Saints & Popes
Saints & Popes Encyclopedia Articles
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Saints Anne and Joachim
Saints Anne and Joachim ; Western feast day July 26, Eastern feast day July 25) were, according to tradition derived from certain apocryphal writings, the parents of the Virgin Mary. St. Anne is one of...
Francis
Francis ushered in a new era of leadership of the Roman Catholic Church when he was elected pope in 2013. As the first pope from the Western Hemisphere, the first from South America, and the first from...
St. Thomas Aquinas
St. Thomas Aquinas ; canonized July 18, 1323; feast day January 28, formerly March 7) Italian Dominican theologian, the foremost medieval Scholastic. He developed his own conclusions from Aristotelian...
Saint John XXIII
Saint John XXIII ; beatified September 3, 2000canonized April 27, 2014; feast day October 11) was one of the most popular popes of all time (reigned 1958–63), who inaugurated a new era in the history of...
Benedict XVI
Benedict XVI was the bishop of Rome and head of the Roman Catholic Church from 2005 to 2013. Prior to his election as pope, Benedict led a distinguished career as a theologian and as prefect of the Congregation...
St. Francis of Assisi
St. Francis of Assisi ; canonized July 16, 1228; feast day October 4) was the founder of the Franciscan orders of the Friars Minor (Ordo Fratrum Minorum), the women’s Order of St. Clare (the Poor Clares),...
Our Lady of Guadalupe
Our Lady of Guadalupe, in Roman Catholicism, the Virgin Mary in her appearance before St. Juan Diego in a vision in 1531. The name also refers to the Marian apparition itself. Our Lady of Guadalupe holds...
Rishabhanatha
Rishabhanatha, the first of the 24 Tirthankaras (“Ford-Makers,” i.e., saviours) of Jainism, a religion of India. His name comes from the series of 14 auspicious dreams that his mother had, in which a bull...
St. Patrick
St. Patrick ; feast day March 17) was the patron saint and national apostle of Ireland. He is credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland and was probably responsible in part for the Christianization...
St. Anthony of Padua
St. Anthony of Padua ; canonized 1232; feast day June 13) was a Franciscan friar, doctor of the church, and patron of the poor. Padua and Portugal claim him as their patron saint, and he is invoked for...
St. Peter the Apostle
St. Peter the Apostle was a disciple of Jesus Christ, recognized in the early Christian church as the leader of the 12 disciples and by the Roman Catholic Church as the first of its unbroken succession...