130 Fun Facts About Saint

Which country is Saint Patrick the primary patron saint of?

Ireland has Patrick, the fifth-century missionary bishop, as its primary patron saint; Brigid of Kildare and Columba are the island's other two patrons.

By his own account, how did the teenage Patrick first arrive on the island he evangelised?

'As a slave taken by pirates' is his own account: raiders seized him at about sixteen, and he spent six years herding animals before escaping and later returning as a bishop.

Legend says Patrick used which plant to explain the Trinity?

The shamrock, three leaflets on one stem, is the plant legend says Patrick held up to illustrate the Trinity; the story is not recorded in writing until the 18th century.

Saint Nicholas, whose gift-giving legend became Santa Claus, was bishop of which city?

Myra, in Lycia on the coast of modern Turkey, was Nicholas's see; in 1087 Italian sailors carried his relics off to Bari, where they remain in a basilica.

What did Saint Nicholas famously drop through a poor man's window on three nights?

Sacks of gold coins, one on each of three nights, paid the dowries so the impoverished man's three daughters would not be forced into prostitution.

Saint Valentine's feast day has been observed on 14 February since at least which century?

The eighth century is when the Gelasian Sacramentary, an early Roman service book, already records a 14 February feast for a martyr named Valentine buried on the Via Flaminia.

Besides lovers, Saint Valentine is patron of epilepsy sufferers and which trade?

Beekeepers count Valentine among their patrons, alongside epileptics and plague sufferers; a flower-crowned skull said to be his is displayed in Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Rome.

On which Tuscan mountain did Francis of Assisi report receiving the stigmata in 1224?

La Verna, a mountain retreat in Tuscany given to Francis by a local count, is where he reported receiving the stigmata in September 1224, two years before his death.

Francis of Assisi is credited with staging the first what, in 1223?

Live nativity scene: at Greccio in 1223 Francis set up a manger with a real ox and ass so villagers could picture Bethlehem, the origin of the Christmas crib tradition.

Francis of Assisi's feast day, 4 October, is also observed as what?

World Animal Day falls on 4 October precisely because it is the feast of Francis, patron of animals; many churches hold pet blessings that day.

Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in 1431 at roughly what age?

Nineteen: born around 1412 at Domrémy, she was burned in Rouen on 30 May 1431 after a trial whose charges included heresy and wearing men's clothes.

Which pope canonised Joan of Arc?

Benedict XV canonised Joan of Arc on 16 May 1920 in Rome, nearly five centuries after her death; she was declared a patron of France in 1922.

Saint George is said to have been a soldier in which emperor's guard?

Diocletian's: tradition makes George an officer in that emperor's guard, beheaded at Nicomedia in 303 for refusing to renounce his faith; the dragon story came centuries later.

Saint George's Day falls on which date?

23 April is Saint George's Day, the traditional date of his martyrdom in 303; England, Georgia, Portugal and Ethiopia all count him as a patron.

Saint Christopher, patron of travellers, legendarily carried whom across a river?

The child Jesus is the boy Christopher carries across a river in the legend; the child grows impossibly heavy because he bears the weight of the world, hence the name 'Christ-bearer'.

Anthony of Padua, invoked for lost objects, was born in which city?

Lisbon, where he was born Fernando Martins in 1195, is his birthplace; his fame for recovering lost things stems from a stolen psalter returned to him by a runaway novice.

What was Saint Peter's original name?

Simon was his given name; Jesus renamed him Cephas, Aramaic for rock, rendered in Greek as Petros, which became Peter.

Under which emperor was Saint Peter crucified in Rome?

Nero: tradition holds Peter was crucified head-down during that emperor's persecution after the fire of 64, on Vatican Hill where the basilica bearing his name later rose.

Mother Teresa founded which religious congregation in 1950?

The Missionaries of Charity, founded in Calcutta in 1950, began with a handful of sisters serving the poorest of the poor and grew into hundreds of houses worldwide.

Where was Mother Teresa born?

Skopje, then an Ottoman city and today the capital of North Macedonia, was her birthplace in 1910; born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, she was ethnically Albanian.

In what year was Mother Teresa canonised?

2016: Pope Francis canonised her in St Peter's Square on 4 September 2016, less than two decades after her death in 1997; she had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

Thomas Becket was murdered in 1170 in which building?

Canterbury Cathedral, where he was archbishop, was the scene: four knights loyal to Henry II cut him down near the north transept on 29 December 1170.

Saint Lucy, whose feast falls on 13 December, is patron of people with what?

Eye problems: Lucy is invoked against them because medieval accounts say her eyes were put out before her execution at Syracuse in 304; art shows her holding them on a dish.

Saint Andrew is traditionally shown on what shape of cross?

X-shaped: the crux decussata, on which tradition says Andrew was bound rather than nailed, became the saltire, the white diagonal cross on blue that is Scotland's flag.

Saint David is the patron saint of which country?

Wales has the sixth-century bishop David as its patron, with 1 March as his day; his best-known miracle raised the ground beneath him at Llanddewi Brefi so a crowd could hear him preach.

Catherine of Siena helped persuade which pope to move the papacy back from Avignon to Rome?

Gregory XI returned the papacy from Avignon to Rome in January 1377 after Catherine's letters and a visit urging him; she was named a Doctor of the Church in 1970.

Thomas Aquinas's best-known work, left unfinished at his death in 1274, is called what?

Summa Theologica, his systematic reconciliation of Aristotle with Christian teaching, was left unfinished when the Dominican friar stopped writing in December 1273 and died the next March.

Augustine of Hippo was baptised in Milan in 387 by which saint?

Ambrose, bishop of Milan, baptised Augustine at the Easter Vigil of 387, the year after the garden conversion described in the Confessions; Hippo Regius lies in modern Algeria.

Saint Jude is the Catholic patron of what?

Lost causes, or desperate situations, are Jude's patronage, a devotion that spread widely in the 20th century; in art he usually holds a club, the instrument of his martyrdom.

Saint Cecilia, whose feast is 22 November, is the patron of whom?

Musicians have Cecilia as patron because her legend says that as instruments played at her wedding she sang in her heart to God alone; her feast is 22 November.

Saint Sebastian survived being shot with arrows and was finally killed how?

Clubbed to death: after Irene nursed his arrow wounds he confronted the emperor over the persecutions, was beaten to death and thrown into a sewer; he is a patron of athletes.

Ignatius of Loyola turned to religion after a cannonball shattered his leg at which 1521 battle?

Pamplona, where a French cannonball shattered his leg during the 1521 siege, began his conversion: reading saints' lives while convalescing, he went on to found the Jesuits.

Ignatius of Loyola added which fourth vow for members of the Jesuits?

Obedience to the pope with regard to missions is the Jesuits' fourth vow, added to poverty, chastity and obedience; the Society's first vows were taken at Montmartre in Paris in 1534.

Thérèse of Lisieux, the 'Little Flower', died of tuberculosis at what age?

24: born in January 1873, she died of tuberculosis at the convent in Lisieux on 30 September 1897; her memoir Story of a Soul made her famous, and she was named a Doctor of the Church in 1997.

Bernadette Soubirous reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary in 1858 in which French town?

Lourdes, in the Pyrenean foothills, is where the fourteen-year-old saw the lady in the Massabielle grotto eighteen times in 1858; the bishop of Tarbes approved the apparitions in 1862.

Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr, was killed how?

Stoned to death outside Jerusalem, as Acts 7 recounts, with the young Saul looking on; Stephen was one of the first seven deacons, and his feast is 26 December.

Good King Wenceslas of the carol was a real ruler of which land?

Bohemia: Wenceslas was its duke in the tenth century, murdered by his brother Boleslaus; the carol's 'king' comes from the royal title conferred on him after his death.

Saint Blaise, whose throat blessing falls on 3 February, was a bishop and what else?

A physician before he became bishop of Sebaste in Armenia, Blaise is invoked against throat ailments after saving a boy choking on a fishbone; the iron combs of his torture made him patron of wool combers.

Saint Florian, patron of firefighters, was martyred how?

Drowned with a millstone round his neck in the River Enns in 304: the soldiers balked at burning him after he taunted them, so they threw him in.

When ordered to hand over the Church's treasures, Saint Lawrence presented what instead?

The city's poor and sick were paraded before the prefect as the Church's true treasure; the Roman deacon was martyred in 258, in legend roasted on a gridiron.

Isidore of Seville, sometimes called the patron saint of the internet, is famous for compiling what?

An encyclopedia, the Etymologiae in twenty books, preserved extracts from classical authors whose works were otherwise lost; that sweep of knowledge is why he was proposed as patron of the internet.

Carlo Acutis, canonised in 2025, was known for building a website cataloguing what?

Eucharistic miracles were the subject of the website the London-born teenager built before dying of leukaemia at fifteen in 2006; he was canonised in 2025.

Kateri Tekakwitha, canonised in 2012, was the first saint from which people?

Native Americans gained their first saint when the Mohawk 'Lily of the Mohawks' was canonised in 2012; smallpox killed her parents and brother and left her scarred.

Who was the first person born in what became the United States to be canonised?

Elizabeth Ann Seton, born in New York in 1774 and canonised in 1975, founded the Sisters of Charity of St Joseph's at Emmitsburg, Maryland, the first congregation of religious sisters begun in the United States.

Padre Pio, canonised in 2002, belonged to which order?

The Capuchins were his order; he bore the stigmata from 1918 for fifty years at the friary of San Giovanni Rotondo in Apulia, and was canonised in 2002.

Óscar Romero, canonised in 2018, was assassinated in 1980 while doing what?

Celebrating Mass in the chapel of a San Salvador hospital on 24 March 1980, the archbishop was shot dead by a gunman a day after calling on soldiers to stop the killings.

Roughly how many saints did Pope John Paul II canonise, more than his predecessors of five centuries combined?

483 saints in 51 ceremonies over his 26-year pontificate, plus 1,344 beatifications; he was himself canonised in 2014, nine years after his death.

Which step must a candidate pass to be venerated locally before full canonisation?

Beatification, which confers the title Blessed, permits public veneration in a diocese, region or religious order; canonisation then extends that veneration to the whole Church.

Where was Saint Patrick actually born?

Roman Britain was his birthplace, at a settlement he calls Bannavem Taburniae, around the end of the fourth century; never formally canonised, he is a saint by long-standing popular acclaim.

Which two Latin works, the main sources for his life, did Saint Patrick write?

'The Confessio and the Letter to the soldiers of Coroticus' are the only surviving writings securely attributed to him; the Letter denounces a warlord whose men killed and enslaved newly baptised converts.

A 14th-century legend says Saint Nicholas slapped which heretic at the Council of Nicaea?

Arius, whose denial of Christ's full divinity the council condemned, is the heretic Nicholas is said to have struck; the tale is first attested about a thousand years after the 325 council.

In the Catholic canonisation process, what title comes immediately before 'Blessed'?

The ladder runs Servant of God, Venerable, Blessed, Saint; each of the last two steps normally needs a miracle.

Which category of candidate can be beatified without a proven miracle?

Martyrs, those killed in hatred of the faith, are declared Blessed without a miracle once the martyrdom is recognised; confessors need one miracle for that step and ordinarily a second for canonisation.

The first undoubted papal canonisation, in 993, was of Udalric (Ulrich), bishop of which city?

Augsburg, in Bavaria, was Ulrich's see; Pope John XV proclaimed him a saint at a Lateran synod in 993, the first canonisation clearly decreed by a pope rather than by local acclaim.

How soon after a candidate's death may a cause for sainthood normally be opened?

'No sooner than five years' after death is the normal rule before a bishop may open a cause; popes can waive the wait, as happened for Mother Teresa, whose cause opened in 1999.

Which pope declared Francis of Assisi the patron saint of ecology on 29 November 1979?

John Paul II named Francis patron of those who promote ecology in the 1979 bull Inter Sanctos, early in his pontificate; in 2013 Jorge Bergoglio became the first pope to take the name Francis.

In the Golden Legend, in which city did Saint George slay the dragon?

Silene, in Libya is the Golden Legend's setting: the town fed sheep and then children to the dragon until George speared it and led it in on the princess's girdle; the tale is a medieval addition.

What happened to Saint Valentine's feast day in 1969?

'It was removed from the General Roman Calendar' in the 1969 revision because so little is reliably known about him; the feast may be kept in local calendars, and he remains a recognised saint.

When do the Eastern Orthodox churches celebrate All Saints?

The first Sunday after Pentecost is All Saints' Sunday in the Orthodox calendar, closing the Pentecost season by honouring all the saints; the Western fixed date is a separate tradition.

According to the traditional list, who is the patron saint of accountants and tax collectors?

Matthew, a tax collector at Capernaum before Jesus called him, is the traditional patron of accountants, bankers and tax collectors; his feast is 21 September.

Which saint, famous for reportedly levitating, is patron of astronauts and aviators?

Joseph of Cupertino, a 17th-century Italian friar whose ecstatic levitations were witnessed many times, earning him the nickname 'the flying saint', was named patron of aviators and later of astronauts.

Which saint is listed as patron of hairdressers?

Mary Magdalene, painted with long flowing hair and traditionally identified with the woman who dried Jesus's feet with her hair, is listed as patron of hairdressers and perfumers.

Thomas More, Yves and Genesius are patron saints of which profession?

Lawyers have all three as patrons: Thomas More, the lawyer-chancellor beheaded in 1535; Yves of Kermartin, a Breton judge famed for defending the poor; and Genesius of Arles, a notary martyred for refusing to record a persecution edict.

The Alpine rescue-dog breed is named for a mountain-pass hospice founded by which 11th-century monk?

Bernard of Menthon, an archdeacon of Aosta, founded the hospice on the Great St Bernard Pass around 1050; its dogs, led by the famed Barry, are credited with rescuing scores of travellers from the snow.

Which archangel is listed as patron of television workers?

Gabriel, the messenger who announced Christ's birth to Mary, was named patron of telecommunications workers by Pius XII in 1951, a patronage extended to radio and television; Michael looks after police officers.

On what date do Western Christians celebrate All Saints' Day?

November 1 is All Saints' Day in the Western churches, honouring all the saints known and unknown; the evening before is All Hallows' Eve, better known as Halloween, and All Souls' Day follows on the 2nd.

Which Roman building did Pope Boniface IV consecrate to Mary and all martyrs around 609?

The Pantheon, Hadrian's temple to all the gods, was consecrated by Boniface IV as the church of Santa Maria ad Martyres in May 609; the anniversary feast fell in spring, and the commemoration later moved to autumn.

Which emperor made All Saints' Day a holy day of obligation throughout the Frankish Empire in 835?

Louis the Pious, Charlemagne's son and successor as emperor, decreed in 835 that the feast be kept throughout the Frankish lands, reportedly at the urging of Pope Gregory IV.

What collective name is given to the three days of Halloween, All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day?

Allhallowtide, from 'hallow' meaning saint, spans 31 October to 2 November: All Hallows' Eve, All Hallows' Day and All Souls' Day, the Church's annual season for honouring the saints and praying for the dead.

What is the All Saints' and All Souls' observance called in the Philippines, where it is a public holiday?

Undás is the Filipino name for the start-of-November remembrance of the dead, when extended families travel home and the country takes public holidays for both All Saints' and All Souls' days.

What is the traditional All Saints' Day custom in countries such as Poland and France?

Visiting graves with flowers and candles is the custom: Polish cemeteries glow with lanterns on the night of All Saints, and the French lay pots of chrysanthemums on family tombs at Toussaint.

Benedict of Nursia wrote his famous Rule at which monastery in the mountains of central Italy?

Monte Cassino, the abbey he founded around 529 on a hill between Rome and Naples, is where Benedict wrote the Rule; he had earlier founded twelve communities at Subiaco, and Paul VI named him patron of Europe in 1964.

Martin of Tours is best remembered for cutting what in two to share with a beggar?

His cloak, sliced with his sword at the gate of Amiens to clothe a freezing beggar, is the scene that defines Martin; the Roman cavalryman, born in present-day Hungary, later became bishop of Tours.

Boniface, the English monk known as the 'Apostle to the Germans', was martyred in 754 where?

Frisia, at Dokkum near the North Sea coast, is where Boniface and some fifty companions were killed by pagans on 5 June 754; his remains were carried to the abbey he had founded at Fulda.

Brigid of Kildare's feast on 1 February was originally which pagan festival marking spring?

Imbolc, the Gaelic festival of early spring midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, was absorbed into Brigid's feast; weaving rush crosses is the day's best-known custom.

Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross founded which reformed religious order?

The Discalced Carmelites, the 'shoeless' reform begun by Teresa at Ávila in 1562 and joined by John of the Cross, were separated from the old order by papal decree in 1580; her Interior Castle imagines the soul as seven mansions.

Which pope commissioned Jerome's Latin translation of the Bible, later known as the Vulgate?

Damasus I, pope from 366 to 384, asked his secretary Jerome in 382 to revise the Latin Gospels; Jerome went on to translate the Old Testament from the Hebrew rather than the Greek Septuagint.

On which Hebridean island did Columba found his famous abbey around 563?

Iona, a small island off Mull, is where Columba and twelve companions landed in 563; the abbey they founded became the base for missions to the northern Picts and a burial place of Scottish kings.

Saint Agnes of Rome, martyred in 304 at about 12 or 13, is traditionally depicted with which animal?

A lamb, playing on the Latin agnus and symbolising her innocence, is Agnes's attribute in art; her skull is kept at Sant'Agnese in Agone on Piazza Navona in Rome.

Which Polish friar volunteered to die in place of a fellow prisoner at Auschwitz in 1941?

Maximilian Kolbe stepped forward in July 1941 to take the place of a condemned stranger, Franciszek Gajowniczek, and died in the starvation bunker after a lethal injection; he was canonised in 1982.

Which legendary creature first appears in a seventh-century Life of Saint Columba, who ordered it to retreat?

The Loch Ness Monster story begins with Adomnán's account of a 'water beast' that had mauled a swimmer in the River Ness. The saint made the sign of the cross and it fled.

Which nickname was given to the church lawyer who, from 1587, argued against declaring a candidate a saint?

Devil's advocate was the popular title for the Promoter of the Faith, an office created under Pope Sixtus V. His opponent, who argued for the candidate, was known as God's advocate.

Tradition says Saint Peter asked to be crucified in which way, feeling unworthy to die exactly as Jesus had?

Upside down is how the third-century writer Origen says he died, 'as he himself had desired to suffer'. An inverted cross is also called the Cross of Saint Peter.

Santa Claus gets his name from Sinterklaas, what 17th-century settlers called Saint Nicholas in which language?

Dutch colonists carried the Sinterklaas legend to New Amsterdam, today's New York. Washington Irving's 1809 History of New York then pictured him as a thick-bellied sailor with a pipe.

Which fierce beast did Francis of Assisi reportedly tame after it terrorised the Umbrian town of Gubbio?

A wolf that had turned from livestock to preying on people laid its paw in the saint's hand to seal a truce. In return, the townsfolk promised to feed it every day.

Simeon Stylites, a fifth-century Syrian ascetic, became famous for living for decades on top of what?

A pillar near Aleppo was his home, and visitors climbed a ladder to get within speaking distance. His imitators became known as stylites, after the Greek word for a column.

Venetian merchants reportedly hid which saint's body under pork to smuggle it out of Alexandria in 828?

Mark became the patron of Venice once the ship slipped through customs with its hidden cargo. The doge ordered a chapel to house the remains, the first St Mark's Basilica in Venice.

Which saint, also called Erasmus of Formia, gives his name to the eerie glow seen on ships' masts in storms?

Elmo is the patron saint of sailors, who often read the glow as a good omen. In fact the discharge can warn that a lightning strike is imminent.

Paul the Apostle was struck blind by a light from heaven while travelling to arrest Christians in which city?

Damascus was where his companions led him by the hand, sightless for three days, until a disciple named Ananias restored his vision. He had set out with orders to bring prisoners back for questioning.

Legend says Saint Patrick chased which creatures into the sea after they attacked him during a fast on a mountain?

Snakes never lived on the island after the Ice Age, so there were none to banish. The tale first appears in the late twelfth century, in the writings of Jocelyn of Furness.

Mother Teresa opened her first hospice in an abandoned Hindu temple in which city, her home for decades?

Calcutta officials helped her open the Kalighat Home for the Dying in 1952, free for the poor. Residents received the last rites of their own faith, whether Muslim, Hindu or Catholic.

Saint Joseph, the husband of Mary, is traditionally said to have earned his living in which trade?

Carpenter is the usual translation, though scholars note the Greek word tekton could mean any skilled craftsman in wood or metal. On his feast day, some dishes are topped with breadcrumbs to represent sawdust.

In Christian art, Saint Peter usually holds which objects, also seen on the coat of arms of Vatican City?

Keys recall the Gospel promise to give him 'the keys of the kingdom of heaven'. Popes, as his successors, adopted them as the symbol of their own authority.

Joan of Arc became known as the Maid of which French city after helping to lift its siege in 1429?

Orléans was freed just nine days after she arrived with a relief army, carrying her banner. She called herself simply 'la Pucelle', the Maiden; the city's name was attached to her in the sixteenth century.

Which 1516 book by Thomas More, later beheaded and canonised, gave English a word for an ideal society?

Utopia literally means 'no place' in Greek, a name More coined for his fictional island society in the New World. He wrote the book in Latin.

Which English king's quarrel with Thomas Becket ended with four of his knights killing Becket in 1170?

Henry II later travelled to the tomb and did public penance, declaring a rebellion against him to be divine punishment. The gesture helped restore his authority at a critical moment.

Tradition says Thomas the Apostle sailed in AD 52 to which country, where he was later killed with a spear?

India's Saint Thomas Christians trace their church to his landing on the Kerala coast. They hold that he was martyred twenty years later near modern Chennai.

Which apostle's reputed tomb in north-west Spain is the goal of pilgrims who walk the Camino?

James is said to rest at Santiago de Compostela, a name shortened from the Latin Sancti Iacobi, 'of Saint James'. He was the first of the twelve apostles to be martyred.

Juan Diego, canonised in 2002, is linked to which image of Mary said to have appeared on his tilma?

Our Lady of Guadalupe is said to have appeared to him four times in December 1531, three of them on the hill of Tepeyac. The garment now hangs in a basilica at the foot of that hill.

John the Baptist, said to have lived on locusts and wild honey, baptised Jesus in which river?

Jordan is where the Gospels place the event: as Jesus came up from the water, the heavens opened and the Spirit descended 'like a dove'. Eastern churches honour the baptiser as Saint John the Forerunner.

Which saint is honoured as the mother of the Virgin Mary, though the Bible's gospels never name her?

Anne and her husband Joachim first appear in an apocryphal gospel written around AD 150. Christian tradition therefore honours her as the grandmother of Jesus.

Which North African saint spent 17 years praying for the conversion of her wayward son, Augustine of Hippo?

Monica wept so much over him that a bishop told her 'the child of those tears shall never perish'. She followed her son across the sea to Italy, where she finally saw him become a Christian.

Saint Helena, credited by tradition with finding the True Cross in Jerusalem, was the mother of which Roman emperor?

Constantine named her Augusta in 324 and, the historian Eusebius says, gave her unlimited access to the imperial treasury. She is thought to have been born into the lower classes.

Tradition says Saint Veronica wiped the face of Jesus on the road to Calvary with what, leaving his image on it?

Her veil, handed back with the face imprinted on it, became a venerated relic. Some scholars think the saint's name grew out of the cloth's Latin label, vera icon, meaning 'true image'.

Catherine of Alexandria, who gave her name to a popular firework, was condemned to die on which device?

A spiked wheel was prepared for her, but in the legend it shattered at her touch. The emperor Maxentius then ordered her beheaded instead.

Saint Lawrence, later claimed as a patron by cooks, is traditionally said to have been martyred on what?

A gridiron set over hot coals is the traditional story, and he is usually shown holding one. Some historians doubt it, since the edict's order against clergy ordinarily meant beheading.

Which patron saint of Paris is said to have picked up his severed head and walked on, preaching as he went?

Denis was beheaded on the highest hill in Paris, and popular belief derives its name, Montmartre, from the Latin Mons Martyrum. Legend has him walking several miles before he fell.

Which apostle, said to have been flayed alive, holds his own skin in Michelangelo's Last Judgment?

Bartholomew grips the skin in one hand and the knife in the other. Most writers agree that the sagging face on the skin is the painter's own self-portrait.

Anthony of Padua, ignored by heretics in Rimini, is said to have preached instead to a crowd of which creatures?

Fish gathered at the water's edge to listen, the story goes. The townspeople, heretics included, then flocked to the shore to see the marvel.

Francisco and Jacinta Marto, shepherd children canonised in 2017, reported visions of Mary at which Portuguese town?

Fátima drew crowds from 1917, when the children described 'a Lady more brilliant than the Sun'. The brother and sister died aged ten and nine in the flu pandemic that began in 1918.

Francis Xavier, a co-founder of the Jesuits who sailed from Goa, led the first Christian mission to which country?

Japan was his goal when he left Goa in 1549 with three Japanese companions and presents for its 'king'. He died three years later on an island off the Chinese coast.

Which Castilian priest founded the Order of Preachers, whose friars are credited with popularising the rosary?

Dominic won written papal approval for his friars in December 1216, after travelling to Rome twice to ask for it. He is the patron saint of astronomers.

Which noblewoman left home on Palm Sunday 1212 to follow Francis of Assisi and founded an order of Poor Ladies?

Clare had her hair cropped and swapped her rich gown for a plain robe; relatives who came to fetch her gave up when they saw it. Her Rule is the first known to have been written by a woman.

The dried blood of Saint Januarius is said to turn liquid three times a year in which Italian city?

Naples has watched for the change since at least 1389, the first certain record of the blood melting. A local chronicle written seven years earlier describes his cult in detail but never mentions it.

Legend says Saint Ursula was massacred along with 11,000 virgin companions outside which city on the Rhine?

Cologne was under siege by the Huns in the legend, and their leader shot her with an arrow. The vast headcount may come from misreading an inscription to just eleven virgins.

Father Damien, a Belgian priest canonised in 2009, cared for people with leprosy on which Hawaiian island?

Molokai's isolated settlement was his parish from 1873. After 11 years of caring for its residents he contracted the disease himself, and he worked on until it killed him in 1889.

Junípero Serra, a Franciscan friar canonised in 2015, founded a chain of Spanish missions in which present-day US state?

California's chain of 21 Spanish missions began with the ones he set up, from San Diego northwards. His canonisation in Washington, D.C., was the first ever held on American soil.

Which immigrant nun, naturalised in 1909, became in 1946 the first United States citizen to be canonised?

Frances Cabrini had crossed the Atlantic from Italy to work among poor Italian immigrants in New York. The Vatican named her patron saint of immigrants in 1950.

John the Baptist was beheaded on the orders of which ruler, whose marriage to his brother's wife he had denounced?

Herod Antipas had divorced his own wife to marry Herodias. The historian Josephus also records the execution, and gives the name of Herodias's daughter as Salome.

In the Book of Revelation, which archangel does battle with Satan and casts him out of heaven?

Michael is sometimes shown holding a pair of scales as well, weighing the souls of the dead. Milton armed him with a sword from God's armoury in Paradise Lost.

Which word for a biography of a saint is also used as an insult for any uncritically flattering life story?

Hagiography joins the Greek words for 'holy' and 'writing'. Early examples often carried the Latin title vita, meaning 'life', and might add an account of the subject's martyrdom.

Which title do Catholics give to saints such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas for their contribution to theology?

Doctor of the Church uses the Latin word for 'teacher'. No woman held the title until 1970, when Teresa of Ávila and Catherine of Siena were added to the list.

In early medieval mosaics in Rome, a square halo instead of a round one signalled what about the person shown?

Still alive was the message: the square marked living popes and donors pictured beside round-haloed saints. A ninth-century writer called the shape 'the sign for a living person'.

In Catholic tradition, a first-class relic of a saint, the most prized kind, consists of what?

A piece of the body, such as a bone, a hair or blood, ranks first. Things the holy person owned or wore, like a rosary or a glove, count as second-class relics.

Which unflattering nickname did fellow students give the young Thomas Aquinas before his teacher Albertus defended him?

The Dumb Ox was simply quiet, which classmates took for slowness. Albertus predicted that this ox's bellowing would one day be heard throughout the world.

Boniface, the 'Apostle to the Germans', reportedly felled a sacred oak in Hesse dedicated to which pagan god?

Thor, known to the Germanic peoples as Donar, gave the tree its name. Wood from the oak was then reportedly used to build a church on the site.

Which German abbess, the 'Sibyl of the Rhine', left more surviving chants than any other medieval composer?

Hildegard of Bingen wrote both the words and the music, and also produced works on medicine and natural history. She even invented a language of her own.

Which German philosopher, born Jewish and later a Catholic nun, was murdered at Auschwitz in 1942 and canonised in 1998?

Edith Stein had been an assistant to the philosopher Edmund Husserl before taking the religious name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She is one of six patron saints of Europe.

Which saint, born Isabel Flores in 1586, became the first person born in the Americas to be canonised?

Rose of Lima was known for severe penance and for caring for the destitute through her own private efforts. She is a patron saint of embroidery and gardening.

The author of the Book of Revelation, traditionally held to be John the Apostle, says he was on which Aegean island?

Patmos appears in the book's opening chapter, and some historians think the writer had been exiled there under the emperor Domitian. He is also known as John the Divine.