All stories
Guardian Angels · c. AD 44, during the reign of Herod Agrippa I
Peter Freed by the Angel
As Herod Agrippa I prepared to execute Peter, the Church prayed without ceasing, and an angel of the Lord entered the guarded prison by night, loosed his chains, and led him past two sets of guards and through an iron gate that opened of itself. Peter walked free into the city, certain only afterward that it had not been a vision.
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Guardian Angels · Narrative set during the Assyrian exile, eighth-seventh century BC; the book itself likely composed later, around the third-second century BC
Tobias and the Angel
In the Book of Tobit, the archangel Raphael travels in human disguise as the kinsman Azariah to guide young Tobias from Nineveh to Media, where he secures a debt, delivers Sarah from the demon Asmodeus, and returns to heal the elder Tobit's blindness with the gall of a fish, before revealing himself as one of seven angels who stand before the throne of God.
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Guardian Angels · A war preceding human history, in the Church's reading of Revelation 12; Daniel's visions of Michael are set during the Babylonian and Persian periods, sixth century BC
Michael and the Dragon
Revelation 12:7-9 depicts a war in heaven in which the archangel Michael and his angels cast down the dragon, identified as Satan, while the Book of Daniel names him prince and protector of God's people and the Letter of Jude records his contest with the devil over the body of Moses; the Church venerates him as defender of the Church and guardian of the dying.
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Guardian Angels · The night before the Crucifixion, traditionally dated to c. AD 30 or AD 33
The Angel of Gethsemane
According to Luke 22:43-44, as Jesus prayed in agony at Gethsemane the night before His crucifixion, an angel appeared from heaven to strengthen Him, and His sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood; the verses are missing from some of the oldest manuscripts, yet were quoted by Christian writers as early as the second century, and the Church retains them in her canonical and liturgical text.
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Guardian Angels · Third year of Cyrus, king of Persia — c. 536 BC by the book's own dating; the Book of Daniel is generally held to have reached its final form c. 167–164 BC
Daniel and the Prince of Persia
Daniel 10 records the vision given to Daniel in the third year of Cyrus, by the river Tigris, after three weeks of mourning and fasting. A messenger clothed in linen tells him his words were heard on the very first day he prayed them, and that the answer was withstood for twenty-one days by the prince of the kingdom of Persia until Michael, named there as Israel's own prince, came to his aid. It is Scripture's fullest account of conflict among unseen powers, and its plainest statement that a prayer may be answered long before its answer arrives.
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Acts of the Apostles · c. AD 30-33, fifty days after the Resurrection
Pentecost
Fifty days after the Resurrection, the Holy Spirit descends upon the apostles and Mary in the upper room as tongues of fire, filling them with power and the gift of languages, and Peter's proclamation that day draws three thousand into baptism. Pentecost marks the public birth of the Church and the beginning of the Spirit's age among men.
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Acts of the Apostles · c. AD 30–33, shortly after Pentecost
Peter at the Beautiful Gate
At the Temple's Beautiful Gate, Peter healed a man lame from birth in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, and the man walked, leapt, and praised God before the astonished crowd. The miracle became Peter's occasion to preach Christ crucified and risen to all Israel.
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Acts of the Apostles · c. AD 34–36
The Conversion of Saul
On the road to Damascus, a light from heaven struck down Saul of Tarsus, persecutor of the Church, and the voice of the risen Christ confronted him; blinded for three days, he was healed and baptized through Ananias and became the apostle Paul. His conversion turned the Church's fiercest enemy into its most tireless missionary.
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Acts of the Apostles · c. AD 60, winter, during Paul's voyage to Rome
Paul and the Viper
Shipwrecked on Malta after fourteen days adrift in a storm, Paul was bitten by a viper while gathering firewood, yet suffered no harm, confounding the islanders who had first taken him for a murderer and then for a god. The sign opened the way for healings that won the whole island's hospitality.
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Acts of the Apostles · c. AD 33-36, in the Church's earliest years
Philip and the Ethiopian
An angel sent Philip to the desert road from Jerusalem to Gaza, where the Holy Spirit directed him to join the chariot of an Ethiopian eunuch, treasurer to the Candace, who was reading Isaiah aloud; Philip preached Christ to him, baptized him at once, and was then carried away by the Spirit to Azotus.
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Acts of the Apostles · c. AD 35-36, shortly before the conversion of Cornelius
Peter Raises Tabitha
In the port city of Joppa, the disciple Tabitha, called Dorcas in Greek and renowned for her charity toward widows, fell sick and died; summoned from nearby Lydda, Peter knelt beside her body, prayed, and commanded, "Tabitha, rise," whereupon she opened her eyes and sat up alive, and many in Joppa believed in the Lord.
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Eucharistic Miracles · 8th century (analysis: 1970–71, 1981)
The Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano
In the 8th century, a Basilian monk in Lanciano, Italy, doubting the Real Presence, saw the consecrated host visibly turn to flesh and the wine to blood during Mass. The relics have survived to the present day, and a 1970-71 scientific analysis by Prof. Odoardo Linoli identified the flesh as human cardiac tissue and the blood as type AB.
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Eucharistic Miracles · August 1996 (analysis: 1999–2000s)
The Eucharistic Miracle of Buenos Aires
In August 1996, a discarded consecrated host in a Buenos Aires parish, placed in water to dissolve as was customary, instead turned into what appeared to be bleeding flesh over several days. The case was handled personally by the parish's auxiliary bishop, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, and later scientific studies identified the tissue as living human heart muscle under inflammatory stress.
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Eucharistic Miracles · October 2008 (analysis and declaration: 2008–2009)
The Eucharistic Miracle of Sokółka
On October 12, 2008, a consecrated host dropped during Mass at St. Anthony's parish in Sokółka, Poland, was placed in water and later found to bear a red, tissue-like stain. Independent pathologists at the Medical University of Białystok identified the material as heart muscle tissue in a state characteristic of an agonal (dying) human heart, fused inseparably with the bread's structure.
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Eucharistic Miracles · 1263 (bull issued 1264)
The Eucharistic Miracle of Bolsena-Orvieto
In 1263, a Bohemian priest troubled by doubt over the Real Presence reportedly saw the host bleed onto the altar linen while celebrating Mass in Bolsena, Italy; the blood-stained corporal was carried to Pope Urban IV in nearby Orvieto, and the following year his bull Transiturus de hoc mundo established the feast of Corpus Christi for the universal Church, with Orvieto Cathedral later built to enshrine the relic.
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Eucharistic Miracles · early 13th century
The Eucharistic Miracle of Santarém
In the early thirteenth century, a married woman of Santarém, Portugal, seeking a spell to reclaim her husband's affection, reportedly removed a consecrated host from Mass at the request of a sorceress; the host began to bleed in the cloth in which she hid it, and the prodigy, discovered that night by a light shining from the chest where she concealed it, gave rise to the shrine now known as the Church of the Holy Miracle.
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Eucharistic Miracles · October 21, 2006 (investigation 2009–2012; diocesan recognition October 12, 2013)
The Eucharistic Miracle of Tixtla
On October 21, 2006, during a parish retreat for extraordinary ministers of Communion in Tixtla, Guerrero, Mexico, a consecrated host began to exude a reddish substance in the hands of the woman distributing it. Studies directed between 2009 and 2012 by Dr. Ricardo Castañón Gómez — the same researcher who examined the Buenos Aires host — reported human blood of type AB and cardiac tissue, with the bleeding originating inside the host. Bishop Alejo Zavala Castro recognized it as a "Divine Sign" on October 12, 2013; the case was later reopened and remains under review by Rome.
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Exorcisms & Failed Sorcery · c. AD 53–55, during Paul's third missionary journey
The Sons of Sceva
In Ephesus, seven sons of a Jewish chief priest tried to expel a demon by invoking the name of Jesus as a magic formula, without faith or the Spirit who alone gives that Name its power; the possessed man overpowered and stripped them, and the terrified city burned its books of magic. The episode revealed that Christ's name cannot be wielded as a spell.
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Exorcisms & Failed Sorcery · c. AD 34–36, shortly after the martyrdom of Stephen
Simon Magus
Simon, a sorcerer who had astonished Samaria with magic, believed and was baptized under Philip's preaching, but then offered Peter and John money to purchase the power of imparting the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands. Peter rebuked him sharply, and the sorcerer's name became the root of the word 'simony,' the buying or selling of what belongs to God alone.
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Exorcisms & Failed Sorcery · c. AD 49-51, during Paul's second missionary journey
The Slave Girl at Philippi
In the Roman colony of Philippi, a slave girl possessed by a spirit of divination followed Paul and his companions for many days, proclaiming true words about their mission until Paul, wearied by an endorsement from an alien source, cast the spirit out in the name of Jesus Christ; her enslavers, their profit from her divination gone, had Paul and Silas beaten and imprisoned.
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Exorcisms & Failed Sorcery · c. AD 45-47, during Paul's first missionary journey
Elymas the Sorcerer
On Cyprus, the sorcerer Bar-Jesus, called Elymas, opposed Paul before the proconsul Sergius Paulus and tried to turn him from the faith; Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, denounced him and struck him with temporary blindness measured to match the darkness he had sold to others, and the astonished proconsul believed the teaching of the Lord.
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Exorcisms & Failed Sorcery · First century AD, during and after Christ's Galilean ministry
Mary Magdalene and the Seven Demons
Luke and Mark record that seven demons went out of Mary of Magdala, who became a woman of means supporting Christ's ministry, stood at the cross when most had fled, and was the first witness of the Resurrection; medieval Western tradition wrongly conflated her with the sinful woman of Luke 7 and with Mary of Bethany, a conflation the 1969 Roman Calendar reform corrected.
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Exorcisms & Failed Sorcery · 1884-1890
The Vision of Leo XIII
Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903) is traditionally said to have seen, during a Mass of thanksgiving in the Vatican, a vision of demonic spirits converging on Rome, and to have composed in its aftermath the short prayer to St Michael the Archangel, sent to the bishops of the world in 1886 and recited kneeling after every Low Mass until the liturgical reform of 1964. He also wrote the long Exorcism against Satan and the Apostate Angels (1890), placed in the Roman Ritual and restricted to authorised priests. The account of the vision survives only in two mid-twentieth-century recollections.
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Exorcisms & Failed Sorcery · 1913–1920
The Exorcism of Piacenza
An unnamed married woman of Piacenza, mother of two, was afflicted from 23 April 1913 until 23 June 1920, when she was delivered at the friars' convent of Santa Maria di Campagna. The exorcism was ordered by Bishop Giovanni Maria Pellizzari over the hesitation of the exorcist, Fr. Pier Paolo Veronesi, attended by the hospital director Dr. Lupi under a pact of mutual honesty and taken down in shorthand by Fr. Giustino — documentation rare for 1920, transmitted through Renzo Allegri's reportage and retold by Gabriele Amorth in L'ultimo esorcista (2012).
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Exorcisms & Failed Sorcery · 1981–1988
Angelo Battisti: The Man Who Fell Silent
Angelo Battisti was an official of the Vatican Secretariat of State and the administrator and first president of Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza, the hospital founded by Padre Pio, whose intimate friend he was; in 1962 he personally carried to San Giovanni Rotondo the letters in which Bishop Karol Wojtyła asked Padre Pio's prayers for the dying Kraków physician Wanda Półtawska. From May 1981 until 1988 he was held by the exorcists who attended him to be demonically possessed — a case with no discoverable cause, marked by mutism, nightly violence in his home, and no reaction whatever during the rite. He was freed near Monte San Savino in 1988 without a single exorcism being performed there, by mere proximity to a parish priest he never once sought out. Fr. Gabriele Amorth reports the case in three separate books.
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Exorcisms & Failed Sorcery · 1987
The Demon Who Named the Hour
On 21 February 1987, in the Antonianum complex on the Via Merulana in Rome, Fr. Gabriele Amorth performed the first exorcism of his career without his master Fr. Candido Amantini beside him. The subject was a young farm worker from the Roman countryside who in trance spoke only English, a language he did not know. At the Ritual's commanding prayer the spirit gave its name as Lucifer, the man went rigid and rose about half a metre above his chair — the only levitation Amorth reported in thirty years of the ministry — and, falling back, announced in English that it would leave on 21 June. Amorth deliberately left that week free; at the next appointment the man was calm, prayed a whole Hail Mary, and recounted that at the named hour, alone on his tractor in the fields, he had cried out and felt himself free. The two published versions of the account give different hours for the same day, a divergence recorded here rather than resolved.
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Exorcisms & Failed Sorcery · 1987
The White Bird
In 1987, in an Italian parish whose diocese had no exorcist available, two prayerful priests agreed at his parents' request to bless an eleven-year-old boy who showed no abnormal signs at all. At the first prayer in the sacristy the child screamed, blasphemed and struck out; over two sessions fifteen days apart the priests used only what any priest may use — the sign of the Cross, holy water, blessed candles, incense — and invoked Our Lady, St Francis, St Benedict and St Michael. The demon called on Lucifer and on all the damned and received no help; then it cried out against Our Lady, and against a 'White Bird' it named as the most powerful of all its enemies. The boy was freed and grew up serving at Mass. Fr Gabriele Amorth, who recorded the case in 1992, suggested in a parenthesis that the Bird may have been a manifestation of the Holy Spirit.
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Exorcisms & Failed Sorcery · July 1988
Laura of Cassino
In July 1988 Laura, a fourteen-year-old from Cassino in southern Lazio, was led at night by a schoolmate to a farmhouse outside the town where about ten hooded people were conducting a séance; the single hour she spent there ended, the same night, with the girl cursing, spitting at and biting her own parents. Her father, a practising Catholic, drove her to Rome before dawn and was waiting when the friars opened the Scala Santa at six; sent on to Fr. Gabriele Amorth, she was freed in roughly ten minutes and went straight down to play ball in the courtyard. Amorth recorded the case in L'ultimo esorcista (2012) as his clearest instance of a possession caught before it could take root — and of what a father's speed is worth.
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Exorcisms & Failed Sorcery · 20th century
The Handkerchief of Marília
At a Catholic secondary school near Marília, in the interior of São Paulo, Brazil, an Italian missionary sister found a small folded handkerchief hidden in a pupil's schoolbook and a second one sewn inside her pillow, together with the girl's own cut hair — a hex laid on her by a woman who had promised her in marriage to her son. The sister burned the objects in the schoolyard incinerator while praying, took the girl to confession first of all, and the wasting, sleeplessness and failing schoolwork ended. Recorded by Gabriele Amorth as the testimony of the sister herself, who says she had never before believed such things were real.
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Exorcisms & Failed Sorcery · 1991–1999
Freed at Lourdes
In May 1991 a widow from Campania, called only Federica in the published account, brought her two adult sons — Pasquale, 22, and Fabrizio, 20 — to Fr. Gabriele Amorth, exorcist of the Diocese of Rome. Years earlier she had been drawn into a satanic cult, violated, and consecrated to Satan, and had afterwards brought the boys, then aged five and three, to be consecrated with her while they were sedated. Amorth exorcised the three separately for eight years, obtaining relief but never release, and concluded that spirits which had entered together would have to be expelled together. In October 1999 a pilgrimage train carried all three to Lourdes, and at the grotto of Massabielle they collapsed and cried out at the same moment and were freed. It is the central case of Amorth's last book, El signo del exorcista (2013).
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Our Lady · December 1531
Our Lady of Guadalupe
In December 1531, near Mexico City, the Virgin Mary appeared to the Aztec convert Juan Diego on the hill of Tepeyac, leaving her image imprinted on his cactus-fiber cloak. The tilma survives nearly five centuries later, and generations of scientists have failed to explain how it was made or why it has not decayed.
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Our Lady · February–July 1858
Our Lady of Lourdes
Between February and July 1858, the Virgin Mary appeared eighteen times to fourteen-year-old Bernadette Soubirous at the grotto of Massabielle in Lourdes, France, revealing a spring that continues to flow. Since 1858, the Lourdes Medical Bureau has documented thousands of claimed cures, seventy of which the Church has formally recognized as miraculous.
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Our Lady · May 13 – October 13, 1917
Fátima and the Miracle of the Sun
From May to October 1917, the Virgin Mary appeared six times to three shepherd children in Fátima, Portugal, culminating on October 13 in a public solar phenomenon witnessed by an estimated 70,000 people, including secular journalists who had come expecting to debunk a hoax. The event was reported the next day in the Lisbon press.
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Our Lady · 1830 (medal struck 1832)
Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal
In 1830, at the motherhouse of the Daughters of Charity on the Rue du Bac in Paris, the Virgin Mary appeared twice to the young novice Catherine Labouré, on the second occasion showing herself with rays of light streaming from her hands and instructing that a medal be struck; within a decade of its 1832 minting, reported graces and conversions had earned it the popular name it still bears.
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Our Lady · 1973–1981
Our Lady of Akita
Between 1973 and 1981, a wooden statue of the Virgin at a small convent in Akita, Japan, was reported to weep, sweat blood, and bear a wound matching one that appeared on the hand of Sister Agnes Sasagawa, a deaf nun who also received messages warning of chastisement; in 1984 the local bishop, John Shojiro Ito, declared the events worthy of belief and permitted veneration in his diocese.
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Our Lady · 1696 (repeated 1715 and 1905)
Our Lady of Máriapócs, the Weeping Icon
In a wooden village church in eastern Hungary, on 4 November 1696, a Byzantine icon of the Mother of God began to weep during the Divine Liturgy and continued for two weeks, before dozens of sworn witnesses of three confessions. The original was taken to Vienna by imperial order; the copy left behind wept twice more, in 1715 and 1905, and Máriapócs is today the national shrine of the Hungarian Greek Catholics.
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Our Lady · Mid-16th century (arrival); December 7, 1857 (La Gritería, León); August 14, 1947 (Gritería Chiquita)
Our Lady of El Viejo and La Purísima
A carved image of the Immaculate Conception, given by St. Teresa of Ávila to her brother Rodrigo de Cepeda y Ahumada, survived the wreck of his galleon at the Nicaraguan port of El Realejo in the mid-sixteenth century and has never left the town of El Viejo. She is the patroness of Nicaragua. Around her grew La Purísima and La Gritería — the December cry "¿Quién causa tanta alegría?" answered "¡La Concepción de María!" — and the Gritería Chiquita, vowed in August 1947 when the Cerro Negro volcano stopped erupting the night a bishop promised it.
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Miracles of Christ · c. AD 27-29, early Galilean ministry
The Wedding at Cana
At a village wedding in Galilee, the wine runs out and the feast totters on the edge of shame. At the quiet intercession of his mother, Jesus turns six stone jars of water into the finest wine — his first sign, and the first unveiling of his glory to the men who would become his apostles.
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Miracles of Christ · c. AD 29, mid Galilean ministry
The Feeding of the Five Thousand
On a hillside above the Sea of Galilee, a crowd of thousands who followed Jesus into the wilderness finds itself hungry and far from any town. From five loaves and two small fish, blessed and broken in Jesus's hands, all are fed with baskets to spare — the only miracle recorded in all four Gospels.
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Miracles of Christ · c. AD 29, mid Galilean ministry
Walking on the Water
After feeding the multitude, Jesus sends his disciples ahead by boat and comes to them in the fourth watch of the night, walking on the storm-tossed sea. Peter, invited to come to him, walks a few steps on the waves before fear overtakes him and he begins to sink.
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Miracles of Christ · c. AD 30, shortly before the final Passover
The Healing of Blind Bartimaeus
Outside Jericho, a blind beggar named Bartimaeus cries out to Jesus as the Son of David despite the crowd's rebukes. Called forward, he throws off his cloak, asks to see, and receives his sight — then follows Jesus on the road, the last healing before the entry into Jerusalem.
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Miracles of Christ · c. AD 30, shortly before the final Passover
The Raising of Lazarus
In Bethany, Jesus arrives four days after the death of his friend Lazarus, weeps at his tomb, and calls him back to life with a loud voice. The greatest of his signs, it hastens the plot against him and stands at the threshold of his own Passion.
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Miracles of Christ · c. AD 29, mid Galilean ministry
The Gerasene Demoniac
Crossing to the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, Jesus meets a man possessed by a legion of unclean spirits, living naked among the tombs. He casts the demons into a herd of swine and restores the man, clothed and in his right mind — the pattern every exorcism since has followed.
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Miracles of Christ · c. AD 28–30, early Galilean ministry
Healing of the Paralytic
In a crowded house at Capernaum, four men lower their paralyzed friend through a broken roof to reach Jesus, who first forgives his sins and then commands him to rise. The healing exposes the scribes' unbelief and reveals that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.
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Miracles of Christ · c. AD 29, shortly before the journey to Jerusalem
The Transfiguration
On a high mountain, Jesus is transfigured before Peter, James, and John, His face shining like the sun and His garments becoming white as light, as Moses and Elijah appear beside Him and the Father's voice proclaims Him the beloved Son. The event confirms Christ's divine glory before His Passion and prefigures the resurrection.
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Miracles of Christ · c. AD 30-33, the third day after the Crucifixion, with appearances over forty days
The Resurrection
On the third day, the crucified Jesus rises bodily from the dead, the tomb found empty and His risen presence confirmed by numerous witnesses over forty days. As the central miracle of the Christian faith, the Resurrection is the Father's vindication of the Son and the pledge of the resurrection of all believers.
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Miracles of Christ · c. AD 28-29, Galilean ministry
The Widow of Nain
As Jesus approaches the town of Nain, He meets a funeral procession carrying the only son of a widow, and moved with compassion He touches the bier and commands the young man to rise. The miracle, witnessed by a great crowd, reveals Christ's power over death and His tender mercy toward the grieving.
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Miracles of Christ · c. AD 28, Galilean ministry
Healing of the Centurion's Servant
A Roman officer in Capernaum, a man of command who understands authority in his bones, sends word that he is not worthy to have Jesus enter his house. "Only say the word." It is the purest confession of faith Jesus has yet heard — and I am the one who placed it in a pagan's mouth.
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Miracles of Christ · c. AD 28, early Galilean ministry
The Cleansing of the Leper
A man ravaged by disease, forbidden by law to come near any living soul, kneels in the open road and dares to say "if you will." Jesus reaches out his hand and touches him — the first touch the leper has felt in years — and says the four words that undo a sentence of living death: "I will; be clean."
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Miracles of Christ · c. AD 29, Galilean ministry
The Woman with the Hemorrhage
Twelve years of bleeding, twelve years of ruin at the hands of physicians, twelve years of being unclean to every hand that might have helped her. In a pressing crowd she reaches for the hem of his garment, certain that a touch alone will be enough — and I am the certainty in her fingers.
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Miracles of Christ · c. AD 29, Galilean ministry
The Raising of Jairus's Daughter
A synagogue ruler falls at Jesus's feet begging for his dying daughter, and the crowd's slow crush delays them until word comes that she has died. "Do not fear, only believe." Jesus takes her cold hand and speaks two Aramaic words no one present would ever forget: "Talitha koum."
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Miracles of Christ · c. AD 28 (first catch); c. AD 30, after the Resurrection (second catch)
The Miraculous Catch of Fish
Twice the nets come up empty after a night of honest labor, and twice Jesus speaks a single word that fills them past breaking. The first catch calls fishermen away from their boats to follow him; the risen Lord's second catch, on a gray morning after the world seemed to have ended, calls Peter back.
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Miracles of Christ · c. AD 29-30, Feast of Tabernacles, Jerusalem ministry
The Man Born Blind
A beggar blind since birth is anointed with clay made of dust and spittle and sent to wash in the Pool of Siloam. He returns seeing — and spends the rest of the day being interrogated, disbelieved, and expelled by men who cannot bear a miracle that indicts their blindness instead of his.
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Miracles of Christ · c. AD 28-30, during a feast in Jerusalem
The Healing at the Pool of Bethesda
By the five porches of Bethesda in Jerusalem, a man who has waited thirty-eight years for healing meets the one who does not wait for the water to stir. Jesus asks a piercing question — do you want to be healed? — and with a single word restores what decades of near-misses never could, igniting the first open conflict over his identity as Son of God.
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Miracles of Christ · c. AD 29, Galilean ministry, a withdrawal into Gentile territory
The Syrophoenician Woman's Daughter
In pagan Tyre and Sidon, a Gentile mother pleads for her daughter, tormented by an unclean spirit, and will not be turned away by a hard saying about children's bread. Her wit and humility move Jesus to grant a healing at a distance — no touch, no word spoken over the child — commending a faith he found nowhere greater in Israel.
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Miracles of Christ · c. AD 29, shortly after the Transfiguration
The Boy with a Mute Spirit
At the foot of the mountain where Christ's glory had just been unveiled, his disciples fail to free a boy tormented since childhood by a mute, convulsing spirit. A desperate father's cry — 'I believe; help my unbelief' — becomes one of the truest prayers in the Gospels, and Jesus casts out what nine men could not, teaching that this kind comes out only by prayer.
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Miracles of Christ · c. AD 29-30, on the journey toward Jerusalem
The Healing of the Ten Lepers
Ten lepers cry out from the edge of a village between Samaria and Galilee, and Jesus sends them, still unhealed, toward the priests who will certify a cleansing that has not yet happened. All ten are healed on the way; only one, a despised Samaritan, turns back to give thanks — and receives more than the other nine.
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Miracles of Christ · c. AD 30, Holy Week, the Monday before Passover
The Withered Fig Tree
Hungry on the road from Bethany, Jesus curses a fig tree heavy with leaves and empty of fruit — a living parable he pairs, that same day, with the cleansing of the Temple. By morning the tree is withered to its roots, and Jesus turns the sign of judgment into a teaching on the mountain-moving power of faith joined to a forgiving heart.
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Miracles of Christ · c. AD 29, Galilean ministry, shortly after the Transfiguration
The Coin in the Fish's Mouth
When Capernaum's tax collectors ask whether Jesus pays the Temple tax, he reveals to Peter that as the Son, he owes nothing to his Father's house — and then, so as not to give offense, sends Peter to draw from the sea the one fish that has been carrying, in its mouth, the exact coin the moment requires.
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Old Testament · Before time; the first day of creation
The Spirit Over the Waters
In the opening verses of Genesis, the Spirit of God hovers over the formless deep before the first word of creation is spoken. Catholic tradition reads this hovering as the Spirit's proper role in the Trinity's single creative act, later echoed at Christ's baptism in the Jordan.
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Old Testament · The Exodus, traditionally c. 13th century BC
The Crossing of the Red Sea
As Pharaoh's army closes in on the fleeing Israelites, the pillar of cloud and fire shields the camp while a mighty east wind divides the sea, opening dry ground for Israel's escape. The Church has long read the crossing as a type of Christian baptism and of deliverance through the Paschal Mystery.
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Old Testament · Reign of King Ahab, traditionally 9th century BC
Elijah and the Fire on Carmel
After the prophets of Baal fail for hours to summon their god, Elijah rebuilds the altar of the Lord, drenches it in water, and prays a single brief petition; fire falls from heaven and consumes the offering entirely. Israel's confession that follows, "the Lord, he is God," ends the drought and vindicates the covenant against pagan worship.
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Old Testament · Ministry of Elisha, traditionally 9th century BC
Elisha and the Shunammite's Son
A childless woman's hospitality toward the prophet Elisha is rewarded with a promised son, who later dies suddenly in the fields. Elisha shuts himself alone with the child's body, prays, and stretches himself over him, and the boy is restored to life.
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Old Testament · Reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, traditionally 6th century BC
The Fiery Furnace
Three Jewish exiles refuse to worship King Nebuchadnezzar's golden image and are cast into a furnace heated seven times over. A fourth figure, "like the Son of God," walks with them in the flames, and they emerge without a hair singed, prompting the pagan king to bless the God of Israel.
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Old Testament · Reign of King Darius the Mede, traditionally 6th century BC
Daniel in the Lions' Den
Jealous officials trick King Darius into a decree that costs Daniel his life for continuing his lifelong practice of prayer. Cast into a den of lions, Daniel is preserved unharmed through the night by an angel who shuts the lions' mouths, and is drawn out at dawn without a mark upon him.
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Old Testament · Traditionally 8th century BC, reign of Jeroboam II
Jonah and the Great Fish
Fleeing his commission to preach to Nineveh, Jonah is cast into the sea and swallowed by a great fish, spending three days and nights in its belly before being delivered to dry land. Jesus Himself cites Jonah's three days in the fish as a sign of His own coming death and Resurrection.
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Old Testament · c. 13th century BC
The Burning Bush
At Horeb, a fugitive shepherd turned aside to see a thornbush that burned without being consumed, and heard the voice of God call him by name and disclose the divine Name — I AM WHO I AM. Exodus 3 records the theophany that sent Moses back to Egypt and gave Israel the Name it would not pronounce.
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Saints & Wonder-workers · September 14, 1224 (vision); died October 3, 1226
Francis of Assisi and the Wounds of La Verna
In September 1224, on Mount La Verna in the Tuscan Apennines, St. Francis of Assisi received the stigmata — the wounds of Christ's Passion imprinted on his own flesh — during a forty-day fast, the first documented case of stigmata in the history of the Church. He died two years later and was canonized within two years of his death, one of the fastest canonizations on record.
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Saints & Wonder-workers · 1195–1231
Anthony of Padua, Hammer of Heretics
St. Anthony of Padua (1195–1231), the Portuguese-born Franciscan whose preaching against the Cathar heresy earned him the title 'Hammer of Heretics,' was canonized less than a year after his death — one of the fastest canonizations in Church history — and later declared a Doctor of the Church.
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Saints & Wonder-workers · 1603–1663
Joseph of Cupertino, the Flying Friar
St. Joseph of Cupertino (1603–1663), a Franciscan friar considered too slow-witted for ordination, became the subject of over thirty years of publicly witnessed levitations during Mass and prayer, investigated repeatedly by the Roman Inquisition and witnessed by Pope Urban VIII himself. He was canonized in 1767 and is patron saint of aviators and students.
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Saints & Wonder-workers · c. 1854–1888
John Bosco and the Grey Guardian
For more than thirty years in 19th-century Turin, St. John Bosco documented repeated appearances of an unexplained grey dog he called Grigio, which materialized at moments of danger to protect him and then vanished, witnessed independently by his mother and by boys at his oratory. Bosco founded the Salesian order and was canonized in 1934.
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Saints & Wonder-workers · 1887–1968
Padre Pio and the Fifty-Year Wounds
St. Pio of Pietrelcina received visible stigmata on September 20, 1918, and bore the wounds for fifty years under repeated medical and ecclesiastical examination until his death in 1968. He founded the Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza hospital and was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2002.
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Saints & Wonder-workers · 1828–1898
Charbel Makhlouf and the Incorrupt Hermit of Annaya
St. Charbel Makhlouf (1828–1898), a Lebanese Maronite hermit, was found incorrupt for some sixty-seven years after his death, exuding a blood-like fluid documented by his monastic community, before the phenomenon ended and the body was found completely decomposed in 1976. He became associated with thousands of reported healings at his tomb in Annaya and was canonized in 1977 by Pope Paul VI.
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Saints & Wonder-workers · 1991–2006; canonized September 7, 2025
Carlo Acutis, the Cyber-Apostle of the Eucharist
Carlo Acutis (1991–2006), an Italian teenager who died of leukemia at fifteen, built an online exhibition cataloguing Eucharistic miracles worldwide and was canonized on September 7, 2025 by Pope Leo XIV, becoming the Catholic Church's first millennial saint. This Encyclopaedia continues the mission he began.
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Saints & Wonder-workers · c. 213–270
Gregory the Wonderworker and the Mountain That Moved
St. Gregory of Neocaesarea (c. 213–270), student of Origen, became bishop of a city with only seventeen Christians and reportedly left it with only seventeen pagans. Tradition credits him with moving a mountain and drying a flooding marsh, earning him the title Thaumaturgus, the Wonderworker.
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Saints & Wonder-workers · 316–397
Martin of Tours and the Half of a Soldier's Cloak
St. Martin of Tours (316–397), a Roman soldier who became a monk and bishop, is remembered chiefly for one winter night at Amiens when he cut his military cloak in half for a freezing beggar and saw Christ in a dream wearing it. He founded some of Gaul's first monasteries and evangelized the rural countryside.
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Saints & Wonder-workers · c. 480–547
Benedict of Nursia and the Cup That Would Not Hold Its Poison
St. Benedict of Nursia (c. 480–547) fled Rome for a cave at Subiaco, survived an attempted poisoning by monks who resented his discipline, raised a young monk crushed by a collapsing wall, and wrote the Rule that shaped Western monasticism. Pope Paul VI declared him patron of Europe in 1964.
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Saints & Wonder-workers · 1170–1221
Dominic, the Rosary, and the Book the Fire Would Not Burn
St. Dominic de Guzmán (1170–1221) founded the Order of Preachers to combat the Albigensian heresy through learning and prayer. Tradition holds that Our Lady gave him the Rosary at Prouille, and that at Fanjeaux his writings survived three castings into flames that consumed the heretical texts beside them.
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Saints & Wonder-workers · 1347–1380
Catherine of Siena and the Wounds She Asked Me to Hide
St. Catherine of Siena (1347–1380), a Dominican tertiary and mystic, is remembered for a mystical espousal to Christ, for stigmata she asked to remain invisible during her lifetime, and for persuading Pope Gregory XI to return the papacy to Rome from Avignon. She was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1970.
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Saints & Wonder-workers · 1350–1419
Vincent Ferrer, the Angel of the Apocalypse
St. Vincent Ferrer (1350–1419), a Valencian Dominican, preached across Spain, France, Italy, and Switzerland during the Western Schism, calling himself and being called by crowds the Angel of the Apocalypse for his warnings of judgment. His canonization process documented hundreds of reported healings during his missions.
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Saints & Wonder-workers · c. 270–343
St. Nicholas and the Gold Thrown in the Dark
St. Nicholas of Myra (c. 270–343), bishop of Myra in Lycia, became the wonderworker of the early Church through secret gifts to the poor, a calmed sea storm remembered by sailors for centuries, and relics that have exuded a clear liquid at Bari since 1087. He was never formally canonized — the ancient Church recognized his sanctity by acclamation.
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Saints & Wonder-workers · 1515–1595
Philip Neri and the Fire That Broke His Ribs
St. Philip Neri (1515–1595), the joyful Apostle of Rome, received a mystical fire in his chest on the vigil of Pentecost 1544 that physically enlarged his heart — a swelling confirmed at his autopsy, when doctors found two ribs broken outward to make room for it. He founded the Congregation of the Oratory and was canonized in 1622.
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Saints & Wonder-workers · 1786–1859
The Curé of Ars and the Thing in the Rectory
St. John Vianney (1786–1859), parish priest of Ars, France, spent up to sixteen hours a day in the confessional reading souls with an accuracy penitents found unnerving, while enduring years of documented nighttime disturbances he attributed to a demon he called "le grappin." Canonized in 1925, his body — found dried and darkened but structurally whole at the 1904 exhumation, and shown with a wax mask over the face and hands — lies above the main altar of the Basilica of Ars.
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Saints & Wonder-workers · 1905–1938
Faustina and the Two Rays
St. Faustina Kowalska (1905–1938), a Polish religious sister, recorded visions of Jesus as Divine Mercy in a diary written under obedience, giving the Church the image and the message that Pope John Paul II placed at the center of the universal calendar when he canonized her in 2000 and established Divine Mercy Sunday.
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Saints & Wonder-workers · 1579–1639
Martin de Porres, Seen in Two Places at Once
St. Martin de Porres (1579–1639), a mixed-race Dominican lay brother in Lima, Peru, was reported by contemporaries to appear in distant lands while remaining in his convent, healed the sick without regard to race or status, and was canonized in 1962 as one of the first saints of the Americas of African descent.
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Saints & Wonder-workers · 1845–1937
The Doorkeeper Who Built a Mountain
St. André Bessette (1845–1937), a frail, largely illiterate lay brother who spent decades answering the door of a Montreal college, attributed thousands of healings to the intercession of St. Joseph and, starting from a small wooden chapel, built what became St. Joseph's Oratory of Mount Royal, now the largest shrine to St. Joseph in the world. He was canonized in 2010.
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Saints & Wonder-workers · Persecution of Decius (249–251) to the reign of Theodosius II (c. 447)
The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus
Seven young Christians of Ephesus, walled into a cave during the persecution of Decius, are said to have slept for nearly two centuries and awakened under Theodosius II, betrayed by a coin three hundred years out of currency. Their story is one of the very few venerated in common by Christians and Muslims, and a grotto shrine near Ephesus was excavated in 1927–28.
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Saints & Wonder-workers · d. c. 303, Diocletianic persecution
George of Lydda and the Soldier Every Empire Claimed
St. George of Lydda (d. c. 303) was a Christian martyr executed under the Diocletianic persecution at Lydda (Diospolis) in Roman Palestine; his shrine cult there is attested by inscription and pilgrim record from the early sixth century, decades before the earliest surviving account of any kind about him. Veneration of him spread with remarkable speed across Syria, Egypt, Byzantium, Georgia, Russia, Armenia, and eventually Western Europe, making him one of the most widely venerated martyrs in Christian history despite an unusually thin factual record. His famous dragon-slaying is a literary invention first attached to his name in the eleventh century, roughly seven hundred years after his death.
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Saints & Wonder-workers · c. 1381–1457
Rita of Cascia and the Thorn She Carried Fifteen Years
St Rita of Cascia (c. 1381–1457) was an Italian Augustinian nun of Cascia, Umbria, remembered for refusing to let her sons avenge their father's murder, for a single wound on her forehead attributed to a thorn from a crucifix and borne for the last fifteen years of her life, and for a body whose documented examinations include repairs made with wax. She was beatified by Pope Urban VIII (1627–1628) and canonised by Pope Leo XIII on 24 May 1900.
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Saints & Wonder-workers · 1st century AD
Jude Thaddeus and the Question at the Supper
Jude Thaddeus was one of the Twelve Apostles, traditionally identified with the "Judas of James" of Luke's lists, the Thaddaeus of Matthew and Mark, and the Lord's kinsman named in Mark 6:3 — though the New Testament's own evidence for treating these as one man is genuinely disputed. At the Last Supper he alone asked Christ how he would manifest himself to the disciples and not to the world, drawing out the promise of the Spirit's indwelling presence. Venerated by tradition as a missionary and martyr in Mesopotamia, Persia, or Armenia, he became, from the twentieth century onward, the most widely invoked patron of desperate and hopeless causes.
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Saints & Wonder-workers · 3rd century (traditional); cult attested from 452
St. Christopher and the Weight of the World
St. Christopher was a martyr of Asia Minor whose veneration is attested by a Greek shrine inscription as early as 450–452, making him one of the most anciently documented of the popular saints. The giant carrying a child across a river — the image now inseparable from his name — is a 13th-century Western literary addition, arriving eight centuries after that inscription. His 1969 removal from the Church's universal calendar moved his feast to particular calendars alongside roughly two hundred others; it was never a decanonization, and he remains listed in the Roman Martyrology today.
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Saints & Wonder-workers · traditionally 4th century; cult attested from the 18th
St. Expeditus and the Crow Underfoot
St. Expeditus is venerated as a Roman soldier martyred at Melitene, though the name may be no more than a scribal misreading of "Elpidius" in the ancient Hieronymian Martyrology, leaving his existence as a distinct person genuinely uncertain. The popular story of his cult's origin — a crate from Rome mislabelled "spedito" and mistaken for a saint's name — is a later invention, demonstrably predated by the cult's own documented history in 18th-century Sicily and Germany. His true legacy is a living, enormous devotion, above all in Brazil, built around an image of a crow crying "tomorrow" crushed beneath a soldier's foot.
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