Here are some saints, powerful intercessors, to pray to throughout pregnancy to cultivate patience, ask for protection or even make good decisions along this journey towards the birth of the baby.
“The birth of a child is an explosion,” rightly estimates Anna Roy, midwife, speaker on the show La Maison des maternales and author of It’s My Pregnancy . If the arrival of a child disrupts the lives of his parents, the nine months of pregnancy are also a necessary period to prepare his body and his heart to welcome a new little baby into his life, his relationship and his home. During her pregnancy, a mother also experiences the astonishing and mysterious reality of a new life growing inside her while the emotional bond between her and her baby slowly takes shape. Here are the saints to pray to feel accompanied throughout this beautiful and ambivalent period, in order to go through with them the joys and anxieties which are the lot of the birth of all the children of the world.
OUR LADY OF THE SEA BREAM
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Little known in France but venerated by many Toulouse women, the Black Virgin of Notre-Dame la Daurade is the object of particular devotion on the part of future mothers. The latter entrust their unborn children to him. To materialize this consecration, the parish gives them a blessed belt, a guarantee of happy deliverance. Notre-Dame La Daurade is probably the oldest Marian sanctuary in Gaul. Indeed, around the 400s, a pagan temple was transformed into a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary , with gold leaf mosaics (representing scenes from the Old and New Testaments), hence the name ” Deaurata ”, “the Golden”. Over time, the smoke from the candles blackens the statue, making it Notre Dame la Noire.
SAINT MAMMÈS (259-275)
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Originally from Gangres in Asia Minor, Saint Mamas, or Mammès, is the son of Theodotus and Rufine, faithful Christians who were imprisoned by the pagans for refusing to deny Christ. It is in the dungeon that Mamas was born in 260. Both his parents died in prison shortly after his birth and the young orphan was adopted by a Christian woman named Ammiane. The name Mamas, or Mammès, means “one who has been breastfed”. For this reason, he is invoked as the patron saint of wet nurses.
SAINT MARGARET OF ANTIOCH († AROUND 305)
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Born in Antioch, Marguerite is the daughter of a pagan priest. Converted to Christianity while still a young shepherdess, she is coveted a few years later by Olibrius, a Roman governor who wishes to marry her. Wishing to remain a virgin, she refuses his advances and finds herself thrown in prison. In her dungeon, she is tormented by the devil and devoured by a dragon while she prays. Thanks to the cross she holds in her hand, she pierces the monster’s belly and manages to free herself. Despite this miracle, Olibrius continues to torture her and makes her suffer the worst tortures. She ends up being decapitated. A virgin martyr, she is invoked for childbirth, because of the ease with which she emerged unscathed from the belly of a dragon who had devoured her.
SAINT ULRICH OF AUGSBURG (890-973)
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Saint Ulrich is the first saint canonized by a decision of Rome, in 993 by Pope John XV. Trained at the monastery of Saint-Gall, in Switzerland, he was named bishop of Augsburg, in Austria, in 923. He died after forty years of episcopate in the service of the Church and remained very popular in Austria, Alsace and in northern Italy. He is the protector of childhood illnesses, since he resurrected a child from the family he was staying with during one of his trips.
SAINT CATHERINE OF SWEDEN (1332-1381)
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With her mother, Bridget of Sweden , Catherine visited churches and the tombs of martyrs, and engaged in long exercises of mortification. Both also went to care for the sick in hospitals, lived in poverty and austerity and made pilgrimages to the Holy Land . Catherine is venerated as a saint but without being canonized, her trial having never ended due to the Protestant reform. She is the patron saint of pregnant women, risky childbirth, miscarriages or terminated pregnancies and the risk of abortion.
SAINT COLETTE OF CORBIE (1381-1447)
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Colette was born on January 13, 1381 in Corbie, near Amiens, in Picardy. An unexpected birth as his mother was over 60 years old. Her parents named her Nicolette, attributing the miracle of her birth to the numerous prayers they had addressed to Saint Nicholas , patron saint of children. This is why couples expecting children are invited to turn to her.
SAINT ANTHONY OF PADUA (1195-1231)
From his birth in Portugal in the 13th century to his early death, after ten years of preaching, the life of Saint Anthony of Padua is of exceptional intensity: orator, preacher, meditator, miracle worker, he never ceases to bring the Good news and to combat heresies throughout Europe. Barren women and pregnant women pray to him for protection.
SAINT RAYMOND NONNAT (1204-1240)
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Raymond Nonnat was born in 1204 in Portell, a village in Catalonia which today bears his name, Sant Ramon. The “unborn” was born in extremis , at the time of his mother’s death in childbirth. Refusing to lose his son at the same time as his wife, his father begs the doctors to open his wife’s stomach with a dagger to extract the newborn, as if by cesarean section. It is this gesture that saves his life. By his birth, the Church celebrates him as the patron saint of pregnant women and midwives.
SAINT MARGARET OF CORTONA (1247-1297)
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Daughter of a poor Tuscan peasant, Marguerite is twenty-eight years old and already the mother of a little boy when she loses her lover, the Count of Montepulciano, whom she finds murdered at the foot of a tree. She took refuge with her father after considering entering religion in a convent in Cortona, in central Italy. She devotes herself to a life of public penitence, shouting out in the streets the sins of her past, while the Friars Minor take charge of her son. Admitted into the Franciscan Third Order, she lived there for twenty-three years, during which she had numerous mystical experiences. We owe him the founding of the Casa Santa Maria della Misericordia, a small hospital in Cortona, which still exists today. She was very appreciated there for the help she gave to pregnant women, before and during childbirth and is therefore invoked as protector of women in childbirth.
SAINT GERARD MAJELLA (1726-1755)
Two centuries before Padre Pio, in the south of Italy, another saint like him multiplied the most improbable miracles, experienced most mystical phenomena, got the whole of Europe talking and lived from his childhood in the familiarity of angels . His name is Gérard Majella. Little known in France, Gérard was born in Muro, south of Naples, in 1726. His father was a tailor and worked hard to raise him but he, when very young, already only thought of God, invincibly drawn to religious life. . As a young man, Gérard patiently endures slander when a young girl accuses him of having had a relationship with her and of being the father of her child. For this reason, he is the patron saint of pregnant women, mothers, unborn children and people wrongly accused.
