St. Anthony of Padua

Born Fernando in Lisbon, he joined the Augustinian canons as a young man before transferring to the Franciscans, inspired by the martyrdom of five friars in Morocco. He sailed for Africa hoping for his own martyrdom, but illness forced him back to Europe, where Francis of Assisi himself heard him preach and appointed him the order's first theology teacher.

Anthony became the most celebrated preacher of his age. Crowds of thirty thousand came to hear him in open fields; shops closed and courts adjourned when he arrived in a city. He preached with such force against usury and social injustice that civic laws were changed in his wake. He died at thirty-five, exhausted by his labors.

He was canonized less than a year after his death — faster than any other saint in history. His patronage of lost things comes from a legend that a novice who stole Anthony's psalter was compelled by a vision to return it. He remains one of the most beloved and invoked saints in the Catholic world.