St. Lawrence

One of the seven deacons of Rome, ordered by the prefect to hand over the wealth of the Church. Lawrence asked three days, gathered the city's poor, and presented them to the prefect: "Here is the treasure of the Church." For this insolence he was roasted on a gridiron — and is said to have joked from the flames, "Turn me over, this side is done."

Tradition places his birth in Huesca, Spain, and his arrival in Rome as a young man drawn by the holiness of Pope Sixtus II, who made him archdeacon — responsible for the Church's charity and its sacred vessels. When Sixtus was arrested during the persecution of Valerian in 258, Lawrence wept, asking why he could not accompany his bishop to martyrdom.

His wit in the face of death has made him one of the most beloved martyrs of the early Church and the unlikely patron of cooks and comedians. The great basilica of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura in Rome marks his burial place, and his feast on August 10 was one of the most widely celebrated in medieval Christendom.