What is a Saint?
In the Catholic Church, the saints are ordinary people like you and I who made it to heaven. They’ve done nothing that you and I cannot do, if we persevere in following Jesus Christ and living our lives according to His teaching.
Catholic devotion to the saints is nothing more than respect and admiration for the memory of the deceased heroes of the Church. We honor them as men and women of heroic virtue who can serve as our role models. They were no more perfect than are we; but, at the end of their lives – and hopefully, ours – they received from Our Lord his words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
We also ask the saints to intercede for us. Have you ever asked anyone to pray for you when you were having a hard time? That is how Catholics “pray to” the saints – we pray with saints, not to them. As the Letter of James says, “The fervent prayer of a righteous person is very powerful.”
Well-known saints like those below often are remembered in a special way on particular days during the year.
January – February – March – April – May – June
July – August – September – October – November – December
This Weeks Saints
October 11
Pope St. John XXIII
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Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
October 12
St. Carlo Acutis
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October 13
St. Edward the Confessor
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October 14
Pope St. Callistus I
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October 15
St. Teresa of Avila
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October 16
St. Margaret Mary Alacoque
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St. Ignatius of Antioch
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October 12
St. Carlo Acutis
“I am happy to die, because I have lived my life without wasting a minute on those things which do not please God.”
St. Carlo Acutis
Carlo Acutis was born on May 3, 1991 in London, the son of Andrea Acutis and Antonia Salzano. His parents were financially well-off, and had worked in Germany and the United Kingdom before settling down in Milan, Italy in September 1991, shortly after Carlo’s birth.
From around the age of 4, he demonstrated great interest in Catholic religious practices. His parents were not particularly religious; so, most of his questions were answered by his family’s Polish baby-sitter. At the age of 7 he received his First holy Communion at the convent of St. Amdrogio and Nemus. He was commonly observed praying before the Tabernacle before and after Mass. He also went to Confession once per week. He enjoyed visiting Assisi where St. Francis is entombed, and adopted Francis as one of his models for living his life.
Acutis was deeply interested in many things typical of a boy his age, like football, Pokemon, action films, comic books and his PlayStation. He was considered a “computer geek” by those who knew him. He taught himself how to code and build websites while still in primary school. In school, he was always concerned with those of his friends who were bullied or who had undergone distressing events, like the divorce of their parents. He also did volunteer work with the poor and homeless.
Carlo used his computer skills to build websites for Catholic organizations. At the age of 11, he developed a site that listed and catalogued all of the Eucharistic miracles in the world. That website (http://www.miracolieucaristici.org/) is still maintained today, and is the basis for a traveling photo exhibition entitled “The Eucharistic Miracles of the World.” The exhibition has traveled to dozens of countries on 5 continents.
Believing himself to be ill with the flu, Carlo was diagnosed with an aggressive leukemia in October, 2006. He died only days later, on October 12, at the age of 15. He was interred in the former cathedral of Assisi, Santa Maria Maggiore.
Carlo Acutis was labeled a “Servant of God” in 2013, one of the first steps towards canonization. A miracle was attributed to him in November of 2019. In that miracle, a seven-year-old child who was born with a pancreatic defect was miraculously healed. His mother had prayed to Acutis, asking for his intercession and shortly after, the defect was cured, and the boy was able to eat solid food for the first time.
Pope Francis announced the beatification of Carlo Acutis, which was planned while visiting Assisi, Italy on October 10, 2020. Carlo was declared a saint on September 7, 2025.
October 15
St. Teresa of Avila
Teresa Ali Fatim Corella Sanchez de Capeda y Ahumada was born in Avila, Spain in 1515. While young she was in chronically poor health, which did not stop her, when she was seven years old, from convincing her older brother that they should “go off to the land of the Moors and beg them, out of love of God, to cut off our heads there.” They got as far as the road from the city before an uncle found them and brought them back. As a teenager, though, she cared only about boys, clothes, flirting, and rebelling. When she was 16, her father decided she was out of control and sent her to a convent.
She was attracted to the religious life and took her vows in the Carmelite order at age 17. She found difficulty in the life of the convent. She found it too easy to slip back into a worldly life there; convents were very loose in their rules, permitting nuns to wear fashionable habits and even jewelry, to host parties, and to absent themselves from the “cloister” for lengthy periods.
Teresa was stricken with malaria, becoming so ill that a grave was dug for her. She never fully recovered her health. She was paralyzed for three years, and she used her illness as an excuse to stop praying altogether. At the age of 41, her confessor convinced her to resume her prayer life. She was continually disturbed, but finally found the key to overcoming her mental distractions; as she described, “The important thing is not to think much but to love much.”
Despite being a contemplative and being in chronically poor health, she spent much of her time and energy seeking to reform herself and the Carmelites, to lead them back to the full observance of the primitive Rule. She founded a convent at the age of 43, which observed the discipline of prayer and poverty. She founded several additional Carmelite houses, despite fierce opposition from local officials and churchmen.
Teresa was both mystic and reformer, contemplative and woman of action, a totally human font of sanctity for her sisters and for the world. Her writings, especially the Way of Perfection and The Interior Castle, have helped generations of believers. With St. Catherine of Siena, she was one of the first women to be honored as a Doctor of the Church.
“Let nothing disturb you,
St. Teresa of Avila
let nothing frighten you,
all things are passing away:
God never changes.
“Patience obtains all things;
whoever has God lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.”
October 17
St. Ignatius of Antioch
“Wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church”
St. Ignatius, Letter to the Smyrnaeans
Born in Syria, Ignatius converted to Christianity as a student of St. John the Evangelist; he was named “Theophorus” (“God-Bearer”) at baptism. Eventually he became the third bishop of Antioch, ordained by St. Peter around 69 AD.
In the year 107, the Emperor Trajan visited Antioch and forced the Christians there to either deny the faith or die. Ignatius would not deny Christ and thus was condemned to be put to death in Rome. He was transported by ship to Rome under guard.
During his long journey from Antioch to Rome, he wrote seven letters, in the body of which he became the first to use the term “Catholic” to describe the Church. Five letters were to churches in Asia Minor, urging his congregations to hold fast to the faith and to obey those shepherds set over them. He warns them against heretical doctrines, providing them with the solid truths of the Christian faith, especially about the Eucharist and the reality of Jesus’s human nature.
A sixth letter was written to Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, who was later martyred for the faith. In the final letter, written to the church in Rome, he begs the Roman faithful to not try to stop his martyrdom. “I am God’s wheat and I shall be ground by the teeth of beasts, that I may become the pure bread of Christ.”
Ignatius was killed and devoured by two lions in the Circus Maximus, as thousands watched his death.