The Universal Call to Holiness

Hey Catholics,

I could use some help on a project. I'm doing a piece on what I call the Do-it-Yourselfers," saints who became very holy and/or mystics without entering holy orders or belonging to a religious order. Lay people who focused their lives totally on God and achieved great heights of holiness.

In Rome we see a lot of people who have, for whatever reason, been unable or unwilling to join the religious orders of the Church in their current form. They sometimes go so far as to make themselves a habit, and spend a lot of time in Rome's 900 churches, praying and making reparation. Some of them are probably at least a little nuts, and in other, less tolerant nations would likely be locked away or regarded as "homeless" and shunned. Here, they are are at least partly revered and are treated with a certain amount of deference.

Italians and other Catholics remember people like St. Benedict Labre, and Gemma Galgani, Anna Maria Taigi and Margaret of Castello.

It's these kinds of saints and blesseds I'd like to do a piece on, particularly the ones who most people might not have heard of, to encourage people in our... errm... difficult times.

The criteria are simply great holiness and the lay state. Members of secular/third orders, oblates and whatnot too.

Anyone got a favourite lay saint? Suggestions in the commbox pls.

St. Catherine of Sienna
St. Rose of Viterbo
Bl. Margaret of Castello
Bl. Mrs. Anna Maria Taigi
St. Benedict Joseph Labre
Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati
Bl. Ivan Merz
Bl. Frédéric Ozanam
St. Maria Goretti
St. Thomas More
St. Giuseppe Moscati
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