It's the day for the wearing of the green and you would think with names like O'Toole, Kelly and Rogers our hosts would be extremely reverential of the patron Saint of Ireland (and Nigeria) but you would be wrong. Turns out the guy's name was Succat and he wasn't even Irish! Learn more about this unofficial patron Saint of drunken pub crawls and his connection to the Springfield tradition of whacking day on this week's episode. 

Saints Preserve Us returns for season two with an exploration of the history of Saint Valentine and how he inspired the modern romantic holiday that is now celebrated in his name. Along the way we learn how he sent the first valentine note ever while in jail waiting to have his head cut off. We find out which of Valentine's relics reside in the Church of the Metastasis of the Virgin Mary on the Island of Lesbos and we ponder the love of Spartan warriors for their fellow men. 

In this episode we recognize the End of Ordinary Time and the end of Season One of Saints Preserve Us. Along the way we acknowledge The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe and discuss a little celebration that happens around his birth, which was overshadowed this year by our grander celebration of Michaelmas. We also highlight some other December Saints, most notably Jolly Old Saint Nick and learn how New York City invented Christmas as we know it today to stop the Irish from getting drunk and running wild in the streets. We recount the horrific details of the tragic death of teen martyr Saint Eulalia and wonder why so many stories of Saints from December involve people being put in barrels. And finally Sean shares a memory from his childhood of a special feast that used to be celebrated on January first but now must never be spoken of under penalty of excommunication.

It's been a wild and wonderful first season of Saints Preserve Us and we want to thank all of our listeners and our esteemed guests. Stay tuned for Saintly Stories in 2022!

Until then check out the book that started it all at:

https://www.amazon.com/Saints-Preserve-Us-Everything-About/dp/067975038X/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2X4P0XHMQJ8VB&keywords=saints+preserve+us&qid=1641343677&sprefix=saints%2520preserve%2520u%2Caps%2C157&sr=8-2

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On this episode we are joined by Maeve Callan Chair of the Religion Department, Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Co-Director of the Interfaith Fellows Program and Professor of Religion at Simpson College in Iowa, and author of The Templars, the Witch, and the Wild Irish, to discuss the sure to be uncontroversial topic of four Irish Saints who were said to have miraculously ended unwanted pregnancies. We also explore the history of the Catholic Church's stance on abortion and finally talk about our co-host Christian O'Toole's very distant relative Saint Lawrence O'Toole.

You can read Maeve Callan's article that kicked off this whole kerfuffle here: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/saints-once-did-abortions-it-was-a-lesser-sin-than-oral-sex-1.3466881

And you can find Maeve's book on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Templars-Witch-Wild-Irish-Vengeance/dp/1501713566

You can also read more about the Church's historical positions on abortion in Molly Monk's article for The Outline.com: https://theoutline.com/post/8536/catholic-history-abortion-brigid

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In this episode we apologize for an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary depicted as a skeleton that was posted to our Twitter account on Halloween, and we explore the controversial kerfuffle kicked off by the image around the Mexican cult figure and folk-Catholic, but unofficial, Saint: Santa Muerte. We then turn to a Saint officially recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, Malachy O'More, a reformer of the Irish liturgy and the first Irish Saint to be officially Canonized. We learn about Malachy's dire predictions of the rise of the Anti-Pope/Antichrist that could be coming soon. And finally, we delight in the story of Saint Rumwold, the miraculous baby Saint who lived all of three days but still managed to declare himself a Christian, request baptism, and preach a sermon before he died.

Follow us on Twitter (where we hope to not offend anyone again but can't make any promises) at: https://twitter.com/SaintsPreserve

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On this very special All Hallows Spooky Saint Spectacular, we learn about the Saintly origins of Halloween and dive deep into the mysterious world of incorrupt Saints with writer and photographer Elizabeth Harper of All the Saints You Should Know, who has faced and photographed these Saintly relics in person around the world. From martyrs whose exquisite corpses never decompose to the bejeweled skeletal remains of the catacomb Saints, we explore the uncanny valley of Saints who exist in a spiritual world somewhere between life and death.

Christian also makes his Halloween pitch for our listeners to check out Midnight Mass on Netflix for some high-end Catholic horror from director Mike Flanagan and his wife Kate Siegel.

You can check out Elizabeth Harper's wonderfully creepy blog All the Saints You Should Know at: http://www.allthesaintsyoushouldknow.com/

And follow her on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/CadaverFormosus

Also check out Midnight Mass on Netflix at: https://www.netflix.com/title/81083626

And finally, follow Saints Preserve Us at: https://twitter.com/SaintsPreserve

Happy All Hallows, All Saints & All Souls Day to one and all!

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On today's episode of Saints Preserve Us, we are joined by Ian Chillag, host and producer of the incredible podcast Everything is Alive, to ponder the mysteries of the Holy Rosary. We learn the history and religious significance of these inanimate objects and ask Ian who he would cast to play a Rosary if one were ever to appear as a guest on his show. We also learn about Ian's brief time in a Catholic middle school and how there he learned first and foremost about the worst possible ways to die.

We also wrap up the month of October by checking in on some Saints we may have missed earlier in the month including Pelagia the Harlot, the brothers Crispin and Crispian (who were name-checked in Shakespeare's Henry V), patron of lost causes Saint Jude Thaddeus, and the possible foot fetishist Saint Hedwig of Silesia.

You can check out Everything is Alive at: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/everything-is-alive/id1388419519

And you can follow Saints Preserve Us on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/SaintsPreserve

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This week we are joined by the creator and host of Saint Podcast, Eric Huang, to discuss Saint Ursula, a British princess who was killed by the Huns in Cologne Germany on October 21st 383 AD, and who miraculously managed to take 11,000 virgins and one pope down with her. We also learn how Ursula inspired a very early commune of liberated women and how a convent of Ursuline nuns suffered madness and demonic possession during a quarantine lockdown in a global pandemic (something we can all relate to). Eric shares how this wild tale inspired both a book by Aldus Huxley and a nearly pornographic 1971 film called The Devils by director Ken Russell.

We also revisit the earlier October feast days of Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, also known as the Little Flower, whose autobiography is much maligned by our co-host Sean Kelly. And finally, we offer our support for the proposed beatification of a modern young woman who was inspired by both St. Francis and St. Thérèse, Cristina Gaztelu Vargas.

You can read about Cristina on the Saint Kateri Conservation website here: https://kateri.org/in-tribute/

And you can learn more about Saint Podcast at: https://www.saintpodcast.com/

Also please check out Saints Preserve Us on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/SaintsPreserve

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Since recording this episode on September 29th, Sean, Rosemary, and Christian have been celebrating Michaelmas, the feast of St. Michael the Archangel, for seven days straight, in honor of the seven churches, lined up from Skellig Michael in Ireland to Stella Maris Monastery in Israel, on the famous geographic Sword of Saint Michael. From the Book of Revelation to Paradise Lost, we learn all about Michael's incredible powers and his legendary performance in the Battle in Heaven, as he cast down the dragon Satan (formerly known as Lucifer). We find that after being cast out of Heaven, Satan landed in a blackberry bush and was so angry he urinated all over it, which is why we don't eat blackberries picked after Michaelmas. We do learn, however, that we can eat blackberry pie at our joyous Michaelmas celebration, along with carrots tied with string, a green goose, french waffles, and a beer made by landlords called Audit Ale. We also share some special Michaelmas connections to Lenny Bruce, Mikhail Gorbachev, Ike & Tina, Wonder Woman, The Seven Samurai, and the Netflix series Dark.

The great Saint Michael rightly reserves most of our reverence this week, but we also save a little time at the end of the episode for The "Not-So-Good" King Wenceslaus, Saint Jerome the reformed skirt chaser, twin brother Saints Cosmas and Damian (early supporters of Medicare For All), and the absolutely lovely and charitable humanitarian St. Vincent De Paul.

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In this episode, we explore the gospel of Saint Matthew, champion of the meek, the outcasts, and the stones that the builders refuse. We also hear how the church abuse scandals of the 1980s led one of our hosts to a crisis of faith and how the music of Bob Marley, much of which was inspired by the book of Matthew, brought him back from the brink. We also explore the suspect stigmata of the modern Italian Saint Padre Pio and learn why Sean's vote for canonization goes to American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist, and scholar Thomas Merton.

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