St. Peter Chanel   Patron of Oceania

Under the patronage of his parish priest, Peter, a poor French shepherd boy, received a classical education before joining the missionary Priests of the Society of Mary, the Marists.  in 1836, Pope Gregory XVI sent him as the True Faith’s first ambassador to the South Pacific.  Peter landed on the tiny island of Futuna in the New Hebrides, where for three years he made little headway among the local cannibals, until he managed to convert and baptize the son of the chief.  That tattooed pagan dignitary lost not time in sending a band of warriors armed with clubs and spears to take care of Father Chanel.  Our Saint’s dying words to them, which he spoke in the local lingo, were “It is well for me that you do this thing>”  Suitably impressed, his killers—and indeed the entire population of the island—immediately became devout Roman Catholics.

St. Armel    Invoked against gout and rheumatism      Armel was famous as a dragon-tamer and miracle-worker in Brittany which is why many French hospitals are named after him.  In 1485 (933 years after Armel’s death), Henry Tudor (soon to be King Henry VII) launched an invasion of England from Brittany, and claimed to be saved from shipwreck through this Saint’s Divine intersession.

St. George   Patron of England, Knights, Archers; Invoked against Plague, Leprosy, Syphilis

George was a Palestinian soldier martyred during the persecution of Diocletian; his cult flourished not only in the Middle Easts but in England during the Crusades—it was probably the Crusaders who brought it with them from Palestine.  King Edward III made George Patron of England and Henry V invoked him a the Battle of Agincourt.  The story of George and the dragon—the triumph of good over evil—varies.   In the classic version, George, young and handsome confronts the dragon-with-poisonous-breath who is holding a princess captive. (She drew a short straw in the town lottery and/or was perishing in a castle from lack of water.)  George pierced  the dragon with his lance, led it captive through town in the princess’s girdle, and instantly converts 15,000 people.  In the East, George is depicted as a quasi-god who endures a series of tortures, including running in red-hot shoes, but always miraculously recovers the next day.  In the Western version, George is a prince of Cappadocia who is tortured daily for seven years and whose bravery is so great that he converts 40,900 people, including the Empress Alexandria.  An ignoble George does exist, however: in Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, which portrays him as a brigand dealing in black-market bacon and rising to power as a Primate of Egypt.  This George was arrested and thrown into the sea.  In art, George is depicted dressed in armor, carrying a banner with a red cross, and slaying the dragon.  The British flag, the Union Jack, includes a variation of the red cross of Saint George.  “Riding Saint George”—that is, sexual intercourse with the female on top—was long believed to be the certain method of begetting a bishop.

St Philip   Patron of Luxembourg and Uruguay

A Galilean fisherman, married and the father of three, Philip gave up everything to follow Christ.  He became the third Apostle.  He helped serve the miraculously multiplied loaves and fishes to the multitudes, for which reason a basket of bread is among his emblems.  after Pentecost, he travel to Phrygia, where the Devil, in the form of a hideous dragon, guarded a statue of Mars.  Philip performed a public exorcism, in the course of which the fiery breath of the loathsome beast slew several spectators, among them the son of the local pagan priest, who forthwith ordered Our Saint stoned and crucified upside down.

St. Margaret  Patron of Childbirth, Nurses and Peasants

A princess of Antioch, Margaret was thrown out of the house when her father discovered that her nanny (one Theotimus) had made her a Christian; together the maiden and her maid became simple shepherdesses.  A stunning beauty despite having consecrated herself to virginity, Margaret was pursued by an amorous prefect, who, upon her rejection of his advances, threw her into jail.  There, in her cell, she was visited by Satan, who assumed the form of a dragon and swallowed her. But in the very belly of the beast, a cross she carried grew to such enormous proportions that the dragon was split in two, and Margaret emerged unharmed.  For  this reason she is the traditional Patron of Childbirth.  She was eventually beheaded, and went directly to Heaven, where she enjoyed enormous popularity through the Middle Ages. Heres was one of the voices heard by Joan of Arc.  Among her emblems is a pearl—which is “margarita” in Latin.

St Domitian  Invoked Against Fever

Upon Domitian’s appointment as bishop, he immediately banished the loathsome dragon that had been poisoning the local water supply. His popularity increased when, in a time of famine, he successfully predicted a bumper crop, thereby convincing the rich to distribute the grain they had been hoarding.

John the Dwarf

One of the Desert Fathers, hermits who in the fourth and fifth centuries fled the world to live in absolute poverty, humility, and prayer in the rocky wilderness of Skete, Egypt, John the Dwarf seems to have been somewhat impetuous, for a monk. One day, while working, he suddenly resolved to become and Angel, tore off his garments, and ran out into the desert.  He returned in a week, hungry and thirsty.  He was gently mocked for his pride by his brothers( “Are you not an Angel?”), until he apologized.  He died on Mount Quolzum, having been driven away from his cell at Skete by marauding Berbers.

RIP Mance Rayder

St. Joan of Arc   Patron of France and the Military

Like the gods about whom Homer sang, the Saints in Heaven have been known to take a partisan interest in mortal politics—as when in 1426 (the eighty-ninth year of the Hundred Years’ War), Saints Catherine, Margaret, and Michael decided to assist the Valois party of Charles of Orléans against his rivals the Burgundians and their English allies.  It was their wish that the dauphin Charles of France (to all appearances a treacherous and cowardly toad) become the king of France; They chose as their instrument of policy a teenage farm girl name Jeanne d’Arc, to whom They appeared (infrequently) and spoke (constantly).  Thanks to many hundreds of books and plays and films, everyone knows what happened next:  Jeanne, clad in white armor, rode at the head of the dauphin’s army, while he himself remained prudently at the rear.  She raised the siege of Orléans, and was wounded by an arrow in the breast.  The dauphin was crowned.  Jeanne attacked Paris, and was wounded by an arrow in the thigh.  Charles dallied at court.  She was captured at Compiegne by the Burgundians, and sold to the English.  Her king expressed no interest in her plight attempting neither ransom nor rescue.  Because she would not deny her Saints, inquisitors found her guilty of heresy, and turned her over to the civil authorities. Because she had opposed their occupation of her country, the English concluded she was a witch.  She was burned at the stake on May 30, 1431.  She was almost nineteen years old.  Over the centuries, such cantankerous agnostics as Mark Twain and George Bernard Shaw have fallen madly in love with her.  Joan was officially canonized by the Catholic Church in 1920.  We invite anyone who has a word to say against her to step outside and say it.