Portal:Catholic Church/Patron Archive/August 16 2007

Saint Roch (Latin: Rochus; Italian: Rocco; French: Roch; Spanish and Portuguese: Roque; c. 1295 – traditionally 16 August 1327) was a Christian saint, a confessor whose death is commemorated on 16 August; he is specially invoked against the plague.

He was born at Montpellier as the son of the noble governor of that city. Even his birth was accounted a miracle, for his noble mother had been barren until she prayed to the Virgin Mary. Miraculously marked from birth with a red cross on his breast that grew as he did, he early began to manifest strict asceticism and great devoutness.

On the death of his parents in his twentieth year he distributed all his worldly goods among the poor; though his father on his deathbed had ordained him governor of Montpellier&mdash; and set out as a mendicant pilgrim for Rome. Coming into Italy during an epidemic of plague, he was very diligent in tending the sick in the public hospitals at Acquapendente, Cesena Rimini, Novara and Rome, and is said to have effected many miraculous cures by prayer and the sign of the cross and the touch of his hand. Ministering at Piacenza he himself finally fell ill. He was expelled from the town; and withdrew into the forest, where he made himself a hut of boughs and leaves, which was miraculously supplied with water by a spring that arose in the place; he would have perished had not a dog belonging to a nobleman named Gothard supplied him with bread.

On his return incognito to Montpellier he was arrested as a spy (by orders of his own uncle) and thrown into prison, where he languished five years and died on 16 August 1327, without revealing his name, to avoid worldly glory.

Attributes: Wound of thigh, dog offering bread

Patronage: pilgrims, against diseases (especially the plague), gravediggers, second-hand dealers, dogs

Prayer: