Talk:Patron saints of places

Saint Joseph
Joseph is not patron of Croatia as a country, but Croatians as people. Please see Catholic Online: Patron Saints. --€ro 12:19, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

National patron saints
I'm not sure about this last of national patron saints. St George is the patron saint of England, but Saints Edmund the Martyr and Edward the Confessor are also listed. These are English saints, but I don't believe they are patron saints of England. Anyone know better? 137.138.46.155 06:56, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

St. George is listed as a national patron saint of Catalonia, but then as a regional patron saint of Aragon. The criteria should be uniform on this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.219.142.84 (talk) 10:50, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Order of saints
It seems that this would be a significantly more user-friendly page if the order was reversed - places listed first, alphabetically. It is much more likely that a reader will be seeking to know the patron of a particular place than to know the place of which one is the patron. Irish Melkite 10:32, 26 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree. I had to do a search for some countries, and I didn't notice until later that each country's name appears more than once.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 17:48, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Saint Vilnius
Back in 1996 I visited an art gallery in Brugges, Belgium which had a painting titled "The skinning alive of Saint Vilnius". It was pretty horrific and I always wondered who he was and what he had done to warrant that kind of treatment. Found no record of him on the internet. Apparently Vilnius is a place. Is there a connection? 129.78.64.102 (talk) 02:54, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Canada
Canada is listed as having mutiple patron saints. That's plausible but, the question is which church is making this proclamation the RCs, Anglicans, Orthodox? Without sources it's imposible to know. --Kevlar (talk • contribs) 17:28, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

To answer my own question the Roman Catholics venerate George, Isaac Jogues, the Jesuit Martyrs of North America, John de Brébeuf, Joseph, Mary of the Hurons, and Our Lady of the Cape, as the patron saints of Canada. See: ,, ,. I also have a source for René, but the denomination isn't specified. It should also be noted that John the Baptist is the patron saint of French Canadians, and his saint's day is a national holiday in Quebec, while Our Lady of the Assumption is the patron saint of the Acadian people.--Kevlar (talk • contribs) 17:48, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Main patronage
The lists seems to contain roughly all the saints explicitly and particularly associated with the respective countries. That's, of course, honorable but I think it misses somewhat that what, at least to me, seems to be the idea of patronage. Thus, our patron as Germans is St. Michael the Archangel, and second patron is St. Boniface our Apostle. Adalbert of Magdeburg, however, is patron saint of the Diocese of Magdeburg (I should think) and Apostle of the Slavs but, as far as I know, not associated with an all-German patronage. Likewise, I though patron of Italy is St. Francis of Assisi (and that's it), patron saint of France is St. Louis, and second patron St. Jeanne (and that's it), patron saint of Ireland is St. Patrick, patron saint of England is St. George, second patrons probably St. Augustine of Canterbury, and maybe also, I hear, Pope St. Gregory, patron saint of the United States is Our Lady under the title of her Immaculate Conception, patron saint of Hungary is St. Stephen, patron saint of Spain is, I think, St. Jacob the Elder, patron saint of Poland is St. Stanislaus, patron saint of us Bavarians is Our Lady under the specific title Patroness of Bavaria (hooray!), etc. Such a list would be nice.--217.189.254.116 (talk) 19:18, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think it's out of place to include the secondary tier of patrons; some of them, like Michael in England, are quite important in their own right. But you're quite right that George should not be buried halfway down England's list and if the options are allowing that or just getting rid of the dross, we should get rid of the dross. We might even look into some formatting, like bolding the primary patrons.


 * As for questionable patrons, where it seems like someone has lazily copied some internet list without checking their facts first, go ahead and remove them pending some sources. — Llywelyn II   10:50, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Saint Patrick [citation needed]
To the joker who added a fact tag to Patrick's patronage over Ireland, may I kindly reäcquaint you with WP:BLUE. — Llywelyn II   10:50, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Formatting names
This was haphazard, so lemme give my two cents here: — Llywelyn II   14:11, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
 * We should not just leave it at "Our Lady of..." The actual saint here is Mary, in reference to some icon, miracle site, or cult.
 * We should link all the names so that people don't have to CTRL+F to find the other instance that has the link they're trying to use
 * We should pipe out the "Saint" from our links ( Joseph, not Saint Joseph ) since they're all saints.
 * We should not pipe out the locations ( Brigid of Ireland, not Brigid ), even when they are locally known without a loconym.
 * We should use John the Greater and John the Less since no one but our editors, the Welsh, and the Icelandings call them "X son of Y".
 * Michael the Archangel, not Michael or Micael (archangel)

Future article improvement
Finished rebuilding the basic page (y'll're welcome), but it is (of course) still a mess. Two main points are A minor annoyance is all the repetition of, e.g., Joseph in East Asia and Cyril & Co. in Slavic Europe.
 * It should be more obvious who the main patrons are
 * It should be more obvious which tradition is being followed (or the page should be cleaned up and moved to Catholic patron saints of places)

I think the solution would be a series of tables where:
 * 1 = place name
 * 2 = principal saint (w/some small allowance for multiples in places like France or with clarification if the Orthodox and Catholic saints differ or the saint changed in a location during the Reformation.)
 * 3 = feast day
 * 4 = an explanation of their patronage
 * 5 = other saints (w/links & no real details)

The different traditions (Orthodox/Catholic/Monophysite/etc.) could be color coded where they differ; place-names could (maybe?) be similarly use a color coded to cluster them into regions of patronage for people like Joseph and Cyril so that they only show up if their cult actually is the single largest one in a place (Doesn't work w/George since he's not really regional). If they aren't, the regional cult could be understood from the placement or color and we don't have to keep repeating the names in the "other saints" section.

Anyone have some free time? — Llywelyn II   13:59, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

US Patron Saint?
Why does a Catholic Almanac from 2012 get to decide what the patron saint for the United States is? Maybe I'm confused but I don't think that's an appropriate source for saying the Virgin Mary is the patron saint of the fifty states. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.78.69.48 (talk) 23:30, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
 * What makes you think they made the decision? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Manannan67 (talk • contribs) 20:58, January 18, 2020 (UTC)
 * The IP you are talking to made one edit and disappeared nearly five years ago. That said, they're likely referring to the fact that the article cites the 2012 Catholic Almanac as the source for it. - Sum mer PhD v2.0 02:29, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

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Limited to Catholicism?
I was SURPRISEd to get redirected here from Patron saints of places. Since there are patron saints outside of Catholicism, this is an WP:INUSA problem. I see recently moved the page in an attempt to limit it to Catholicism, but there are still non-Catholic saints, e.g., Herman of Alaska. That could be solved by removing them, and probably deleting redirects like Patron saints of places per WP:REDLINK, but I don't see a real benefit to removing such information, so I've reverted per WP:BRD.

It may well be useful to have a separate list of Catholic saints, but this should not come at the expense of a broader list. As an intermediate step, I recommend enhancing the article with information about which churches recognize which saints. I would also have no issue with organizing the list by church first, if it makes sense to do so. --BDD (talk) 18:21, 21 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Yeah, this list is a mess that I meant to get back around to fixing. So much of it is unsourced, duplicate entries, different list formats, different naming conventions for the same people, etc. Many of the town/city ones are also redundant to the saints for their larger subdivision, and with no source there's a good chance many of them weren't actually designated a patron of the town. I made that change because the Catholic Church is the only one with very clearly defined, unambiguous criteria per WP:LISTCRITERIA. The Orthodox situation is a lot more messy, with patronages recognized by one Orthodox Church not necessarily recognized by others. At one point, the page even had people who had been colloquially called a patron saint by someone, but didn't even belong to any religion. I don't think this is an WP:INUSA problem so much as an issue of list scope being poorly defined, so I tried to define it. The overwhelming majority of entries were Catholic, so that's where I started.
 * My goal was/is to reduce the list to what is verifiable, and go from there. Orthodox and other denominations (minus any overlap) would really be better off in a separate list, or at least a separate section of this page. With Orthodoxy being a collection of multiple denominations/hierarchies that have a complex web of which Churches recognize which other ones, just from a layout standpoint it would be better to have extra columns in the table showing which denominations their patronage is recognized in. It might be doable all at this page, but this list is already enormous enough to verge on unusable and adding all that extra information could easily cause issues with the template limits due to the numbers of references and other flags needed. I'm open to ideas on the best way to clean up this mess. The Wordsmith Talk to me 19:23, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I completely understand the need to bring order to this list, and appreciate the difficulties of finding authoritative information for non-Catholic churches (especially Orthodox ones). I'm a redirects guy, so my concern re: INUSA was around having broader-term redirects that take users to narrower concepts. That may ultimately satisfy readers, but it's also misleading. Maybe there is a case for REDLINK deleting the broader terms; I just hesitate because there's already content on non-Catholic saints here. It would be different if we were determining the scope while writing the article from scratch.
 * Roughly, I'm imagining an additional column for church(es) that have the designation of a particular saint with a particular place. That will give a bigger picture of where we stand and provide more information for readers in the meantime. --BDD (talk) 15:08, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
 * That could be possible, but if a list including that became truly comprehensive instead of what it was previously (95% Catholic or pre-Schism with a handful of others) it would almost definitely bump into template limits. It might be worth a shot, but first we'd have to go through and start tagging each Saint and which Churches recognize them. The Wordsmith Talk to me 15:26, 22 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks and any lurkers for your patience. I've reviewed each saint listed from the beginning (under Continents) through Luxembourg (in Countries), stopping there for the scientific reason that my wife is ready to go to bed. :)
 * I grouped each saint (or group of saints) into one of five buckets. I based this off quick looks at their article. It's certainly possible veneration of a specific church just isn't listed in an article at the time I looked, but I assumed that's basic information likely to be there.
 * Bucket 1 – Saints only venerated in the Catholic Church
 * Bucket 2 – Saints mainly venerated in or associated with the Catholic Church, but also by others
 * Bucket 3 – Saints with no particular affiliation (indeed, mostly pre-Schism figures)
 * Bucket 4 – Saints mainly venerated in or associated with non-Catholic church, but also by the Catholic Church
 * Bucket 5 – Saints not venerated in the Catholic Church


 * My full data is collapsed below. Out of a nice round 110 saints, the numbers by bucket were, respectively, 25, 24, 51, 5, and 5.


 * Exclusively Catholic (25): Agnes of Bohemia, Andrew Kim Taegon, Anna Wang, Astrik, Bruno of Cologne, Canute IV of Denmark, Charbel Makhlouf, Coloman of Stockerau, Francis Solanus, John of Nepomuk, Joseph of Anchieta, Laura Montoya, Laura Vicuña, Leopold III, Margrave of Austria, Louis Bertrand (saint), Mariana de Jesús de Paredes, Mary MacKillop, Peter Canisius, Peter of Alcántara, Peter of Saint Joseph de Betancur, Rose of Lima, Saint Casimir, Saint Petronilla, Teresa of the Andes, Thérèse of Lisieux
 * Leaning Catholic (24): 26 Martyrs of Japan, Ansgar, Bridget of Sweden, Canadian Martyrs, Catherine of Siena, Denis of Paris, Edith Stein, Elizabeth of Hungary, Francis of Assisi, Francis Xavier, Gertrude the Great, Jean de Brébeuf, Joan of Arc, John Bosco, Korean Martyrs, Louis IX of France, Martin of Tours, Óscar Romero, Peter Chanel, Peter Claver, Saint Dominic, Saint Remigius, Saint Thorlak, Virgil of Salzburg
 * Ecumenical (51): Adalbert of Magdeburg, Adalbert of Prague, Andrew the Apostle, Barnabas, Bartholomew the Apostle, Benedict of Nursia, Brigid of Kildare, Columba, Cunigunde of Luxembourg, Cyprian, Elijah, Frumentius, Gerard of Csanád, Henry (bishop of Finland), James the Great, Jerome, John the Apostle, John the Baptist, Jude the Apostle, Lazarus of Bethany, Ludmila of Bohemia, Margaret the Virgin, Mark the Evangelist, Maruthas of Martyropolis, Michael (archangel), Moses the Black, Olaf II of Norway, Paul the Apostle, Pope Gregory I, Procopius of Sázava, Radegund, Saint Anne, Saint Barbara, Saint Boniface, Saint Emeric of Hungary, Saint Florian, Saint George, Saint Joseph, Saint Kilian, Saint Maurice, Saint Nicholas, Saint Nino, Saint Patrick, Saint Peter, Saint Vitus, Severinus of Noricum, Sigismund of Burgundy, Stephen I of Hungary, Thomas the Apostle, Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia, Willibrord
 * Leaning non-Catholic (5): Cyril and Methodius, Gregory the Illuminator, John of Rila, Kirill of Turov, Mesrop Mashtots
 * Not Catholic (5): Elisæus of Albania, Euphrosyne of Polotsk, Hans Egede, Herman of Alaska, John of Baku


 * Some of this is subjective, but it gives us a general picture. For better or worse, it mostly confirms what we already knew. If we do give a separate Catholic article, I think it would be more useful to limit it to group 1. On the other hand, the low numbers in bucket 5 make me think a separate non-Catholic article would not be very helpful. I considered recommending spinning out the many instances of Mary to Patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary if they aren't there already—I assume they'd be in buckets 1 or 2 if I had a good way of investigating them all—but that might leave some places without a listed saint here.
 * So... I'm not really sure where this leaves us! I will say that rather than a new column, we could use footnote symbols for the various churches—or I suppose those symbols could go in a new column anyway. --BDD (talk) 01:46, 11 April 2024 (UTC)