Patron Saints: Professional Division Quiz

Answer: Apollonia

St. Apollonia was martyred during a riot against the Christians in Alexandria in Egypt in 249 AD. She was an elderly deacon in the church. When the mob set upon her, they struck her over and over again in the face, knocking out her teeth. They threatened to burn her alive if she did not deny her Christian faith, but Apollonia stuck to her guns (okay, guns hadn't been invented, but you know what I mean) and her God, said a short prayer and calmly walked into the bonfire. She died very shortly thereafter. She is not only the patron saint of dentists, but she is also invoked by sufferers of toothache. In art, she is shown with a forceps gripping a tooth.

St. Polycarp is the saint who is invoked for earaches, St. Blaise is in charge of sore throats, and St. Wolfgang is the go-to guy for upset stomachs (when the Tums don't do the job, I guess).

Answer: Mark

I find it fascinating that Mark, who is credited with being the author of the shortest, pithiest gospel, is the fellow who is the patron of a profession whose members delight in using five words where one will do (the more obscure and multisyllabic the words, the better, it seems). My best friend is a lawyer, and I often tease her about being paid by the word. (I'm a writer by trade, and she says that's the pot calling the kettle black!) My choice for a patron saint for lawyers would have been St. Paul, who has a tendency to over-explain things, and gets pretty convoluted at times. Luke gets doctors, but that would have been too easy, since everyone knows that. John is the patron saint of writers, and Matthew - well, you'll have to wait for the answer to the question about accountants.

Answer: Matthew

Matthew, who was Levi before he left his job behind to become a disciple of Jesus, was a tax collector, so it makes sense that he is the patron of accountants. He's also responsible for bankers, bookkeepers and his former colleagues, tax collectors.

Thomas More gets civil servants, Isidore of Seville is in charge of computer programmers, and Vincent de Paul watches over charities and volunteers.

Answer: Gemma Galgani

Gemma Galgani was a devout Italian girl who suffered from ill health all her life. Evidently, she was a quiet, unexcitable girl who had occasional bouts of strange behaviour which some put down to demonic possession. She was one of the saints who bore the stigmata (the wounds of Christ). She never worked as a pharmacist, but during her 25 years of life she must have ingested a lot of pills and powders to alleviate her aches and pains.

Benedict is the saint to call on if you accidentally ingest poison, Jacinta Marta is in charge of all bodily ills, and Josemaria Escriva is the patron saint of diabetics.

Answer: Thomas

I have no idea why Thomas is the patron saint of architects. I don't recall him designing any buildings, but maybe that's what he was doing on the side while he was supposedly spreading the gospel in India.

Stephen is the patron saint of bricklayers (although I'd have made him patron saint of rock stars - particularly the Rolling Stones), Vincent Ferrer is the patron saint of builders, and Bartholomew drew the plasterers in the patron saint stakes.

Answer: Agatha

St. Agatha is the one who is also the patron saint of bellfounders because her symbol, a pair of breasts on a dish, looks rather like bells. Maybe the connection to nursing came with that well known phrase "Ring for the nurse."

Anne, the putative mother of the Virgin Mary, is the patron saint of mothers and pregnant women. Anthony of Padua keeps an eye on barren women, and women in labour can appeal to St. Elmo.

Answer: Jerome

Jerome was one of the doctors of the church. He was an ordained priest, but never exercised the priestly office. Instead, for eighteen years he served Pope Damasus as his secretary, and it was Damasus who commissioned Jerome to revise the Latin translation of the New Testament. Later, Jerome, with his disciples, founded a free school and Jerome taught Greek and Latin there. Meanwhile, he continued his work on the scriptures, and translated the whole of the bible into Latin. This version, known as the Vulgate, was used for centuries up to the Reformation.

Francis de Sales is the patron saint of journalists, John of God is responsible for booksellers, and Peter Celestine is the saint bookbinders turn to when they are in a bind.

Answer: Patrick

Let's see, Patrick is also the saint one invokes if one is afraid of snakes, so perhaps engineers, some of whom spend their days building roads and bridges often run into snakes, and call on Patrick so frequently that he has became their patron. It's as good an explanation as any, I guess.

Brigid keeps an eye on dairy workers, Columba looks after poets, and Kevin is always there for the blackbirds.

Answer: Gregory

Pope Gregory I (aka Gregory the Great) is the patron saint of teachers. Gregory is the Pope who, on encountering a group of flaxen-haired, blue-eyed children in the Roman slave market, inquired where they had come from, and was told they were Angles from Angleland (England).

The Pope's response was "Non angli, sed angeli" ("Not Angles, but angels."). He promptly sent Augustine and forty monks from the monastery of St. Andrew off to England as missionaries to the English in 597. Augustine and his companions made their base in Canterbury, and eventually of course, Canterbury became the mother church of the Anglican Communion worldwide. Thomas Aquinas, John Bosco and Catherine of Alexandria are all patron saints of students. Maybe the organizers of patron saints believe students need more help than their teachers.

Answer: John Vianney

John Vianney, patron saint of parish priests, was himself a devoted parish priest, serving the people of Ars-en-Dombes in France for over forty years. He was a gifted preacher, and it was not long before Ars-en-Dombes, despite its small size and isolation, became a centre for pilgrimage as thousands of people flocked to hear this man of God. His fellow clergy, discomfited by all the attention that the Cure of Ars was getting, complained to their Bishop that John was mentally deranged, but the Bishop's only response was, "I wish all my clergy were so afflicted."

Casimir of Poland is the patron saint of bachelors (and since RC priests are celibate, he could qualify, I suppose). Charles Borromeo is responsible for seminarians, who are not yet priests. Francis Xavier is the patron saint of foreign missions, which makes sense, since he was the fellow who took the gospel to the East Indies and Japan.