To celebrate All Saints’ Day, Jesuit Missions’ Campaigns and Advocacy Adviser Richard Solly lists some of those who have inspired him in his life and work.
There is such a huge number of saints that it seems wrong to pick out only some for special mention, but here are a few who have made a deep impression on me and influenced my path in life, including my work now at Jesuit Missions.
I have left out the Jesuit saints because we already celebrate them widely within the Jesuit family. In my own list there is a bias towards medieval saints because I studied medieval history at university and was inspired by what I read about them.
St Francis of Assisi (1182-1226)
St Francis has been my favourite saint since I first read about him at school. He challenged the social customs and structures of injustice of his day by giving up his great wealth and living with and serving the poor and the outcast, including particularly people with leprosy, who had previously repulsed him. He spoke of the Earth as our Mother and treated other living beings as brothers and sisters, famously taming the wolf of Gubbio and preaching to a flock of birds. He opposed war and the bearing of arms. He travelled to Egypt during a crusade and went unarmed into the Muslim military encampment to speak to the Sultan, establishing a model of respectful interfaith dialogue which was centuries ahead of its time.
St Clare of Assisi (1194-1253)
St Francis’ great friend St Clare similarly came from a wealthy family and, inspired by Francis, ran away from home in order not to have to marry a rich young man chosen by her family. She embraced the same absolute poverty that Francis embraced and lived a life of prayer in support of the poor and needy and of peace in the world, tending a small garden through which she too showed her love of God’s creation.
St Aidan (c.590-651)
St Aidan was sent by the great St Columba of Iona to preach the Christian faith to the Anglo-Saxon people on Northumbria. His predecessor on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne had alienated people by his gruff and demanding manner. Aidan was gentle and non-judgemental and attracted people to the Faith by his kindness. The King of Northumbria gave him a horse to make it easier to travel around, but Aidan gave it to a poor man who needed it more than he did. The King was angry, feeling insulted that he had given away so great a gift, but Aidan simply pointed out that once the King had given him the horse it was his to do what he wanted with it, and it would do more good helping the poor man and his family.
St Hilda (614-680)
St Hilda was the Abbess of Whitby, governing a double monastery including both monks and nuns. In 664 she hosted a great gathering at which it was to be decided whether the Church in the Anglo-Saxon lands would follow Celtic or Roman practices. She herself favoured Celtic practices but went along with the decision to follow Roman practices. She was a wise leader and a great diplomat.
St John Henry Newman (1801-1890)
St John Henry Newman was a well-known academic and Church of England priest. He was very clear and systematic in his thinking, and his studies of the Patristic period of Church history led him eventually to join the Roman Catholic Church, in which he was made a Cardinal by Pope Leo XIII. But his clear thinking did not turn him into a bigoted or arrogant man. In fact, his work on how Christian beliefs develop over time helped prepare the way for the Second Vatican Council which encouraged the whole Catholic Church to be more open to other Christians and people of other Faiths.
Bl Sara Salkahazi (1899-1944)
Blessed Sara Salkahazi was a loud, self-confident, chain-smoking Hungarian socialist journalist who became a nun and set up Working Girls’ Homes which secretly provided shelter for Jewish women being persecuted by the Hungarian Nazi Party. She was arrested in 1944 and shot along with the Jewish women caught in the house at the time.
St Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997)
St Teresa gave up a relatively easy life teaching rich girls in Kolkata in order to find and assist the most neglected of the poor and sick in the city’s streets, dedicating decades of her life to caring for them with respect and dignity.
St Oscar Romero (1917-1980)
St Oscar Romero was a rather timid man whose ministry as a priest in El Salvador was for a long time rather unadventurous but whose duties as a bishop helped him to understand more and more profoundly the terrible effects of inequality and injustice on the country’s rural poor. As Archbishop of San Salvador, he continually denounced the brutal injustices inflicted on the poor and on anyone who challenged the status quo, and called on the country’s rich elite and on the military to end the repression. He was shot dead while celebrating Mass in March 1980.
These very different people have all inspired me and I ask them each day to pray for me. You will perhaps have your own list of such spiritual heroes. We can allow them to inspire us to greater devotion to the cause of the Kingdom of God; and as St Thomas More said, may we all one day meet merrily in heaven.
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