St. Catherine of Alexandria: Feast Day, Patronage & Prayers
Updated: Oct 3
Feast day: November 25 (optional memorial)
Patron of: Philosophers, students, and young women.
About St. Catherine of Alexandria
St. Catherine of Alexandria is venerated as a virgin and martyr of the early fourth century. The details of her life come from later legends, but devotion to her was strong in both East and West, and she was one of the most popular saints of the Middle Ages, invoked in the traditional Litany of the Saints and counted among the Fourteen Holy Helpers.
According to her story, Catherine was a young noblewoman of Alexandria in Egypt, highly educated in philosophy, who became a Christian. When the emperor Maxentius persecuted Christians, she boldly confronted him, and he summoned fifty philosophers to refute her. Instead, she answered them so well that they were converted. She was condemned to be broken on a spiked wheel, which shattered at her touch, and she was then beheaded. The wheel became her symbol. Her relics are venerated at the ancient monastery that bears her name at the foot of Mount Sinai. Removed from the General Roman Calendar in 1969, her memorial was restored in 2002 on November 25. Students and philosophers ask her help to love truth and to defend it with courage.
Prayers to St. Catherine of Alexandria on Daily Catholic Prayers
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