Our Friends The Saints

You don’t have to do great things to become a saint.

When you look at the lives of the saints, it is easy to feel inadequate.
We picture them facing down emperors, building massive cathedrals, or performing public miracles.
Then we look at our own lives—stressful homework, frustrating chores, feeling misunderstood—and think, I just don’t have what...

She couldn’t read. She couldn’t ride a horse. She was terrified of battle. But when Heaven spoke, she was the only one who listened.

When we think of Saint Joan of Arc, we usually picture a statue: a fierce warrior in heavy armor, holding a sword, looking untouchable. But statues do not bleed. Statues do not cry. Statues do not get scared.

Joan of...

He bore the wounds of Christ. But he also knew what it felt like to be completely misunderstood.

Teenagers today carry heavy, invisible burdens. Anxiety, family struggles, the pressure to be perfect, and the quiet fear that no one truly sees them. They need a friend who understands. They need Padre Pio.
In this compelling addition to the Our...

Most people picture a gentle man in a brown robe feeding birds. But the real Francis of Assisi was loud, ambitious, and desperate to be the center of attention.

Before he was a saint, Francis was a teenager obsessed with fashion, fame, and being a knight. He spent his father’s fortune on velvet doublets, chased worldly glory, and ended up rotting...

He wanted glory. He wanted fame. He wanted the world to notice him.

Then, a single cannonball shattered his leg—and the life he had planned.

Before he was a saint, Íñigo of Loyola was just a restless young man chasing the wrong things. Confined to a castle bed for months, the vain young courtier was forced to slow down. In the quiet boredom of his...

He was rejected by his father, marginalized by his society, and turned away at the doors of the convent. So, he asked to be the janitor.

In seventeenth-century Lima, Peru, Martin of Porres was mixed-race, illegitimate, and poor. When he knocked on the doors of the Dominican priory, the authorities told him he didn’t belong. Instead of walking...

He was kidnapped at sixteen. Sold into slavery. Left to freeze on an Irish mountain.
The real Saint Patrick was no superhero. He was a scared teenager who barely cared about God—until everything fell apart.

Forget the green rivers and the mythical snake stories. Saint Patrick: Courage in the Wild strips away the caricatures to reveal the deeply...

Everyone knows Santa Claus. But do you know the real Saint Nicholas?

Long before the red suit, the reindeer, and the shopping malls, there was a young man in the ancient Roman Empire who inherited a massive fortune. He gave it all away in the dead of night. His name was Nicholas.
He was not a mythical figure. He was a flesh-and-blood bishop who...

He wore sneakers. He played video games. He loved soccer. And he found the highway to heaven.

When we look at the saints, it is easy to feel discouraged. We picture monks in deserts or martyrs in ancient coliseums. We put them on pedestals so high that we convince ourselves holiness is completely out of reach.
Then we meet Carlo Acutis.

Carlo was a...

He dreamed of reaching the whole world. He gave his life to save just one.

Before he was a prisoner in Auschwitz, Maximilian Kolbe was a curious boy who loved science and looked up at the stars. As a young Franciscan friar, he became a media pioneer. He used the printing presses and radio waves of his day to spread the Gospel, founding the...

What if one of the Church’s greatest saints started out as a boy who made mistakes, followed the wrong crowd, questioned almost everything—and spent years searching for happiness in all the wrong places?

Before Saint Augustine became a bishop and Doctor of the Church, he was a brilliant, competitive, restless boy with a talent for getting into...