Saints Alive

WEST CHESTER, Pa.–Imagine you are a fourteen-year-old girl and you discover that your father wants to hook up with you because you resemble your late mother. You’ve unfriended him on Facebook and you ignore his sext messages, but you still suspect he may have installed a toilet cam in your bathroom. This was the cross Read More

WEST CHESTER, Pa. – Saint Theneva of Glasgow was a British princess who enjoyed the horizontal sports from an early age. Her fondness for frolic was something of an embarrassment to her father, Lord Seefeth, who was planning to invade England and sought the favor of god in that enterprise. Discovering that Theneva had conceived Read More

WEST CHESTER, Pa.–If you’re STD (sick to death) of people who splatter their “writing” with SFS (stupid fucking shorthand), you can thank Saint Cassian of Imola, the OPS (official patron saint) of shorthand. Cassian, who lived in the fourth century CE (common era), was a schoolmaster at Imola in north-central Italy. He also moonlighted as Read More

WEST GOSHEN, Pa.—Fabian d’Fabiano, whose name literally means “Fabian, Son of the Son of Fabian,“ was a poor excuse for an olive farmer, who lived outside Rome. To supplement his pitiful income he raised doves for racing and companionship and, when all else failed, food. In 236 CE—shortly after the tragic yet unforeseen [sic] death Read More

Suppose that Mitt Romney, after losing the 2012 Presidential Election to Barack Obama, somehow manipulated his way into writing not only the official biography of Mr. Obama but also the only one available. We should not be surprised if it contained facts such as “Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim; he was born in Kenya Read More

The Catholic Church “teaches” that god calls each one of us to be a saint. Most people treat such invitations as crank calls, but your more impressionable types scurry out to get fitted for a sackcloth hoodie and a bed of nails. One such loser was André Bessette (1845-1937), whose feast day is celebrated today. Read More

VATICAN CITY–In perhaps his most populist and daring move yet, Pope Francis the First, also known as The People’s Pope, issued a divine apostolic proclamation (DAP) last week appointing St. Christopher to the position of patron saint of texting. Although there are patron saints for every sort of occupation, special cause, infirmity, act of god, Read More

WEST CHESTER, Pa.–If you are a breastfeeding hermit living in cave near Edinburgh, Scotland, have we got a saint for you. His name is Giles, and he was born a wealthy nobleman in Athens, Greece, in the seventh century. After his parents had died, Giles frittered away his inheritance helping the poor. That sort of Read More

On October 4, 1630, the village of Cupertino, Italy, held a procession on the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi. During the procession a young priest named Joseph, who was there to clean up after the animals, suddenly flew into the sky, where he remained hovering over the crowd for nearly a minute. The Read More

WEST CHESTER, Pa.–Next to the Blessed Virgin Mary’s breasts—which no one but the Holy Ghost and the infant Jesus has ever seen—the hooters of St. Agatha of Palermo are the most famous and most venerated in all of christendom. “Mary’s breasts are given titular respect,” says Emilio Cacasodo, S.J., “After all, she is the mother of Jesus, Read More

WEST CHESTER, Pa–The Catholic church is nothing if not fanciful, some might even say fey, as in man-in-a-purple-dress fey. Those ornate Pius of Hollywood jumpers favored by the church’s high priests, the three-story hats that dwarf the chubby little pope beneath them, the gothic organ music, Omen-like choirs, and incense-laden rituals: do these strike anyone else Read More

WEST CHESTER, PA. – The First Universal Brotherhood of the Aggressive Atheist is pleased to join our Catholic brethren everywhere in ecumenical fellowship to salute the memory of St. Augustine Zhao Rong et al., 120 god-botherers ranging in age from nine to seventy-two, who died between 1648 and 1930 in China. Most of these happy Read More