You're listening to Catholic Sprouts, the daily podcast for Catholic kids that strives to plant seeds of faith.

Hey there, Sprouts. Today is Wednesday, June 8th, 2020. Now, this week we have been talking about the patron saints of summer. We have already talked about the patron saints of beaches, of good weather, of travel.

And today we are talking about the patron saint of barbecuing or grilling.

Now, this is a little bit of a gross connection, but a great story. The patron saint of barbecuing or grilling out is St. Lawrence.

Now, St. Lawrence was a deacon in the early church. He lived in the city of Rome, and during those years

when it was illegal to be a Christian. He served under the Pope, and as a deacon, it was his special job to distribute

alms or money that Christians had donated. He distributed that to the poor. But like I said,

the church was under fierce persecution. And so the officers in Rome were hunting down Christians.

They found the Pope.

They drug him out and executed him.

And St. Lawrence begged the Pope to go with him, but the Pope prophesied that St. Lawrence would follow him in a couple of days.

So after the Pope had been killed, the Roman

officers found Lawrence, and they knew that he was in charge of the church treasury. They thought

that the Christian church was very wealthy. So they ordered St. Lawrence to bring them all of the

riches of the church in three days' time. So St. Lawrence got to work.

He emptied the church treasury. He gave every penny away to the poor and the suffering.

And then he began to gather up all the poor, the sick, the widows, the orphans.

He gathered all of those people, and he arrived before the officers at the appointant time.

So he came and he bought this big crowd of smelly, sick, poor people.

And the Roman officers were very confused.

They had ordered him to bring the treasures

of the Christian church. St. Lawrence, who enjoyed a good joke even to the end, he told them that

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