Patronage
4 saints are venerated as patrons of torture victims, led by Charles Lwanga (feast day June 3).
1860 — 1886 · Feast day: June 3
Chief of the royal pages in the court of King Mwanga II of Buganda. He protected the young pages from the King's immoral advances and baptized them in secret. He was burned alive for his faith along with 21 distinguished companions.
Unknown, c. AD 300 — c. 305 AD · Feast day: June 22
Saint Alban was a pagan Roman citizen of Verulamium who sheltered a fugitive Christian priest, converted to his faith within days, then dressed in the priest's robes to face arrest in his place. He was beheaded on Holywell Hill around 305 AD — Britain's first recorded Christian martyr, whose cult gave rise to St Albans Abbey and inspired Bede's most vivid account of Christian heroism.
c. 841 AD — November 20, 869 AD · Feast day: November 20
Edmund was a boy-king of East Anglia who, when Viking warlords demanded he renounce Christ or die, chose death. Tied to a tree at Hoxne, shot with arrows and beheaded on November 20, 869, he remained England's patron saint for six centuries — until Saint George replaced him in the 15th century.
July 22, 1559 — July 22, 1619 · Feast day: July 21
Born Giulio Cesare Russo in 1559, Lawrence of Brindisi became the first Capuchin friar declared a Doctor of the Church — mastering seven languages to preach the Gospel and riding before a Christian army at Székesfehérvár armed only with a crucifix. He died on his sixtieth birthday, July 22, 1619, on a diplomatic mission in Lisbon.