St. Raymond Nonnatus

Who they were

The name is the biography. Nonnatus means not born, because Raymond was delivered by cesarean in Catalonia after his mother died in labour, a survival so rare in the thirteenth century that it read as providence.

He joined the young Mercedarian order, founded to ransom Christians enslaved in North Africa, and gave the family inheritance to the work. In Algiers, when the money ran out with captives still in chains, he did what the order's fourth vow actually contemplated and handed himself over as the hostage. The traditions of his captivity are hard, including the account that his captors, enraged that he kept preaching, padlocked his lips. That is presented here as the tradition it is. Ransomed at last by his order, he was named a cardinal and died at about thirty six on the road to Rome.

Why people turn to St. Raymond Nonnatus

Expectant mothers in complicated or dangerous deliveries, and the midwives, doulas, and hospital teams around them. The patronage flows straight from his birth. He is also asked for by the wrongly held, from his chains.

How to ask their intercession

For a mother by name before a hard delivery, hers and the baby's both. This pairs naturally with Gerard Majella.