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Saints for real life

Patron Saint of Lost Things

St. Anthony of Padua

Catholics have long turned to St. Anthony when something has been lost or misplaced. His story, though, is larger than a single devotion. He was a Franciscan preacher, a theologian, and a Doctor of the Church, and the basilica raised over his tomb in Padua has drawn pilgrims for nearly eight centuries.

“Let your words teach and your actions speak.”
St. Anthony of Padua, from his sermon teaching, read in the Office of Readings on his feast
Saint Anthony of Padua in the brown Franciscan habit, holding a lily and the Christ Child.

Why Catholics turn to St. Anthony

  • The tiered marble and gilt reliquary wall of the Chapel of the Relics in the Basilica of Saint Anthony, Padua. Finding what is lost He is the saint most Catholics name first when something has gone missing: a set of keys, a document, a bearing.
  • The crypt beneath the Church of Saint Anthony in Lisbon, where pilgrims pray at the site venerated as his birthplace. Asking for help in confusion The same prayer is made for what cannot be held: clarity, a decision, a person out of touch.
  • The rose window of Lisbon Cathedral, the church whose font is traditionally venerated as the place of Anthony's baptism. Ordinary needs, and the poor Anthony preached steadily for those crushed by debt. The old custom of the "bread of Saint Anthony" gives alms in thanksgiving.
  • The Franciscan sanctuary of La Verna on its wooded ridge in the Tuscan Apennines. Devotion that becomes a journey For many the devotion ends at his tomb, in a Franciscan basilica that has kept his memory since 1232.

Start with the answer

Why is St. Anthony the patron saint of lost things?

Saint Anthony of Padua in the brown Franciscan habit, holding a lily and the Christ Child.

St. Anthony of Padua is the Catholic saint most commonly invoked as the patron saint of lost things. The association is traditionally traced to an account of a stolen psalter that was later returned. His feast is June 13, and his principal pilgrimage shrine is the Basilica of St. Anthony in Padua, Italy.

The patronage rests on a story told of Anthony after his death rather than on anything he wrote. A novice is said to have left the community taking with him a psalter Anthony used to teach, a book carrying his own notes and, in the thirteenth century, a costly object to replace. Anthony prayed for its return, and the account has the novice bringing it back and returning to the community.

That story is not in the earliest life of Anthony, the Assidua, written within a year or so of his death in 1231. It appears in later Franciscan collections, and it is best read as devotional tradition rather than documented biography. What the tradition preserves is the shape of the prayer people still make: something is gone, and Anthony is asked to help find it.

The devotion spread through generations of Catholics who turned to Anthony for help in ordinary needs, and it fits the saint. Anthony spent his short life making difficult things findable: Scripture for people who could not read it, justice for people buried in debt. Catholics still ask him for what is lost, and for what matters more than the thing itself.

Read his full life Visit his tomb in Padua
“Let your words teach and your actions speak.”
St. Anthony of Padua, from his sermon teaching, read in the Office of Readings on his feast

Padua, and where his story begins

Visit St. Anthony

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Plan a pilgrimage

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  1. A morning at the basilica The tomb, the Chapel of the Relics, and the cloisters. Come early, before the queue builds.
  2. Follow the Franciscans Assisi is the other half of the story: Francis approved Anthony to teach theology to the friars.
  3. Or begin in Lisbon His birthplace church and the cathedral font, a minute apart in the Alfama.
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Photo credits
  1. Hero; The Basilica. Basilica Santo Antonio in Padova. Petar Milošević / Wikimedia Commons. Source. CC BY-SA 3.0.
  2. Finding what is lost; The tomb and the relic chapel. Didier Descouens / Wikimedia Commons. Source. CC BY-SA 4.0.
  3. Asking for help in confusion. Quarto de Santo António - Igreja de Santo António de Lisboa - Lisbon (52750124327). Haydn Blackey / Wikimedia Commons. Source. CC BY-SA 2.0.
  4. Ordinary needs, and the poor. Jakub Hałun / Wikimedia Commons. Source. CC BY 4.0.
  5. Devotion that becomes a journey. Terragio67 / Wikimedia Commons. Source. CC BY-SA 4.0.
  6. Lisbon, where he began. Dguendel / Wikimedia Commons. Source. CC BY 4.0.