Students and learning

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

• St. Albert the GreatThe medieval mind that studied everything, Aquinas’s teacher and the scientists’ patron.
• St. Aloysius GonzagaRenounced a princely inheritance at seventeen and died at twenty-three nursing plague victims.
• St. AmbroseDrafted into a bishopric by a crowd: he baptized Augustine and made an emperor do penance.
• St. Angela MericiFounded the first teaching order of women: school for girls, centuries early.
• St. AnselmFaith seeking understanding: the gentlest mind of the medieval Church.
• St. Bede the VenerableFifty years in one monastery, and he wrote England into history, finishing his last sentence as he died.
• St. Benedict of NursiaWrote the rule that shaped western monasticism, and is asked to pray for protection against evil.
• St. BonaventureThe Seraphic Doctor: head and heart refused to be enemies in him.
• St. Carlo AcutisA gamer and programmer who died at fifteen, the first saint of the internet generation.
• St. CasimirThe prince who walked away from an unjust war at thirteen: Lithuania’s beloved young saint.
• St. Catherine of AlexandriaThe girl who out argued the emperor’s philosophers, by tradition, and patron of students ever since.
• St. Charles Lwanga and CompanionsPages of the royal court who protected the younger boys, and paid for it at Namugongo.
• St. Clare of AssisiFrancis’s first follower, who fought the papacy for the right to own nothing and won on her deathbed.
• St. Cyril of AlexandriaThe theologian of Ephesus: because of him, the Church says Mother of God.
• St. DominicFounder of the Order of Preachers, and the name tradition attaches to the rosary itself.
• St. Dominic SavioBosco’s best pupil, dead at fourteen, and the proof that holiness fits a schoolboy.
• 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. Elizabeth Ann SetonWidowed in quarantine, converted at full cost, and the first American born saint.
• St. EphremThe Harp of the Spirit: he taught theology by writing hymns, and founded women’s choirs to sing them.
• St. Gemma GalganiA young mystic of Lucca who lived with spinal tuberculosis, asked for by people with back pain.
• St. GeorgeThe soldier-martyr behind the dragon legend, where the courage is the historical part.
• St. Gregory the GreatSold his estates, fed Rome through plague, and named the papacy’s true job.
• St. HelenaSet aside by an emperor for politics, mother of the next one, and the Church’s great seeker of the Cross.
• St. Hildegard of BingenAbbess, composer, physician, visionary: the twelfth century’s widest mind belonged to a nun.
• St. Isidore of SevilleTried to write down everything known, and thirteen centuries later people invoke him over the internet.
• St. JeromeGave the West its Bible from a cave in Bethlehem: brilliant, cranky, and honest about it.
• St. John Baptist de La SalleHe invented the modern classroom, and gave away his fortune so poor boys could sit in it.
• St. John BerchmansMy penance is community life: the saint of the perfectly kept ordinary.
• St. John BoscoA street-magician priest who built a family for Turin's abandoned boys, asked for by parents and teachers.
• St. John Henry NewmanHeart speaks to heart: the Oxford convert who paid full price for following the argument.
• St. John NeumannArrived in New York with one suit and no diocese, and built the American parochial school.
• St. John Paul IIThe pope who gave the rosary its first new mysteries in centuries, and forgave the man who shot him.
• St. José Sánchez del RíoFourteen years old, given every chance to renounce, and he would not.
• St. Joseph CalasanzHe opened Europe’s first free school for poor children, and was deposed from his own order at ninety.
• St. Joseph MoscatiThe Naples professor who treated the body and remembered the soul: the modern lay physician saint.
• St. Joseph of CupertinoThe slowest student his teachers had ever met, asked for by test takers, and, from the levitations, by pilots.
• St. Julie BilliartParalyzed twenty two years, she taught from her bed; healed, she founded schools for twelve more.
• St. Justin MartyrHe shopped every philosophy in the empire, found the true one, and kept the philosopher’s cloak.
• St. Lawrence of BrindisiThe Capuchin who preached in eight languages, and rode before an army armed with a crucifix.
• St. Leo the GreatRode out to meet Attila, and the Hun turned around.
• St. Madeleine Sophie BaratFoundress at twenty-one, superior for sixty-three years: for a single child I would have founded the Society.
• 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. Maria GorettiMurdered at eleven, and the second half of her story belongs to the man she forgave.
• St. Marie-Alphonsine GhattasA Jerusalem daughter who saw Our Lady of the Rosary, and founded the Rosary Sisters of Palestine.
• St. Mary MacKillopExcommunicated, wrongly and briefly, and vindicated. Australia’s first saint kept teaching the whole time.
• St. Nimatullah KassabThe scholar-monk of Kfifan, who taught a young student named Charbel.
• St. PancrasMartyred at fourteen, and for a thousand years oaths were sworn over his tomb.
• St. Peter ChrysologusGolden words: the Doctor who kept his homilies short on purpose.
• St. Pier Giorgio FrassatiVerso l’alto: the mountain climbing student whose secret poor filled his funeral.
• St. Stanislaus KostkaHe walked four hundred and fifty miles to answer his call, and died a novice at seventeen.
• St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)Jewish philosopher and Catholic Carmelite, killed at Auschwitz, a daughter of Israel to the end.
• St. Thomas AquinasThe Church's greatest mind, locked in a tower by his own family, asked for by students.
• St. TimothyPaul’s anxious protege, told to let no one despise his youth.