You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute,

an Apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.

Welcome to Form Now. I'm Tim Gray, president of the August Institute, and joining me as a special guest and a colleague of mine here at the August Institute, Paul McCusker, who is a well-known author, best-selling author, and the creative director of a lot of our content production here at the August Institute.

And so, Paul, this is a joy to talk with you about St. Cecilia. You know, we've done a special audio drama that we're going to talk about on St. Cecilia. So she has a very special place in our heart. But St. Cecilia, her feast day this year kind of got eclipsed. It fell on a Sunday on the 22nd of November. And so a lot of people, you know, missed that feast day. So today, we want to talk about St. Cecilia, so we don't forget her. And, of course, she's known as, you

know, saints have the, a lot of saints are the patrons of certain things. You know, they're kind of

the, they're known for, you know, St. Anthony's, the patron for finding lost objects,

you pray for him for that. And St. Cecilia, she's a wonderful patroness. We want to explain

for everybody what she's the patroness of. Well, over the years, she became our patroness of,

well, the organ is how she's normally depicted as sitting at the organ, but then it expanded over the years as her patron of, well, music, music in the arts, but mostly music.

So, you know, so many people love St. Cecilia, especially those who love music. You know, they love the name

their children, you know, when they have a daughter, Cecilia, because she's the patroness of

singing, of music. And I think a lot of Catholic parishes need to pray for her for their

intercession for their choirs so that their choirs can improve.

But she is, she's, you know, Catholic choirs love St. Celia.

It's, she's just this great patroness. And when we wanted to tell the story about this saint,

because she's a remarkable woman who, you know,

unfortunately she's martyred by the Romans during the persecution of the Christians,

and she was a convert to Catholicism.

And she has this remarkable story.

Why don't you just tell a little bit about her story for people?

Well, it is remarkable.

She was from a fairly upper middle class household in near Rome, and it was fairly

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