You're listening the Catholic Spouts

podcast, we are getting back to business as usual. And we are also celebrating the launch

of our brand new club, the Be a Saint

Kids Club, by talking about what it actually takes to become a saint in the Catholic Church.

Now, of course, it takes a life of good and holy works, a true relationship with Jesus Christ,

so a life of holiness. But what we are going to talk about this week is what it actually takes for the church

to recognize a saint.

And all of the events that we'll be talking about need to occur, be investigated, and proven

to be true after that saint has died.

But before we get to that, let's talk about the saint that we

are celebrating today on August 16th. The saint is Saint Rock or St. Rocco. This is a French saint

who lived in the 1300s. And the reason why he is an important saint for us to know about in our times

is because he is the patron saint of pandemics or of infectious diseases. So during St. Rock's life,

he answered the call to become a religious and he lived his life as a hermit. A hermit

devotes his life entirely to prayer and lives completely alone. So after spending many years

in this deep contemplative state with God, St. Rock left his hermitage and he discovered that

there was a plague sweeping through France. Of course,

this is the 1300s. They did not have advanced medicine. So these diseases just spread and

killed whole regions. For this reason, many people would just leave plague victims to die.

They would not help them.

But St. Rock, because he was a holy man, he got to work helping.

And he was actually seen as a living saint because the people that he was ministering to would actually recover.

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