Patronage

Patron Saint of Loss of parents

4 saints are venerated as patrons of Loss of parents, led by Teresa of Ávila (feast day October 15).

Teresa of Ávila

1515 — 1582 · Feast day: October 15

Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda Dávila y Ahumada (1515–1582) entered the Carmelite Monastery of the Incarnation in Ávila at twenty and spent nearly two decades in spiritual struggle before a decisive conversion around 1554. She then reformed the Carmelite Order, traveled across Spain founding seventeen convents she called 'dovecotes,' and wrote the defining Catholic mystical texts of her century. In 1970 Pope Paul VI named her the first female Doctor of the Church.

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Edith Stein

October 12, 1891 — August 9, 1942 · Feast day: August 9

Edith Stein was a Jewish philosopher who served as a Red Cross nurse during WWI, earned her doctorate under Edmund Husserl in 1916, and converted to Catholicism in 1922 after a single night reading Teresa of Ávila. She entered the Carmelite order in 1933, was seized by the Gestapo in the Netherlands in 1942, and was killed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz on August 9 — her feast day.

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Syncletica of Alexandria

c. 320 AD — c. 400 AD · Feast day: January 5

Syncletica of Alexandria renounced a wealthy Macedonian inheritance, cut her own hair, and withdrew to a cell near Alexandria with her blind sister — becoming the most influential female spiritual teacher of early monasticism. She authored 28 sayings in the Apophthegmata and endured three years of mouth cancer with the same equanimity she had taught her disciples.

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Marguerite Bourgeoys

April 17, 1620 AD — January 12, 1700 AD · Feast day: January 12

Marguerite Bourgeoys crossed the Atlantic to a rough colonial outpost and turned a stone stable into Canada's first school. Sailing to New France in 1653, she founded the Congregation of Notre-Dame of Montreal — one of the Church's first uncloistered sisterhoods — and was canonized by John Paul II in 1982, becoming Canada's first female saint.

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Related Patronages

Headache sufferers Spanish writers Spain People in need of grace Europe Martyrs Students Philosophers World Youth Day Converted Jews The ill Temptations Single laywomen Educators Poverty People rejected by religious orders Canada