Now that the saint database has launched, I’ve encountered people interested in finding what saints are patrons of what things. This led me to start searching on the internet and I found that patrons are not always official. In fact, patronage is almost always determined by what canonists like to call “popular acclamation.” That is, people in the Church say something enough that it becomes accepted as correct, even though the Church has made no official statement about it.

So from what I can tell there are three types of patrons:
1.) Unofficial patrons of occupations, activities and illnesses
2.) Official patrons of churches and other official organizations
3.) Official patrons proclaimed by the Pope

Lists of Patron Saints
Here’s some lists of Patron Saints from Wikipedia:
Patron Saints of Occupations and Activities
Patron Saints of Illnesses and Dangers
Patron Saints of Places
Patronages of Blessed Virgin Mary
And the Catholic Encyclopedia:
“Patron Saints” in Catholic Encyclopedia

So that led me to ask, “Who made Wikipedia the arbiter of truth in Patron Saints?” The answer: nobody. Since patronage is usually done by popular acclamation instead of by the official organs of the magisterium it’s anybody’s guess. Does Wikipedia get a vote in the whole popular acclamation thing? I don’t think so.

Well, are there any official patrons? Yes. For example, every Catholic place (church, monastery, college, etc.) named after a saint automatically gets the saint as an official patron. A few saints are officially proclaimed patrons of particular countries or other entities by the Pope himself. The Catholic Encyclopedia chronicles a few:

• St. Joseph was declared patron of the universal Church by Pius X on 8 December, 1870. Leo XIII during the course of his pontificate announced the following patrons: St. Thomas Aquinas, patron of all universities, colleges, and schools (4 August, 1880); St. Vincent, patron of all charitable societies (1 May, 1885); St. Camillus of Lellis, patron of the sick and of those who attend on them (22 June, 1886); the patronal feast of Our Lady of the Congo to be the Assumption (21 July, 1891); St. Bridget, patroness of Sweden (1 October, 1861); the Holy Family, the model and help of all Christian families (14 June, 1892); St. Peter Claver, special patron of missions to the negroes (1896); St. Paschal Baylon, patron of Eucharistic congresses and all Eucharistic societies (28 November, 1897). On 25 May, 1899, he dedicated the world to the Sacred Heart, as Prince and Lord of all, Catholics and non-Catholics, Christians and non-Christians. Lourdes was dedicated to our Lady of the Rosary (8 September, 1901). Pius X declared St. Francis Xavier patron of the Propagation of the Faith (25 March, 1904).

But you’re probably thinking, like I am, ok so where’s the real list. I mean, are all patrons of various diseases and occupations just unofficial? Well, let’s parse the above list carefully:

Pope-Proclaimed Patron Saints

• St Joseph
• St. Thomas Aquinas
• St. Vincent (de Paul?)
• St. Camillus of Lellis
• St. Bridget of Sweden
• St. Peter Claver
• St. Paschal Baylon
• St. Francis Xavier

Other Pope-Proclaimed Patronages

• Sacred Heart, as Prince and Lord of all, Catholics and non-Catholics, Christians and non-Christians
• the patronal feast of Our Lady of the Congo to be the Assumption
• Lourdes was dedicated to our Lady of the Rosary

I’ve been scouring Canon Law and the internet for more information that will hone in on our question, but haven’t found much. Let me know if you can find an official list of patron saints. While all the unofficial patronage things are great fun, I want to begin with the official list and then move out in a wider circle, noting the origin (and authority) of each patronage. My gut feeling is that the vast majority of patronages are unofficial and even arbitrary. Let me know what you think.

Edit 6/25/2013: Updated info at this post.

Okay, my friends, the database of Catholic saints which I have been working on and telling you about is finally being launched. (Hold onto your hats!) Here’s the URL: http://www.ecatholichub.net/study/saints. Click on “Saint A-Z” to see searchable javascript database. Like I told you before, you can search by multiple criteria for anyone listed in the Roman Martyrology–a saint or a blessed. Take a look and tell me what you think. This is a totally unique resource on the web and I think it promises to be a very useful one.

EDIT 6/25/2013: Updated info at this post.

On October 1, the database of Catholic saints and blesseds which I have been constructing will be launched into cyberspace by ecatholichub.net. I invite you to take a look at it and let me know what you think once it gets up on the web. The database is based on the data in the 2004 Roman Martyrology which I explained in a previous post. What makes it unique and special as far as online saint databases go, is its comprehensive scope. It doesn’t leave out saints or add people who are not recognized by the Catholic Church. There are a few other saint databases online and each one has its merits and problems. But I think this new one at ecatholichub.net will really take the cake. It’s more of a reference tool, I suppose, but it provides data that no one else is providing. In that sense, I think it will be very useful for finding saints that are less well known. Right now, we’ve got 6,882 entries. Now there are still a handfull of double entries that I haven’t deleted yet. And there are some entries which include martyr groups or several people for whatever reason. This can result in double entry (when each member of the group is also listed separately) or it can result in masking the total number (for example, if there are 100 martyrs in a group, but we only have the names of three of them).

The most challenging part of putting the database together was translating Latin proper nouns which describe diocesan sees over which a saint bishop ruled or locations where martyrs were put to death. I had piles of Latin dictionaries and word lists all over my desk and I was mining the depths of the resources at Catholic University’s library trying to find various words. I got the vast majority of difficult terms and proper nouns from Latin into English, but there are still a few I left untranslated because I couldn’t find them. Hopefully, this will not bar people from figuring out who these saints are or confusing them with one another.

One of the coolest features about the database is the ability to search with multiple criteria. You can use any combination of fields to search for saints by name, title, feast day, year of death, etc. I think this should be useful for finding all saints with the name “Odo” or all saints remembers on August 24th and such like.

I really struggled over whether to uniformly translate saint names into English or vary it up a little based on common usage. For example, St. Teresa of Avila is usually spelled “Teresa” in English, but St. Therese of Lisieux is another story. Both appear as “Teresa” in Latin. Then of course, there are different spellings of Anne, Ann, Anna, Hannah and then Mary, Maria, Marie, etc. It goes on. Some saints have a Latinized “-us” on the end like “Bernardus.” In most cases, I chopped off the “-us.” The reason this is such a struggle is that many people are named after saints and take great pride in the spelling of their names because names are such an important part of our identity and self-understanding. But I judged that in the interest of saint-searchers, uniformity was the best route. I listed many saints with alternative names in the Biography field, so if people are used to calling a saint by a certain spelling or title, it still can usually be found.

I’m hoping that the database will grow over time and new saints and blesseds will keep being added. If it goes in the right direction, we may be able to set it up to take user-generated content like pictures and biographical information. Like I said, I think it will be very useful to a lot of people and it really is a one-of-a-kind thing on the Internet. Once the link is up, I’ll provide it for you here and ya’ll can have a look for yourselves.

EDIT 6/25/2013: Updated info at this post.

I’ve been working on a saint database for ecatholichub.net, creating a saint database that promises to be the most comprehensive, complete and well-organized saint database on the internet.

To do this, I’ve been basing the database on the Roman Martyrology. The Roman Martyrology is the Church’s official list of saints. For each day, the Martyrology lists usually about ten to twenty saints with a little phrase about where they lived, who they were or where they were martyred. Not every saint in the martyrology is a martyr. But every saint that has been officially canonized or beatified is. The process for canonization was originally set up by Pope Alexander III in 1170. Since then the process has been modified a bit, but the pope maintains the right to name saints. Before 1170, local bishops would name saints based on their lives or popular devotion.

Canonization
I’ll explain the Martyrology in a bit, but first you need to know a little about how people become saints. When a holy person dies or is killed for the sake of Christ, he or she might be named a saint by the pope. There is a 5-year waiting period after the person’s death before the process can begin. Sometimes this waiting period is lifted by the pope–as in the cases of Mother Teresa and John Paul II. If people are pushing for the person to be canonized and the Church elects to begin the process, the holy person is initially called “Venerable” or “The Servant of God.” The process cannot begin until the Church does a basic verification that the holy person in question lived a holy life and was a professing Christian.

Then there is a waiting period where people across the world pray to the holy person, asking his or her intercession for various things. This is not an act of worship, but it is a prayer. That is, Catholics don’t worship saints, but they do pray to them, asking them to pray for us. It’s like asking a friend to pray for you. Ok, so if a request is granted through the intercession of the saint–usually these are medical miracles–then the “Servant of God” can be beatified. The Congregation for the Causes of Saints (part of the Roman Curia) is responsible for reviewing cases and approving miracles. The Congregation verifies the occurrence of a miracle using evidence and witnesses. Once a miracle is approved by the Congregation and the Pope, then the person is beatified. A beatification is an event, so the person is not officially “Blessed” until after the beatification event. After the event, they carry the name “Blessed” or “Bl.” for short.

But you must be thinking, so what’s a “blessed”? Is that like a junior saint? Well, in fact, you’d be correct about that. The Church permits people to pray to Blesseds and ask their intercession. Their names are entered in the Roman Martyrology and their feast days actually get celebrated by their religious order or by their local Church. But their feast days are not celebrated in the Church universal.

People continue praying to the Blessed person and if another miracle is granted, then their case or “cause” is resubmitted to the Congregation. If the miracle is approved, then the Blessed is then canonized a “Saint.” And yes, canonization is an event too, so the person isn’t officially a saint until after the event. Then they get the little “St.” in front of their name. Oh yeah, and canonizations are technically infallible pronouncements–they can’t be revoked.

So what’s the Roman Martyrology?
The Roman Martyrology is where the names of all these people go. It’s an official list. Each saint and blessed is assigned a day. Since there’s about 6,500 saints and blesseds, each day contains several saints, about 10-20 as I said above. The entries in the Martyrology are meant to be read liturgically, but few places actually practice that right now.
The current edition of the Martyrology was published in 2004. It is only in Latin for now. But since I know a little Latin, I’ve been working on translating the index and turning it into a saint database. It doesn’t have a whole ton of information about each person, but enough to organize it. I hope we get an official translation sometime soon.

Past editions of the Martyrology have often been incomplete or kind of haphazard. Fortunately, John Paul II got serious work going on a well-researched, comprehensive one and they did quite a job. The first edition came out in 2001, but it had a lot of errors and problems, so they reworked it and republished in 2004. There were previous editions in 1946 and 1962.

Now technically a “martyrology” is a list of martyrs, so a whole lot of martyrologies were floating around the early Church. Fortunately, Rome saw to it, that these lists were verified in codified, so we’re not all using different or inaccurate lists. Some of the lists are very ancient, for example, from inscriptions in the Roman catacombs.

Well, that’s the Martyrology. Oh, and if you want to buy a copy and have $150 to spare, look here at the Vatican Bookstore, yep, it’s the official one.