A Great Cloud of Witnesses
The Saints
They are not distant. They are family who have gone ahead, and they pray for us still.
To ask a saint to pray for us is no different in kind from asking a friend to pray for us — except that these friends are already home, and see the face of God. Each one below lived a real life, in a real place, with real fears; and each is honored by the Church for having let God finish the work He began in them.
Choose a saint to read their life and to pray with them. Every prayer on their page opens large and clear, so it can be read aloud by one voice or by the whole family together.
St. Jude Thaddeus
Patron of Hopeless Causes
The apostle whose name was long forgotten because it was shared with a traitor, now invoked the world over when every other hope has failed.
- Feast
- October 28 (with St. Simon)
St. Michael the Archangel
Prince of the Heavenly Host
The great defender of God's people and commander of the armies of heaven, whose name is itself a question no enemy can answer: Who is like God?
- Feast
- September 29 (Michaelmas)
The Blessed Virgin Mary
Mother of God, Queen of the Most Holy Rosary
The Mother of Our Lord and the first of all disciples, whose consent at Nazareth opened the door of salvation — and to whom the whole Rosary is entrusted.
- Feast
- January 1 (Mary, Mother of God) · October 7 (Our Lady of the Rosary)
St. Joseph
Patron of the Universal Church, Terror of Demons
The silent guardian of the Holy Family — a working man who is never once recorded as having spoken, and who protected the Child entrusted to him without a word.
- Feast
- March 19 (Solemnity) · May 1 (St. Joseph the Worker)
St. Peter
Prince of the Apostles, First Pope
The fisherman who was given a new name and the keys of the kingdom, who denied his Lord three times and was forgiven three times over.
- Feast
- June 29 (with St. Paul)
St. Andrew
The First-Called, Brother of St. Peter
The fisherman who heard the Baptist point to the Lamb of God, followed Him that same day, and then went to find his brother Simon — the first apostle called, and the one who brought Peter to Christ.
- Feast
- November 30 (St. Andrew's Day)
St. John the Evangelist
The Beloved Disciple
The disciple who leaned on the Lord's breast at the Supper, stood beneath the Cross when the others had fled, and was given the Mother of God as his own.
- Feast
- December 27
St. Anthony of Padua
Hammer of Heretics, Finder of Lost Things
A Franciscan preacher of such power that crowds filled the fields to hear him — and the saint half the world still calls upon over a mislaid set of keys.
- Feast
- June 13
St. Francis of Assisi
The Little Poor Man, Founder of the Friars Minor
The merchant's son who stripped himself of everything to marry Lady Poverty, rebuilt the Church by living the Gospel, and bore the wounds of Christ in his own flesh.
- Feast
- October 4
St. Thérèse of Lisieux
The Little Flower, Doctor of the Church
A Carmelite who died at twenty-four having done nothing the world would notice, and who taught the whole Church that holiness is reached by very small things done with great love.
- Feast
- October 1
St. Patrick
Apostle of Ireland
Carried off as a slave at sixteen, he escaped — and then went back of his own free will to bring the faith to the people who had taken him.
- Feast
- March 17
St. Dominic
Founder of the Order of Preachers
The preacher to whom tradition says Our Lady herself entrusted the Rosary — a man who sold his books to feed the starving and founded an order to bring light where there was error.
- Feast
- August 8
St. Augustine of Hippo
Doctor of Grace
The brilliant, restless sinner whose mother prayed for him for seventeen years — and whose conversion gave the Church her greatest teacher after the apostles.
- Feast
- August 28
St. Thomas Aquinas
The Angelic Doctor
His family locked him in a tower for a year to break his vocation. He would not be broken — and became the greatest teacher the Church has ever produced.
- Feast
- January 28
St. Catherine of Siena
Doctor of the Church
The twenty-fourth child of a Sienese dyer, who could not read as a girl — yet lectured popes, carried the wounds of Christ, and talked the papacy itself back to Rome.
- Feast
- April 29
St. Teresa of Ávila
Doctor of Prayer
A witty, worldly Spanish nun who at nearly forty finally surrendered to God — then reformed an entire religious order and taught the whole Church how to pray.
- Feast
- October 15
St. Joan of Arc
The Maid of Orléans
A seventeen-year-old farm girl who heard the voices of saints, led armies, crowned a king — and answered her judges so well that her trial became her glory.
- Feast
- May 30
St. Bernadette Soubirous
Visionary of Lourdes
The poorest girl in Lourdes, asthmatic and unschooled, to whom Our Lady appeared eighteen times — and who kept the secret of heaven with unshakable simplicity.
- Feast
- April 16
St. Pio of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio)
Bearer of the Wounds of Christ
A Capuchin friar who carried the visible wounds of Christ for fifty years, heard confessions twelve hours a day, and told an anxious world: pray, hope, and don't worry.
- Feast
- September 23
St. John Paul II
Pope of the Rosary
He lost his whole family by twenty-one, worked under the Nazis, resisted the Communists, survived an assassin's bullets — and gave the Rosary its first new mysteries in centuries.
- Feast
- October 22
St. Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa)
Saint of the Gutters
She left a comfortable convent to live among the dying in the slums of Calcutta — and carried on for fifty years through an interior darkness no one suspected until after her death.
- Feast
- September 5