Community of Saints: Facts about Saints

Just a Few Facts

Saint Patrick was born in Britain, not in Ireland. He was captured by Irish pirates just before his 16^th birthday and subsequently taken to the Emerald Isle, where he was sold as a slave to the Druid tribal chieftain Miliuc and became a herder. At 22, he escaped enslavement and, eventually making his way back to England, began studying for the priesthood. Yet, Ireland beckoned, and one night Patrick dreamed of receiving a letter marked with the words “The Voice of the Irish” — the voice that begged he return; thereafter, against his distraught parents’ wishes, Patrick went back to the island nation, evangelizing throughout the country. His efforts to convert the Druids to Christianity met with considerable opposition, though Patrick somehow survived numerous attempts to poison, re-enslave, torture, imprison, or kill him.

St. Thomas Aquinas once insulted a nun, telling her she had ugly feet.

St. Luke is the patron saint of physicians and artists.

The gruesome murder in 1170 and subsequent canonization in 1173 of St. Thomas a Becket, who is venerated in the Anglican Communion, was the subject of a 2021 exhibition at the British Museum in London. Eyewitness accounts, illuminated manuscripts containing scenes from Becket’s martyrdom, jewelry, and sacred reliquaries were part of the exhibition.

St. Josephine Bakhita was born in the Sudanese region of Darfur and is the patron saint of human trafficking survivors. Kidnapped by Arab slave traders in 1877, she was bought, sold, and given away numerous times, and her body bore some 114 scars from abuse. Italy’s vice consul, Callisto Legani, to whom Bakhita ultimately was sold in 1883, took her with him when he returned to Italy and soon after arrival gave her as a “gift” to another family. Later, the family had to conduct business in Sudan and placed her in temporary custody of the Canossian Sisters in Venice; during her time with the sisters, Bakhita learned about God and felt called to follow Christ. Refusing to return to her owners, she became the subject of a court case in Italy that declared that slavery had been outlawed before Bakhita was born. Thus declared free, she decided to remain with the sisters and was both baptized and confirmed on the same day in 1890. She received the sacraments from the Cardinal Patriarch of Venice, who later became Pope Pius X. Bakhita was canonized by St. John Paul II in 2000.

Elizabeth Ann Seaton was the first U.S.-born citizen to be given the title of “Saint.” An educator, she founded America’s parochial school system. Canonized in 1975 by Pope Paul VI, Mother Seaton, as she was known, is entombed in Emmitsburg, Maryland, in the Basilica at the National Shrine bearing her name.

Together with 11 Anglicans and 12 other Catholics, St. Charles Lwanga of Uganda was martyred in 1886, age 26, after refusing to renounce Christianity. He is the patron saint of African Catholic Youth Action.

Martin Luther King Jr., born Michael Luther King Jr. was just 15 when he enrolled at Morehouse College, his father’s and maternal grandfather’s alma mater. King is the subject of voluminous FBI records, including audio surveillance.

Thomas Merton’s autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, sold more than one million copies and was translated into more than 15 languages. Enormously prolific, Merton published scores of articles, more than 60 other books, and hundreds of poems. His political writings were deemed “unbecoming” of a monk (he belonged to the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, or Trappists).

Sadhu Sundar Singh of India, born into a Sikh family, claimed to have seen Jesus in a vision and subsequently was baptized in an English church. A Christian missionary who had no use for church authority and conventional church rules, he traveled to Ceylon, Australia, Israel, Malaysia, Japan, China, Tibet, Peru, Germany, and other countries in Western Europe. Known as “the apostle with the bleeding feet,” because he walked everywhere for long periods, he was celibate, owned no possessions, and lived on others’ charity. (Note: “Sadhu” means religious ascetic or holy man who renounces worldly life.)

Frederick Buechner published in 1980 a Pulitzer-nominated novel, Godric, about St. Godric of Finchale. At the time of his death in 2022, he had published 39 books, including a memoir that had been translated into 27 languages.

Fannie Lou Hamer, a voting and civil rights activist who helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, ran for Congress in 1964, four years before Shirley Chisholm.

Reinhold Niebuhr, author of the famous “Serenity” prayer and approximately one thousand books, articles, reviews, editorials, sermons, and prayers, was known as “America’s theologian.” An adherent to the concept of original sin, he preached and lectured widely, and counted Eleanor Roosevelt, Erik Erikson, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., George Kennan, and Hubert Humphrey among his friends. Lyndon Johnson awarded him in 1964 the President’s Medal for Freedom.

As a child, Theodore Roosevelt witnessed the New York City funeral procession of Abraham Lincoln. Deemed “Father of the Modern U.S. Navy,” the 26^th president received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for his global peacemaking efforts.

Jean-Paul Sartre declined to accept the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded him in 1964. In addition to philosophical works (especially those on existentialism), the French philosopher wrote plays, novels, and short stories, as well as literary criticism.

John Buscema Francis, St. Francis of Assisi, was the star of the Marvel comic titled “Francis, Brother of the Universe” (1980). At his birthplace in Italy, an entire bookstore is devoted to him. Through July 2023, the exhibition “St. Francis of Assisi,” at London’s National Gallery, showcased the work of artists for whom the saint, canonized two years after his death in 1228, became a deeply inspirational figure. In addition to a piece of sackcloth said to have been worn by Francis, the exhibition included various relics, such as the ivory horn Francis received from a Muslim sultan in 1219 as a gesture of cordial interfaith relations.

References

“Saints and Commemorations of the Episcopal Church”
“So, are there unique Episcopal saints or not?”

St. Patrick
History.com
Biography.com

St. Thomas Aquinas
Catholic.org
Stanford.edu

St. Luke
Catholic.org

Saint Thomas a Becket
Catholic.org
CatholicNewsAgency.com

St. Josephine Bakhita
SetonShrine.org
Catholic.org

Elizabeth Ann Seaton
SetonShrine.org

Martin Luther King Jr.
NobelPrize.org
NPS.gov
TheKingCenter.org
Stanford.edu

Thomas Merton
Merton.org

Sadhu Sundar Singh
CCEL.org

Frederick Buechner
FrederickBuechner.com