About Saints
About Saints
You can find brief bibliographies, patronages, quotes, and paintings for some of the saints featured in our chaplets. There is also more information on saints in general on this page.
Saints
Discover more about some of the saints featured in our chaplets.
More About Saints
What is a Saint?
A saint is someone who lived a holy life in obedience to God’s will. The term “living saint” is not accurate. Even if a person is living a saintly life, the Catholic Church declares saints after their death. After five or more years, the process begins.
The Church does not recognize every saint, yet all those in heaven are saints.
How Are Saints Declared?
To declare a saint, proofs of holiness are investigated. In pre-Congregation years (before 1588), it was the role of the local bishop or councils. Over the centuries that followed, the process of declaring saints became more standardized. In 1634, Pope Urban VIII made it the role of the Apostolic See. Pope Sixtus V established the Congregation of Rites in 1588. Pope Paul VI (1969) and Pope John Paul II (1983) reorganized it. It is now the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.
Three Stages to Declaring Sainthood
- First, they have the title Venerable or a Servant of God. The Pope recognizes someone as having lived a saintly life or suffered martyrdom.
- Next, the Pope declares them Blessed or beatified, usually after a miracle. It would be after someone has prayed to them for help.
- After a second proven miracle, the Pope can canonize a saint.
Blessed Carlo Acutis
Pope Francis declared Carlo Acutis Blessed on October 10, 2020. I often seek his help with designing this website.
From 2002 to 2005 (ages 11-14), he taught himself computer coding and built a website, www.miracolieucaristici.org, to document Eucharistic Miracles and make them known. Click to visit his digital museum.
We Can Ask for Their Help
We can find a patron saint something we want help with and pray for their intercession. For example, we can pray to St. Joseph for our family.
It's in Our Name
We can choose a saint’s name for our children. We can also choose a favourite saint for our Confirmation name. The saints we choose will intercede for our spiritual growth.
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CREDITS
The LOGO image of Our Lady of Grace is original artwork by Martin Lariviere in 2009. We have the artist’s permission (my son). It is our exclusive trademark logo image.
A beautifully photographed sky by Donald Tong inspired the website’s colour scheme. Cropped portions of it are the background for the footer Bible verse. He shared it as a free download on pexels.com.
Raphael painted The Sistine Madonna circa (1513-1514). We made circular cut-outs from the original image.
This official photo of St. Teresa of Calcutta’s canonization shows a face worn with work and warmed with loving concern for others. It is a free image from favpng.com. We used a different angle for our featured image.
Carlo Esteban Murillo painted an everyday scene of the Holy Family circa 1660-1670. It is our featured image.
The Photo of St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican is a public domain image.
The photo of St. John Paul II was the official image for his canonization on April 27, 2014.
Pope Francis beatified Blessed Carlo Acutis on October 10, 2020. We cropped a photo that was shared for free by Milagros Berdayes in 2021.
Elvis Fotos shared the Baptism photo on Cathopic.
Our information is from general knowledge, experience, and shared internet sources. We ask that you use it as a starting point for your research so that you can verify facts and build a reference list
IN REVIEW
A saint is someone who lived a holy life in obedience to God’s will. The Church does not recognize every saint, yet all those in heaven are saints.
The term “living saint” is not accurate. Even if a person is living a saintly life, the Catholic Church declares saints after their death. After five or more years, the process begins.
There are three steps to sainthood.
- First, they have the title Venerable or Servant of God. The Pope recognizes the person as having lived a saintly life or suffered martyrdom.
- Next, the Pope declares them Blessed or Beatified, usually after a miracle. It would be after someone has prayed to them for help.
- After a second proven miracle, the Pope can canonize a saint.
There are three things to know about obtaining a saint’s prayers.
- We can find a patron saint of something we want help with and pray for their intercession. For example, we can pray to St. Joseph for our family.
- A beatified or venerable person can pray on our behalf to God if we ask them. We pray, trusting that they will be declared saints.
- Our name might be a saint’s name or we might have chosen one for our Confirmation name. The saints we choose will intercede for our spiritual growth.