Sainted Ladies Trivia Quiz

Answer: Saint Anne

By tradition, St. Anne is identified as the mother of the Virgin Mary, who in turn was the mother of Jesus Christ. St. Anne is not explicitly named in the Gospels but rather in the Protoevangelium of James, written around A.D. 145 and not regarded as canonical. Nevertheless, by tradition the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches regard her as Mary's mother, and Anne's sister, Sobe, was the mother of Elizabeth, who was the mother of John the Baptist. St. Anne is the patron saint of single women, housewives, women in childbirth, and equestrians, as well as Brittany; Detroit, Michigan; and Quebec, Canada; not to mention the Mi'kmaq people, indigenous to Quebec but now living in Newfoundland.

Answer: St. Veronica

As Jesus carried his cross to Golgotha, a woman of Jerusalem named Veronica took pity on him and cleaned his face. The woman was not identified in the Four Gospels, and it is probable that her name was not Veronica, which is a corruption of "vera icon" or "true image" -- a name which became attributed to her in popular imagination, according to the "Catholic Encyclopedia". St. Veronica popularly remains the patron saint of photographers and of laundry workers, and also of photographs themselves.

Answer: St. Barbara

According to legend, in A.D. 303 St. Barbara's father followed her into the mountains and beheaded her for being a Christian. Thereafter a thunderstorm arose, and a fire came down and consumed the guilty father. Santa Barbara, California, is named after her, and the US Army and US Marine Corps have a military honor society, the Order of Saint Barbara, for both field and air artillery.

Answer: St. Catherine of Siena

Born Caterina di Giacamo di Benincasa in 1347, St. Catherine of Siena belonged to the Third Order of St. Benedict. She was well-known for her altruism and her fasting, and for her periods of ecstasy. As a scholar she wrote "The Dialogue of Divine Providence".

When Gregory XI was displaced to France, she helped return him to Rome and also helped make peace among the various Italian city-states. She shares patronage of Italy with St. Francis of Assisi.

Answer: her breasts

St. Agatha of Sicily, who died around A.D. 250, is commemorated by name in the Canon of the Mass. Because of the peculiar form of torture she endured, St. Agatha is patron saint of breast cancer as well as rape victims and torture victims, not to mention wetnurses and bell-founders (because of the shape of her severed breasts).

The Basques traditionally hold gatherings on Saint Agatha's eve (the night of February 4).

Answer: St. Bernadette

Bernadette Soubirous was an teenaged peasant girl, unable to read or write, who saw an apparition 18 times in 1858 at Lourdes, France. The apparition, who identified herself as the Immaculate Conception, asked her to dig in the ground and build a cave-grotto in Massabielle.

The story of Our Lady of Lourdes, as the vision became to be called, is memorialized in Franz Werfel's "The Song of Bernadette" (1942), a novel turned into a movie (1943) starring Jennifer Jones. Bernadette later joined a convent where she gained literacy and lived out her life, dying of illness at age 35. St. Bernadette was canonized in 1933 by Pope Pius XI.

Answer: St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

Elizabeth Ann Seton grew up in New York City and married wealthy businessman William Seton. The Napoleonic Wars, however, bankrupted William, who eventually succumbed to tuberculosis. As a widow, Elizabeth started a school for young women. When she converted to Roman Catholicism, many parents pulled their daughters from her school, and the Sulpician Fathers convinced her to start a school for Catholic girls.

She later founded the Sisters of Charity, the first American community of Sisters. Like her husband before her, she died of tuberculosis in 1821.

She was canonized in 1975 and is the patron saint of Catholic schools, not to mention the entire state of Maryland, where her school for girls was located.

Answer: St. Rita

St. Rita was born in Roccaporena in Umbria, Italy in 1381. Her husband physically abused her and cheated on her, but somehow she made him a better person. After her husband's violent murder, she tried to join a convent, but the nuns required her to end the feud between her family and the families of the murderers.

She succeeded and joined the monastery of St. Mary Magdalene in Cascia. St. Rita is often depicted with a forehead wound, and roses or bees. In addition to hopeless cases, she is the patron saint of battered women, troubled wives, and mourning women.

Answer: Teresa of Calcutta

Saint Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997), or Mother Teresa, was beatified in late 2003, which is a step toward sainthood, and canonized in 2016. An Albanian, Teresa was known for tending to the poorest of the poor and the dying in India, particularly people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy, and tuberculosis. Her Missionaries of Charity, which she founded in 1950, continued to run soup kitchens, hospices, counseling programs, orphanages, and schools -- all for free to their clients. She was criticized late in her life for failing to provide painkillers for patients, even when they underwent surgery, because of her beliefs on suffering.

St. Teresa of Avila founded the Reformed Carmelites and was a Doctor of the Church and is the patron of headaches, people in need of grace, and chess. St. Thérèse of Lisiuex was also a Carmelite and as one of the most popular saints int he Catholic Church is known as the "The Little Flower of Jesus". She is patron of missionaries, florists, and gardeners. Teresa of the Andes was yet another Carmelite, this time from Chile, where she is extremely popular, being Chile's first saint.

Answer: She was the first Native American saint.

Informally known as Lily of the Mohawks, St. Kateri is the patron saint of the environment, ecology, Native Americans, exiles, and people ridiculed for the religion, as she herself was shunned and exiled for embracing Roman Catholicism. An Algonquin-Mohawk from what is now Auriesville, New York, Kateri defied her family's plans for marriage and studied catechism with a Jesuit Father Jacques de Lambertville, who baptized her.

It is said that within a quarter of an hour of her death in 1680, her scars from smallpox as an infant were completely healed.