Patronage
2 saints are venerated as patrons of ecology and the environment, led by Francis of Assisi (feast day October 4).
1181 — 1226 · Feast day: October 4
Francis of Assisi — the 'Little Poor One' — stripped himself naked in the public square to renounce his inheritance and embrace radical poverty. He preached to birds, crossed enemy lines to meet an Egyptian sultan, and became the first recorded person in Christian history to receive the Stigmata, the physical wounds of Christ.
1656 — 1680 · Feast day: July 14
Orphaned at four by smallpox, which scarred her face and damaged her eyesight, this Mohawk-Algonquin woman converted to Catholicism at nineteen despite her uncle's fierce opposition. Baptized in 1676 and driven from her village by persecution, she fled to the Jesuit mission at Kahnawake, where she took a vow of perpetual virginity and died in 1680 at age twenty-four — the first Native American to be canonized.