on St. Thomas Aquinas, see Chapters 3, 8, 9, 14, and Appendix A.

St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556)

Son of Don Beltrán Yañez de Oñez y Loyola and Marina Saenz de Lieona y Balda, Ignatius was born in 1491 and grew up to become a soldier. Military life suited him. He liked the regimen and discipline, and it gave him a sense of accomplishment because he was serving and defending the homeland and his monarch.

When a cannon ball injury to his leg compelled him to a long recuperation, he asked for reading materials to pass the time. The only thing available was a book on the lives of the saints. One day, he realized that instead of fighting for earthly kings and princes, he should become a Soldier of Christ and win souls away from the real enemy, the devil, and bring them back to the true King of Kings, Almighty God. He saw how the military discipline could be used to discipline the soul rather than just the body.

Ignatius developed a method of spirituality, Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, which focused on using the fullest amount of imagination during meditation. People were asked to pick a scene from the Bible and imagine they weren’t spectators, like in the audience of a play, but actual bystanders or participants in the biblical scene being contemplated.

For example, say you’re at the wedding feast of Cana (John 2:1–11). You feel a cool breeze blow across the left side of your face. You can smell the aroma of lamb being roasted in an open pit. The sun is out, and people are laughing and talking as they often do at wedding receptions. Then you hear the words being whispered around the table, “They have no wine,” just as you take a sip from your goblet and realize that it’s almost empty. Now, try to imagine the rest of the story on your own.

This use of the imagination helped the faithful appreciate the reality of the scriptural text. It also enabled them to transcend what they merely knew cognitively from memory and to use previous sense experiences not only to pretend but also to learn and experience the event.

Ignatius was ordained a priest at the age of 46, so he’s often invoked as the Patron Saint of Delayed or Second Career Vocations. In 1534, he formed the Society of Jesus, which would later be known as the Jesuits. Feared, admired, scorned, and often misunderstood, the Jesuits became a powerful and influential religious community for two reasons:

Their fourth vow of total obedience to the Roman pontiff: Other orders took the vow of obedience, but sometimes loyalty to the order came before obedience to the hierarchy. Ignatius preferred that his priests be at the total disposal of the pope to go wherever he sent them and to do whatever task he gave them.

Their professional expertise and background: Most Jesuits have one or more doctorates or the equivalent and study more before ordination as opposed to their diocesan or other religious community colleagues.

St. Bernadette Soubirous (1844–1879)

Bernadette was born on January 7, 1844, in Lourdes, France. Her parents, Francis and Louise Soubirous, were extremely poor but loved their daughter very much. She suffered from severe asthma, which kept her behind a few years in school.

The faithful believe that on February 11, 1858, she saw an apparition of Mary in a cave on the banks of the Gave River near Lourdes. The woman didn’t identify herself but asked Bernadette to faithfully come to the grotto and pray the rosary for the conversion of sinners so that they might turn away from their evil ways and come back to God.

Initially, the townsfolk thought Bernadette was insane. But on February 25, the woman asked Bernadette to dig in the soil until a spring of water would appear. She did as the woman asked, and the spring did appear. It’s believed that the water had immediate miraculous properties, and the skeptic populace of Lourdes flocked to the grotto to get some of this healing water. The blind could see, the lame could walk, the deaf could hear, the sick regained their health, and so on.

The faithful believe that on March 25, 1858, the woman announced to Bernadette that she was the Immaculate Conception. Interestingly, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception had been defined by Pope Pius IX only four years earlier (1854), and scholars maintain that an intellectually challenged peasant girl from the rinky-dink town of Lourdes couldn’t have heard about such a term, let alone have understood it.

The public authorities, which were anti-Catholic and anti-clerical, closed the grotto only to have the Emperor Louis Napoleon III order it reopened. His son had taken ill and his wife, the Empress Eugenie of France, obtained some Lourdes water, which the faithful believe cured his imperial royal highness.

Bernadette didn’t live a normal life after that, and in 1866 she entered the convent of the Sisters of Notre Dame in Nevers where she spent the rest of her short life. Thirteen years later, she was found to have an illness similar to tuberculosis, which produced excruciating and chronic pain, but she said the healing waters of Lourdes were not for her.

She died in 1879, but today, her body remains incorrupt (free of decay despite the lack of embalming or mummification treatments). The Shrine at Lourdes is an international place of prayer, and some miraculous healings are still being attributed to those waters from the grotto where Catholics believe Mary appeared to Bernadette.

St. Thérèse of Lisieux (1873–1897)

Francoise-Marie Thérèse, the youngest of five daughters, was born on January 2, 1873. When she was four, her mother died and left her father with five girls to raise on his own. Two of her older sisters joined the Carmelite order of nuns, and Thérèse wanted to join them when she was just 14 years old. The order normally made girls wait until they were 16 before entering the convent or monastery, but Thérèse was adamant. She accompanied her father to a general papal audience of His Holiness Pope Leo XIII and surprised everyone by throwing herself before the pontiff, begging to become a Carmelite. The wise pope replied, “If the good God wills, you will enter.” When she returned home, the local bishop allowed her to enter early. On April 9, 1888, at the age of 15, Thérèse entered the Carmelite monastery of Lisieux and joined her two sisters. On September 8, 1890, she took her final vows. She showed remarkable spiritual insights for someone so young, but it was due to her childlike (not childish) relationship with Jesus. Her superiors asked her to keep memoirs of her thoughts and experiences.

At the age of 23, she coughed up blood and was diagnosed with tuberculosis. She lived only one more year, and it was filled with intense physical suffering. Yet it’s said that she did so lovingly, to join Jesus Christ on the cross. She offered up her pain and suffering for souls that might be lost, so they could come back to God. Her little way consisted of, in her own words, “doing little things often, doing them well, and doing them with love.” She died on September 30, 1897.

Despite the fact that she lived such a short and cloistered life, having never left her monastery after she took her vows, she was later named Patroness of the Foreign Missions. The reason was that during World War I, many soldiers who were wounded in battle and recuperating in hospitals — as well as those who were in the trenches awaiting their possible death — read her autobiography, and it changed their hearts. Many who had grown cold or lukewarm in their Catholic faith wanted to imitate St. Thérèse of Lisieux, who was also known as the Little Flower, and become a little child of God.

St. Pio of Pietrelcina (1887–1968)

Padre Pio was born on May 25, 1887, in Pietrelcina, Italy. Because he showed evidence of having a priestly vocation early in his youth, his father went to the United States to make enough money so Francesco (his baptismal name) could attend school and seminary. At the age of 15, he took the vows and habit of the Friars Minor Capuchin and assumed the name of Pio in honor of Pope St. Pius V, patron of his hometown. On August 10, 1910, he was ordained a priest. Catholics believe that less than a month later, on September 7, he received the stigmata, just like St. Francis of Assisi.

During World War I, he served as a chaplain in the Italian Medical Corps. After the war, news spread about his stigmata, which stirred up some jealous enemies. Because of false accusations that were sent to Rome, he was suspended in 1931 from saying public Mass or from hearing confessions. Two years later, Pope Pius XI reversed the suspension and said, “I have not been badly disposed toward Padre Pio, but I have been badly informed.”

In 1940, he convinced three physicians to come to San Giovanni Rotundo to help him erect a hospital, Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza (House for the Relief of Suffering). It took until 1956 to finally build the hospital due to World War II and slow donations, but it eventually came to pass.

Catholics believe that he was able to read souls, meaning that when people came to him for confession, he could immediately tell if they were lying, holding back sins, or truly repentant. One man reportedly came in and confessed only that he was unkind from time to time, and Padre Pio interjected, “Don’t forget when you were unkind to Jesus by missing Mass three times this month, either.”

He became so well loved all over the region and indeed all over the world that three days after his death on September 23, 1968, more than 100,000 people gathered at San Giovanni Rotundo to pray for his departed soul.