Health and illness

Any of these can be asked. There is no order of precedence and no wrong choice, so pick whoever the story fits.

• Bl. Solanus CaseyDetroit’s own: the doorkeeper of St. Bonaventure who told a city to thank God ahead of time.
• St. AgathaA martyr of Sicily, asked for by women facing breast cancer.
• St. Aloysius GonzagaRenounced a princely inheritance at seventeen and died at twenty-three nursing plague victims.
• St. Alphonsus LiguoriA lawyer, a moral theologian, and a lifelong sufferer of scrupulosity and crippling arthritis.
• St. AnastasiaThe martyr the Church remembers at Christmas dawn: deliverer from poisons, friend of prisoners.
• St. André BessetteA doorkeeper in Montreal for forty years, associated with thousands of healings he refused credit for.
• St. Angela MericiFounded the first teaching order of women: school for girls, centuries early.
• St. Anthony the AbbotSold everything at twenty, walked into the desert, and fathered monasticism.
• St. ApolloniaThe elderly deaconess whose broken teeth made her the dentists’ saint.
• St. Bernadette SoubirousThe girl who saw Our Lady at Lourdes, asked for by the sick and the poor.
• St. Bernardine of SienaHe preached the Holy Name to packed piazzas, and told a ruined card maker to print it instead.
• St. BlaiseA physician-bishop, asked for by anyone with a throat ailment.
• St. BonaventureThe Seraphic Doctor: head and heart refused to be enemies in him.
• St. Camillus de LellisA gambler who lost everything, then invented modern nursing, asked for by the sick and by gamblers.
• St. Catherine LabouréSaw the design of the Miraculous Medal, then kept the secret for forty six years while tending old men.
• St. Catherine of SienaA dyer's daughter who told the pope to his face to come home to Rome, and he did.
• St. Charbel MakhloufA Lebanese hermit-monk whose tomb became one of the world's most reported healing sites.
• St. Charles BorromeoThe reforming cardinal who stayed in plague-struck Milan when the officials fled.
• St. Clare of AssisiFrancis’s first follower, who fought the papacy for the right to own nothing and won on her deathbed.
• St. Damien of MolokaiVolunteered for the leper colony no one could leave, and died one of them.
• St. DenisFirst bishop of Paris, martyred on the hill still named for martyrs, and the old patron of headaches.
• St. Dulce Lopes PontesThe Good Angel of Bahia: her hospital for the poor began in a chicken yard.
• St. Elizabeth of the TrinityHeaven is in the soul: the young Carmelite who taught busy people where God actually lives.
• St. Erasmus (Elmo)The sailors’ saint of the glowing masthead, whose windlass became, by pure misreading, a mercy for stomach ailments.
• St. Francis de SalesBe who you are and be that well: the gentlest Doctor, patron of writers and of the deaf.
• St. Gemma GalganiA young mystic of Lucca who lived with spinal tuberculosis, asked for by people with back pain.
• St. Giuseppe CottolengoA dying woman was turned away by every hospital, so he built the Little House that turns nobody away.
• St. Gregory the GreatSold his estates, fed Rome through plague, and named the papacy’s true job.
• St. Ignatius of AntiochWrote seven letters on the road to the lions, and coined the phrase the Catholic Church.
• St. James the GreaterFirst apostle martyred, and a thousand years of pilgrims still walk to his shrine.
• St. JanuariusBishop-martyr of Naples, whose relic the city watches three times a year with held breath.
• St. John ChrysostomThe golden mouth: he preached to the powerful as if they were poor, and paid the price.
• St. John DamasceneFrom the caliph’s Damascus, he wrote the defence of holy images the Church still uses.
• St. John of GodA soldier turned hospital founder, asked for by heart patients and the mentally ill.
• St. Joseph MoscatiThe Naples professor who treated the body and remembered the soul: the modern lay physician saint.
• St. Julie BilliartParalyzed twenty two years, she taught from her bed; healed, she founded schools for twelve more.
• St. Junípero SerraFounder of the California missions: he fought the soldiers for Indigenous people, and built a system that did lasting harm.
• St. Leopold MandićFour foot five, a stammer, and forty years in one confessional.
• St. LucyA young martyr of Syracuse whose name means light, asked for by people with eye trouble.
• St. LukeThe physician who wrote the Gospel of mercy, patron of doctors and artists.
• St. Marianne CopeFifty congregations refused Hawaii’s plea. She answered, finished Damien’s work, and stayed thirty years.
• St. Peregrine LaziosiA cancer patient himself, asked for by people facing the same diagnosis.
• St. Pio of PietrelcinaA confessor who heard confessions for fifty years, and bore the stigmata.
• St. PolycarpEighty six years I have served him: a disciple of John, faithful to the end of the living link.
• St. Rafael Arnáiz BarónThe young Trappist diabetes kept expelling. He kept coming back, and died at twenty six.
• St. RafqaShe asked to share Christ’s suffering, and bore thirty years of it with documented joy.
• St. Raphael the ArchangelThe archangel of healing, safe travel, and finding the right person.
• St. RochA pilgrim who nursed plague victims, caught it, and was fed by a dog, asked for in epidemics.
• St. SebastianThe officer executed twice: he survived the arrows, went back, and finished the martyrdom.
• St. StephenThe first martyr. He died forgiving, with Saul holding the coats.
• St. Teresa of ÁvilaA Carmelite reformer who prayed dry for twenty years, asked for by headache sufferers and anyone whose prayer feels like nothing.
• St. TimothyPaul’s anxious protege, told to let no one despise his youth.
• St. VeronicaShe pushed through the soldiers to wipe his face: the patron of small mercies in large suffering.
• St. VitusA boy of the persecutions whose name medicine borrowed: patron of epilepsy, dancers, and performers.
• Sts. Cosmas and DamianTwin physicians who charged nothing: the silverless ones, patrons of medicine.
• Sts. Francisco and Jacinta MartoThe shepherd children of Fatima, asked by Our Lady of the Rosary for exactly this prayer.