Patronage
2 saints are venerated as patrons of The sick and suffering, led by Padre Pio (feast day September 23).
1887 — 1968 · Feast day: September 23
A Capuchin friar and mystic who bore the stigmata — the wounds of Christ — for fifty years. His life was marked by intense physical suffering and supernatural gifts, and his ministry in the confessional at San Giovanni Rotondo drew pilgrims in such numbers that he sometimes spent sixteen hours a day hearing confessions.
July 19, 1754 — January 2, 1833 · Feast day: January 2
Seraphim of Sarov spent twenty-five years as a hermit in the Russian forest, most famously praying on a granite rock for 1,000 successive nights with arms raised to heaven. When robbers beat him nearly to death with his own axe, he pleaded for their mercy at trial. He died in 1833 kneeling before an icon of the Mother of God — a life that ended exactly as it was lived.