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

Greetings young Squire Sprouts. Today is the 22nd day in the 10th month in the year of our Lord 2022. My name is Sir Roland Pader Law, and you're listening to Saturdays with Sir Roland

on Catholic Sprouts where every Saturday we discuss the art of dragon slain.

Today is the feast of one of my favorite saints.

I know, I keep saying that, because there's so many great saints.

But this one probably influenced me more than any other saint because he was alive for most of my life, and he was the Pope.

He is, of course, St. John Paul II.

He was elected Pope almost exactly one year before I was born, so I grew up with

this man as Pope. He was Pope for 26 years and was the first non-Italian Pope in 455 years as he was

from Poland. I could tell you stories about this great modern-day saint all day, and his feast day is a

great day to start our new series on the seven deadly dragons

because he is the one who inspired me to strive for holiness and to slay dragons and be not afraid.

He was the inspiration for the over 50,000 wristbands I've distributed across the country that say,

become a saint, be not afraid. He was an intellectual genius and spoke at least eight languages

and encountered more human faces than anybody who ever lived. But his heart belonged to our Lord

in adoration and prayer, and he entrusted his life, told us to us to our blessed Mother Mary,

to guide and protect him from evil. He was a true evangelist and taught us to seek what he called

a new evangelization to help reawaken the sleeping giant called the Catholic Church. The new

evangelization is about sharing the ancient truce of our faith with new methods and new ardor,

and that is exactly why I'm teaching you the ever-ancient and ever-new methods of dragon slain.

So if you like this podcast,

say thank you to St. John Paul II today, and heed his advice, be not afraid to be the saints

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