Episodes

He flunked Latin, became a priest anyway, and ended up America's first martyr — all because he refused to leave his parish in Guatemala.

Blessed Stanley Rother's story is part of our ongoing look at church history and the lives of the saints — this time, a story that's still being finished, since he's one miracle away from full canonization. This episode's Then and Now segment connects his 1981 martyrdom to missionaries facing the same choice today.

Everyday Saints tells the true stories of Ca...

He built the largest Catholic publishing operation in the world — then volunteered to die in a stranger's place at Auschwitz.

St. Maximilian Kolbe's story includes a childhood vision of two crowns, a media empire built out of a Polish monastery, and a decision in a starvation bunker that took the Church eleven years to properly name. This episode's Truth or Legend checks three claims most retellings skip past.

Everyday Saints tells the true stories of Catholic saints, separating verified churc...

Why do Catholics ask saints to pray for them instead of going straight to God? A special episode — no saint story today, just an honest answer.

Everyday Saints tells the true stories of Catholic saints, separating verified church history from centuries of pious legend — one ordinary saint at a time. This week we step away from that format for a direct answer to a question a lot of listeners, and a lot of Catholics, have never fully worked through: the communion of saints, the honor-vs-worship d...

A beggar tricked one of the most powerful men in the Christian world out of money — three separate times, in three different disguises. He got away with it every time, and the man he conned never once regretted it.

In this episode of Everyday Saints, a Catholic podcast telling real saint stories in plain, everyday language, we tell the true story of St. John the Merciful, the church leader who gave away an entire fortune to the poor and refused to condemn one of his own monks on rumor alone — e...

She led an army, crowned a king, and turned a losing war around — and the official record shows she was executed over a change of clothes.

In this episode of Everyday Saints, a Catholic podcast telling real saint stories in plain, everyday language, we tell the true story of St. Joan of Arc — a nineteen-year-old peasant girl who broke the siege of Orléans, crowned Charles VII king of France, and was burned at the stake after a politically rigged heresy trial. We separate fact from centuries-old...

Her own father hunted her down and killed her himself. Centuries later, that same tragedy helped build one of the earliest known models of community mental health care in the world.

In this episode of Everyday Saints, a Catholic podcast telling real saint stories in plain, everyday language, we tell the true story of St. Dymphna — a young Irish princess martyred by her own father after fleeing to the town of Geel, in what's now Belgium. We separate fact from centuries of pious legend with a rou...

He raised the Son of God — and never spoke a single word in Scripture. Not a greeting. Not a complaint. Not an explanation.


In this episode of Everyday Saints, a Catholic podcast telling real saint stories in plain, everyday language, we tell the true story of St. Joseph — the quiet man who absorbed a devastating prophecy in silence, packed up his family in the middle of the night to outrun a king who wanted his son dead, and stood by wordlessly while that same son, at twelve years old, point...

In this episode of Everyday Saints, a Catholic podcast telling real saint stories in plain, everyday language, we tell the true story of St. Simeon Stylites — a shepherd boy who gave up everything to chase God, and ended up trying to escape the crowds that followed him by climbing on top of a stone pillar. He never came down. For thirty-seven years, he lived on a platform barely six feet across, fifty feet in the air, exposed to the weather, while pilgrims, emperors, and entire towns came to fin...

In this episode of Everyday Saints, a Catholic podcast telling real saint stories in plain, everyday language, we tell the true story of St. Teresa of Calcutta — known to most of the world as Mother Teresa. For nearly fifty years, while she was founding hospices, winning the Nobel Peace Prize, and becoming the most recognizable image of Christian charity on the planet, she was privately writing to her spiritual directors that she couldn't feel God's presence at all. These letters were only made ...

In this episode of Everyday Saints, a Catholic podcast telling real saint stories in plain, everyday language, we tell the true story of St. Genesius of Rome — an actor who built his career mocking Christians on stage for the Emperor Diocletian, during the worst persecution in Roman history. One night, in the middle of performing a comedy sketch making fun of Christian baptism, Genesius said the words as a joke — and for the first time, meant them. He stopped the performance, told the emperor an...

In this episode of Everyday Saints, a Catholic podcast telling real saint stories in plain, everyday language, we tell the true story behind the man you already think you know: St. Nicholas of Myra. Before he was Santa Claus, he was an orphan who gave away a fortune in secret, dropping gold through windows in the dead of night so three sisters wouldn't be sold into slavery. Before that generosity ever made it into a Christmas poem, Nicholas spent years imprisoned and tortured for his faith durin...

In this episode of Everyday Saints, a Catholic podcast about the real lives of the saints, we tell the story of St. Mary of Egypt — one of the most extraordinary and least-known figures in Christian history. At 12 she ran away to Alexandria. For 17 years she lived entirely for herself. Then, on a whim, she joined a boat of pilgrims to Jerusalem — and at the door of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, something she couldn't explain stopped her cold. What followed was 47 years alone in the desert, a...

In this episode of Everyday Saints, a Catholic podcast about the real lives of the saints, host John O'Connor tells the story of St. Thomas the Apostle — one of the most misunderstood figures in the entire New Testament.

You know him as Doubting Thomas. Here is what you do not know.

Before he ever demanded proof, he was the only disciple willing to say out loud what following Jesus might actually cost. And after the moment history remembers him for — standing in a locked room, face to face wit...

In this episode of Everyday Saints, a Catholic podcast about the real lives of the saints, host John O'Connor tells the story of St. Moses the Black — a former slave, murderer, and leader of a violent gang of seventy-five men who terrorized the Nile Valley in fourth century Egypt.

He once swam a river at night with a sword in his teeth to settle a score over a barking dog.

He died thirty-five years later with his hands open — greeting the men who came to kill him. Without raising a hand in def...

In this episode of Everyday Saints, a Catholic podcast about the real lives of the saints, host John O'Connor tells the story of St. Paul — one of the most recognizable names in all of Christianity, and one of the most misunderstood.

Before he wrote half the New Testament, he was dragging Christians out of their homes and throwing them in prison. He stood and watched the first Christian martyr get stoned to death — and approved.

Then a blinding light knocked him off his feet on a road outside ...

In this episode of Everyday Saints, a Catholic podcast about the real lives of the saints, host John O'Connor tells the story of St. Margaret of Castello — one of the newest saints in the Catholic Church, canonized by Pope Francis in 2021, and one of the most overlooked.

She was born blind, severely disabled, and a dwarf. Her own wealthy parents were so ashamed of her that they sealed her into a small room beside a chapel when she was six years old. When a pilgrimage they took her on didn't pro...

In this episode of Everyday Saints, a Catholic podcast about the real lives of the saints, host John O'Connor tells the story of St. Thomas Aquinas — and it is nothing like what you learned in school.

His own brothers kidnapped him. His family locked him in a tower for a year to stop him from becoming a friar. They sent a woman into his cell to break his vows. And none of it worked.

The man who came out the other side wrote one of the most influential works in the history of Western thought — ...

In this episode of Everyday Saints, a Catholic podcast about the saints, host John O'Connor tells the story of St. Perpetua of Carthage — a young Roman mother who wrote her own prison diary in the year 203 AD, knowing she would die for her faith. It is one of the oldest surviving documents written by a woman in the ancient world.

The sand is hot beneath her feet. She is twenty-two years old. She has a baby she will never hold again. How she got to that arena — and what she wrote in the days bef...

A man is lying under a fig tree in a garden in Milan. Weeping. Uncontrollably. He is thirty-two years old — one of the most brilliant minds in the Roman Empire.

And he has been running from this moment for fifteen years.

In this episode of Everyday Saints, host John O'Connor tells the real story of St. Augustine of Hippo — one of the most influential thinkers in the history of Western civilization, and one of the most relentlessly honest human beings who ever put words on a page. A man who kne...

A man is being beaten in an asylum.

He is not there because he hurt someone. He is not there because he is dangerous.

He is there because he gave too much away.

That is where this story begins. And by the time it ends — this same man will have built something that is still saving lives in fifty-two countries today.

In this episode of Everyday Saints, host John O'Connor tells the real story of St. John of God — one of the most unknown, raw, and ultimately extraordinary saints in the history o...

He was the most popular young man in his town. Wealthy, charming, magnetic — the kind of guy everyone wanted to be around. He dreamed of glory, went to war, and ended up in a dungeon for a year.

He came out completely different.

In this episode of Everyday Saints, host John O'Connor tells the real story of St. Francis of Assisi — not the bird bath in the garden, not the gentle friar in the brown robe. The real one. The radical one. The man who stripped off every piece of clothing in the middle...

She was kidnapped at age seven. Sold into slavery over a dozen times. Tortured with 114 cuts carved into her skin. And if she ever met the people who did it — she said she would kneel down and kiss their hands.

This week on Everyday Saints, host John O'Connor tells the real story of St. Josephine Bakhita — a Sudanese woman whose life was marked by unimaginable suffering, and whose response to that suffering is one of the most extraordinary things you will ever hear.

What you'll hear in this ep...

He was loud, impulsive, hot-tempered, and working-class. He denied knowing Jesus Christ three times in a single night. And Jesus still built the entire Church on him.

In the first episode of Everyday Saints, host John O'Connor tells the real story of St. Peter — not the stained-glass version, but the fisherman with a temper, a complicated faith journey, and a track record of spectacular failure.

If you've ever felt like you've blown it too badly to come back from — this episode is for you.

Wh...