Catholic Saints
The saints are the friends of God who have completed their pilgrimage and now intercede for the Church on earth from the joy of the Beatific Vision. Their lives are the lived form of the Gospel across two thousand years of Catholic history, the proof in particular human persons that the holiness Christ calls all the baptized to is genuinely possible.
Why study the saints?
The Catholic devotion to the saints is grounded in three theological principles preserved in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (paragraphs 956 to 962): the saints in heaven are alive in Christ, their intercession is real, and their imitation is one of the principal means by which the Holy Spirit forms us into conformity with Jesus. Each saint is, as Saint Thomas Aquinas observed, a particular angle of the infinite light of Christ refracted through a particular human life.
The biographies on this page are drawn from the Catholic primary sources: Butler's Lives of the Saints, the Catholic Encyclopedia (1907 edition), the canonization records preserved in the Vatican archives, the Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists, and the canonized saints' own writings where extant. Each entry treats the saint's life and historical context, theological and spiritual significance, devotion and liturgical observance, and the prayers and novenas associated with the saint.
All saints
The Communion of Saints
The Catholic doctrine of the Communion of Saints holds that every baptized Christian is joined in one Body to every other baptized Christian, on earth or in Purgatory or in heaven, in the one Christ. The saints in heaven are not lost to us; they are closer to us than they were in their earthly lives, by reason of their union with the Risen Lord who is Himself present to us in every tabernacle and in every faithful soul. To pray to a saint is to participate in this living communion, and to ask the friend of God to remember us before the Throne.
For the broader theological context, see the Communion of Saints. For the Catholic novenas associated with particular saints, see the novenas hub.