Saints & Wonder-workers
25 documented wonders in the chamber of Saints & Wonder-workers — each with its place, its period and the sources behind it.
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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