St. Bernardine of Siena

Who they were

Bernardine of Siena's public life began in a plague ward. At twenty, when the pestilence of 1400 emptied Siena's great hospital of its staff, he volunteered, gathered companions, and ran it for four months.

He became a Franciscan and, in his forties, the most famous preacher in Italy: piazzas of tens of thousands, sermons of scandalous practicality about business fraud, vendettas, and gambling, and at the centre of everything his great device, the Holy Name of Jesus rendered as the IHS monogram in golden rays, held up on a placard as he preached. Bonfires of dice and cards followed his missions, and with them the best story of his life: a card painter protested that Bernardine had destroyed his livelihood, and the saint told him to print the IHS tablet instead, whereupon the man reportedly could not keep up with demand. Tried for heresy over the monogram devotion and fully acquitted, offered three bishoprics and refusing all three, he preached until his voice, lost for years earlier in his career and recovered, carried him to his death on the road in 1444.

Why people turn to St. Bernardine of Siena

People fighting a gambling problem, with St. Camillus de Lellis, who was one. Advertisers and brand builders, by the monogram: the patron who invented the mark that replaced the cards. And preachers and speakers who have lost their voice, literally.

How to ask their intercession

One day at a time, and his prayers alongside the counsellor and the programme rather than instead of them. If gambling has hold of you, the National Problem Gambling Helpline is 1-800-522-4700, free and staffed at all hours.