All Saints All the Time

The Saints-a-Day Guide

By Sean Kelly and Rosemary Rogers

(Random House, $14.95, paperback)

 Quick, name the patron saint of choir boys and juvenile delinquents. And which saints were killed by “crazed” cows?

The Saints-a-Day Guide bills itself as “a lighthearted but accurate (and not too irreverent) compendium.” It originally was published in 2001 by Villard Books as The Birthday Book of Saints. This Random House paperback edition was published in 2003 and is an entertaining and enlightening reference work for “all of us, Catholic or not.”

If you didn’t name Saint Dominic Savio, “the youngest (nonmartyr) Saint ever officially canonized,” and Saints Perpetua and Felicity, you obviously don’t know your saints and need this book.

Indeed, whether we are boatwrights, linguists or just somebody with a headache or a hernia, we have Saints looking out for us and can invoke them if we happen to know their names.

Also, with this handy book, we may never again miss the “Feast of Saint Godeleva,” celebrating the “miserably married martyr, 1070″ (July 5) or the “Feast of Saint Theodard,” the “assassinated Frankish abbot, 669,” who is considered the patron saint of cattle dealers (September 10). 

And don’t forget Nov. 5, the “Feast of Saint Kay.” The name of the 7th century monk in Brittany often is “invoked against toothache,” according to this book’s co-authors.

Sean Kelly is a book author, television writer and National Lampoon editor. Rosemary Rogers is the author of several books about saints, the Irish and movies.

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