Justice and dignity

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

• Bl. Miguel ProExecuted without trial, arms outstretched, saying Viva Cristo Rey.
• Bl. Solanus CaseyDetroit’s own: the doorkeeper of St. Bonaventure who told a city to thank God ahead of time.
• St. AdalbertBishop of Prague twice, martyr of the Baltic once, and Poland bought his body back with its weight in gold.
• St. Alberto HurtadoContento, Señor, contento: he picked the homeless up in a green truck, and Chile never forgot.
• St. Alphonsus RodríguezHe lost everything, then spent forty six years opening a door, and sent Claver to the Americas.
• St. AmbroseDrafted into a bishopric by a crowd: he baptized Augustine and made an emperor do penance.
• St. AnastasiaThe martyr the Church remembers at Christmas dawn: deliverer from poisons, friend of prisoners.
• St. AndrewThe first called. He heard, and went to get his brother.
• St. Andrew Dũng-Lạc and Companions117 canonized: priests, mothers, soldiers, fishermen, from a century that made a hundred thousand.
• St. Andrew Kim Taegon and CompanionsA Church founded by laypeople reading books, then defended with ten thousand lives.
• St. AnsgarApostle of the North: everything he built collapsed twice, and the harvest came 150 years after he died.
• St. Augustine Zhao Rong and Companions120 canonized across three centuries, led by a soldier converted by his prisoner.
• St. BarnabasSon of encouragement: he vouched for Paul when everyone was afraid, and for Mark when Paul would not.
• St. BartholomewCan anything good come out of Nazareth? The honest sceptic who got the compliment of the Gospels.
• St. Basil the GreatOne soul in two bodies: half of the Church’s great friendship, and the first hospital builder.
• St. Benedict Joseph LabreRejected by every monastery, he made the road his cell: the homeless pilgrim of Rome.
• St. Benedict the MoorBorn to enslaved parents, mocked in the street, and chosen to lead the friars who ranked him last.
• St. Bernard of ClairvauxThe honey tongued doctor who taught the world to look to Mary.
• St. BlandinaThe frailest of the martyrs of Lyons: she outlasted everything, encouraging the others like a mother.
• St. BonifaceHe felled the thunder god’s oak and built a chapel from the wood, and died shielding himself with a book.
• St. Bridget of SwedenMother of eight, widow, mystic: she spent her last decades telling popes to come home.
• St. Brigid of IrelandIreland’s other patron: abbess of Kildare, endless generosity, the cross of rushes.
• St. CasimirThe prince who walked away from an unjust war at thirteen: Lithuania’s beloved young saint.
• 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 de FoucauldFrom dissolute officer to hermit of the Sahara: apostle of the hidden life.
• St. Charles Lwanga and CompanionsPages of the royal court who protected the younger boys, and paid for it at Namugongo.
• St. Claude de la ColombièreHe believed her when no one else did: the patron of steady listeners.
• St. ColumbaHe copied a book without leave, and the ruling, to every cow its calf, sent him into the exile that converted Scotland.
• St. ColumbanusThe Irishman who walked Europe founding monasteries and correcting kings, adopted, fittingly, by motorcyclists.
• St. CuthbertShepherd, prior, hermit, bishop, and the first man on record to protect wild birds.
• St. CyprianHe argued that the Church could take back those who broke, and was beheaded saying thanks be to God.
• St. Damien of MolokaiVolunteered for the leper colony no one could leave, and died one of them.
• St. David of WalesBe joyful, keep the faith, and do the little things: Wales’s patron, in his own last words.
• St. DenisFirst bishop of Paris, martyred on the hill still named for martyrs, and the old patron of headaches.
• St. DismasThe good thief: the only person in Scripture promised paradise to his face.
• St. Dominic SavioBosco’s best pupil, dead at fourteen, and the proof that holiness fits a schoolboy.
• St. Dulce Lopes PontesThe Good Angel of Bahia: her hospital for the poor began in a chicken yard.
• St. DymphnaAsked for by people carrying anxiety, depression, and mental illness.
• St. Edmund CampionOxford’s golden orator came back to England with a price on his head: the expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun.
• St. Edward the ConfessorThe last Anglo-Saxon king, remembered not for conquest but for peace, alms, and an abbey.
• St. Elizabeth of HungaryA princess widowed at twenty who traded the castle for a hospital, and died at twenty four having given it all.
• St. Elizabeth of PortugalShe rode a mule between two arrayed armies, her husband’s and her son’s, and stopped the battle.
• St. Frances Xavier CabriniSent west instead of east, she crossed the ocean thirty times for immigrants.
• St. GenevieveThe woman who told Paris not to flee Attila, and was right.
• St. GeorgeThe soldier-martyr behind the dragon legend, where the courage is the historical part.
• St. Gerard MajellaThe saint expectant mothers ask for, especially when a pregnancy is difficult.
• St. Gertrude the GreatThe mystic of Helfta whose name is on the most prayed prayer for the holy souls.
• St. GilesHe took the arrow meant for the deer: the old patron of everyone afraid to confess.
• St. Gregory of NarekArmenia’s prayer poet: his book is kept under pillows, and Rome made him a Doctor across a divide.
• St. Hedwig of SilesiaThe duchess who carried her shoes, and consoled a grieving people while burying her own son.
• St. Isidore the FarmerA day labourer who prayed before dawn and plowed after, the working farmer’s saint.
• St. Ivo of KermartinA lawyer and not a thief, a marvel to the people: the advocate of the poor.
• 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. Joan of ArcThe teenager who led armies, was burned by a rigged court, and was proven right forever.
• St. John ChrysostomThe golden mouth: he preached to the powerful as if they were poor, and paid the price.
• St. John EudesHe preached the Hearts of Jesus and Mary before anyone else, and built refuge for women the world had used.
• St. John FisherThe one bishop who refused: made a cardinal in the Tower, and the hat never reached him.
• St. John NepomuceneThrown from the Charles Bridge rather than break a confession’s seal.
• St. John NeumannArrived in New York with one suit and no diocese, and built the American parochial school.
• St. José Sánchez del RíoFourteen years old, given every chance to renounce, and he would not.
• St. Joseph CafassoThe priest of the gallows: he walked sixty condemned men to their deaths and called them his hanged saints.
• St. Joseph CalasanzHe opened Europe’s first free school for poor children, and was deposed from his own order at ninety.
• St. Josephine BakhitaEnslaved as a child in Sudan, she ended a free woman, a sister, and a saint.
• St. Juan DiegoThe man Our Lady of Guadalupe chose, whose tilma has hung in Mexico City ever since.
• St. Junípero SerraFounder of the California missions: he fought the soldiers for Indigenous people, and built a system that did lasting harm.
• St. Kateri TekakwithaThe Lily of the Mohawks: scarred at four, exiled for her faith, first Native American saint.
• St. Katharine DrexelThe banking heiress who spent the whole fortune on schools the country refused to build.
• St. Leonard of NoblacThe hermit whose shrine filled with the chains of freed captives.
• St. Lorenzo RuizA Manila clerk who boarded the wrong ship, and became the Philippines’ first saint.
• St. Louis IXThe king who judged the poor under an oak tree, and wrote his son the letter every father means to write.
• St. Margaret Mary AlacoqueThe nun of the Sacred Heart: disbelieved at home, vindicated across the world.
• St. Margaret of CastelloBorn blind and disabled, hidden by her parents, abandoned, and beloved by the whole town that found her.
• St. Margaret of CortonaNine years a nobleman’s mistress, a son, a murder, and then the Franciscans’ Third Light.
• St. Margaret of ScotlandThe exiled princess who civilized a court, mothered kings, and taught her husband to love the books he could not read.
• St. Marguerite BourgeoysMontreal’s first teacher: she opened her school in a stable and fought Rome for sisters without walls.
• St. Marguerite d'YouvilleWidow of a bootlegger, mocked as the tipsy sisters: she took the insult as a name.
• St. Maria GorettiMurdered at eleven, and the second half of her story belongs to the man she forgave.
• St. Mariam BaouardyThe little Arab: a Galilee orphan who survived the unthinkable and built the Carmel of Bethlehem.
• St. Marianne CopeFifty congregations refused Hawaii’s plea. She answered, finished Damien’s work, and stayed thirty years.
• St. MarkHe deserted Paul once, and the last word on him is that he is useful to me.
• St. Martin de PorresBarred from full membership for his race, he outshone the order that barred him.
• St. Martin of ToursThe soldier who cut his cloak in half for a freezing beggar, and the patron of everyone leaving the military.
• St. Mary MacKillopExcommunicated, wrongly and briefly, and vindicated. Australia’s first saint kept teaching the whole time.
• St. Mary MagdaleneThe first witness of the resurrection, and the patron of second chances.
• St. MauriceCommander of the Theban Legion: Egyptian soldiers who refused the unjust order, at the cost of the whole legion.
• St. Maximilian KolbeTook another man's place in a starvation cell at Auschwitz.
• St. Moses the BlackGang leader, then desert father: my sins run out behind me, and I come to judge another.
• St. Nicholas of MyraThe bishop behind Santa Claus: fiercer, poorer, and better than the legend.
• St. Nimatullah KassabThe scholar-monk of Kfifan, who taught a young student named Charbel.
• St. OlafViking raider, hard king, Norway’s eternal patron: sainthood found him faster than gentleness did.
• St. Oliver PlunkettThe last Catholic martyr of Tyburn, condemned by a plot everyone knew was false, and forgiving everyone anyway.
• St. Oscar RomeroChosen as the safe candidate, he became the voice of the voiceless, and was shot at the altar.
• St. PancrasMartyred at fourteen, and for a thousand years oaths were sworn over his tomb.
• St. PatrickTaken as a slave, went back freely, and is asked to pray for people facing fear.
• St. Paul Miki and CompanionsTwenty six crucified above Nagasaki, then the Church went underground for 250 years and survived.
• St. Peter CanisiusThe second apostle of Germany: he answered a hostile age with catechisms and courtesy.
• St. Peter ClaverSlave of the slaves forever. He signed it, and met every ship for forty years.
• St. Peter DamianOrphan, swineherd, hermit, cardinal, and a man who spent thirty years begging to be sent back to his cell.
• St. Philip NeriThe Apostle of Rome, who made cheerfulness a discipline and jokes a cure for pride.
• St. Pier Giorgio FrassatiVerso l’alto: the mountain climbing student whose secret poor filled his funeral.
• St. RafqaShe asked to share Christ’s suffering, and bore thirty years of it with documented joy.
• St. Raymond NonnatusDelivered by cesarean after his mother died, he spent his life buying other people back.
• St. Rita of CasciaMarried into violence, outlived it, and is asked for in impossible situations.
• St. RochA pilgrim who nursed plague victims, caught it, and was fed by a dog, asked for in epidemics.
• St. Rose of LimaThe first canonized saint of the Americas: needlework by day, the poor in her family’s spare room.
• St. Rose Philippine DuchesneShe begged thirty years for the mission, arrived at forty nine, failed at the language, and knelt.
• St. Stanislaus of KrakówPoland’s bishop martyr: he excommunicated his king and was cut down at the altar.
• St. StephenThe first martyr. He died forgiving, with Saul holding the coats.
• St. Stephen of HungaryHungary’s first king: he wrote his son a manual of everything he knew, and then had to bury him.
• St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)Jewish philosopher and Catholic Carmelite, killed at Auschwitz, a daughter of Israel to the end.
• St. Teresa of CalcuttaFifty years serving the dying, and fifty years of interior darkness, serving anyway.
• St. Thomas MoreThe King's good servant, but God's first: patron of lawyers and of costly integrity.
• St. Thomas the ApostleUnless I see: the doubter whose demand produced the highest confession in the Gospels.
• St. TitusPaul’s fixer, sent into the messes nobody else could sort out.
• St. Titus BrandsmaThe journalist the Nazis killed at Dachau. His last act was giving his rosary to his executioner.
• St. Turibius of MogrovejoA law professor drafted to Lima, who walked his diocese for twenty five years and confirmed two future saints.
• St. UbaldusThe gentle bishop of Gubbio, asked for eight centuries to pray for people troubled by obsessive fear or harassment.
• St. Vincent de PaulThe peasant priest who organised charity itself. Every parish food pantry descends from him.
• St. Vincent PallottiA century early, he insisted that every layperson is an apostle.
• St. WenceslausThe good king of the carol, murdered by his brother at the church door.
• Sts. Cosmas and DamianTwin physicians who charged nothing: the silverless ones, patrons of medicine.
• Sts. Cyril and MethodiusThey gave the Slavs an alphabet so the Gospel could speak their language.
• Sts. Isaac Jogues, Jean de Brébeuf and CompanionsEight missionaries who died among the peoples they had chosen to belong to.