April Saints

 

APRIL 3 ST BENEDICT OF AFRICA/ BENEDICT THE MOOR Born of Moorish African slaves, he was freed at birth and became known for his charity. Invited as a young man to join a Franciscan hermite group, he became the leader.

A patron saint of African Americans, Benedict is remembered for his patience and understanding when confronted with racial prejudice and taunts.

APRIL 4 Saint Isidore of Seville Isidore was one of the last of the ancient Christian philosophers; he was the last of the great Latin Church Fathers. Some consider him to be the most learned man of his age, and he exercised a far-reaching and immeasurable influence on the educational life of the Middle Ages. Indeed, all the later medieval history-writing of Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula, comprising modern Spain and Portugal) was based on his histories. His work is regarded by modern historians as exercising an important influence on the beginnings of representative government.

In Dante's Paradise (X.130), he is mentioned among theologians and Doctors of the Church alongside Bede the Venerable.

In the mid 2000s he was declared the patron saint of the Internet by the Vatican. He is also the patron saint of computers, computer users, and computer technicians.

 

APRIL 7 Saint Jean-Baptiste de La Salle was a priest, educational reformer, and founder of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools. He is the patron saint of teachers.

He dedicated much of his life to the education of poor children in France; in doing so, he started many lasting educational practices. He is considered the founder of the first Catholic schools.

APRIL 21 Saint Bernadette Soubirous, a miller's daughter born in Lourdes, France and is venerated as a Christian mystic.

Soubirous is best known for her Marian apparitions of "a small young lady" who asked for a chapel to be built at a cave-grotto in Massabielle where the apparitions occurred between 11 February and 16 July 1858. She would later receive recognition when the lady who appeared to her identified herself as the Immaculate Conception–Our Lady of Lourdes.

APRIL 21 SAINT ANSELM was a Benedictine monk, a philosopher, and a prelate of the Church who held the office of Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109. Called the founder of scholasticism, he has been a major influence in Western theology and is famous as the originator of the ontological argument for the existence of God using the phrase "that than which nothing greater can be conceived"and the satisfaction theory of atonement. 

According to this view, sin incurs a debt to Divine justice, a debt that must be paid somehow. Thus, no sin, according to Anselm, can be forgiven without satisfaction. However, the incurred debt is something far greater than a human being is capable of paying. All the service that a person can offer to God is already obligated on other debts to God. By Anselm's time the suggestion has been made that some innocent person, or angel, might possibly pay the debt incurred by sinners. That, however, we would put the sinner under obligation to that deliverer and the sinner would become indebted to a "mere creature." The only way in which the satisfaction could be made─that humans could be set free from their sin─was by the coming of a Redeemer who is both God and man. He himself would have to be sinless, thus having no debt that he owed. His death is something greater than all the sins of all humanity. His death makes a superabundant satisfaction to the Divine Justice.

Anselm's canonization was requested by Thomas Becket in 1163. Anselm may have been formally canonized at some point before Becket's death in 1170, but no explicit record has survived, even though Anselm was henceforth included among the saints at Canterbury and elsewhere.  He was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1720 by Pope Clement XI. On 21 April 1909, 800 years after his death, Pope Pius X issued an encyclical "Communium Rerum", praising Anselm, his ecclesiastical career, and his writings. His symbol in hagiography is the ship, representing the spiritual independence of the church.

APRIL 23 Saint George was a Greek who became an officer in the Roman army. Saint George became an officer in the Roman army in the Guard of Diocletian. He is venerated as a Christian martyr. In hagiography, Saint George is one of the most venerated saints in the Catholic (Western and Eastern Rites), Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, and the Oriental Orthodox churches. He is immortalized in the tale of Saint George and the Dragon and is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers (for the health of domestic animals/pets). His memorial is celebrated on 23 April, and he is regarded as one of the most prominent military saints. Patron Saint of England, Portugal, Malta and Gozo as well as the Scouting Movement (Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Rover Guides, Brownies, Girl Scouts and Ranger Guides.

APRIL 25 Saint Mark is the traditional author of the Gospel of Mark. He is one of the Seventy Disciples, and the founder of the Church of Alexandria, one of the original four main episcopal sees of Christianity. He then became Peter’s interpreter and scribe and wrote the Gospel of Mark.

In AD 49, about 19 years after the Ascension of Jesus, Mark traveled to Alexandria and founded the Church of Alexandria, which today is part of the Coptic Orthodox Church. He became the first bishop of Alexandria and he is honored as the founder of Christianity in Africa.

His symbol is the Winged lion.^]

APRIL 29 Saint Catherine of Siena, a tertiary of the Dominican Order, and a Scholastic philosopher and theologian. She also worked to bring the papacy of Gregory XI back to Rome from its displacement in France (the Avignon papacy), and to establish peace among the Italian city-states. She was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1970. She is one of the two patron saints of Italy, together with St. Francis of Assisi.