The patron saint of journalists is St. Francis de Sales – whose feast is today, 24 January. The Holy Father’s annual message for the World Day of Social Communications is dated for the feast in his honor.
St. Francis (1567-1622) was certainly a writer, but not every writer is a journalist. He was assigned the patronage because, barred from entering his own city of Geneva by the Calvinist authorities, the Catholic bishop used instead the media of the time to reach his flock, writing pamphlets and spiritual letters – his Introduction to the Devout Life is a collection of those. While we await the proper patron saint of journalists – GK Chesterton – we already have unofficial patrons in St. Titus Brandsma and St. Maximilian Kolbe, who were proper journalists as well as priests.
Saints Titus and Maximilian were priests who considered journalism not only compatible with their priesthood, but essential to their mission. Kolbe founded a magazine, Knight of the Immaculata, which had an astonishing circulation of one million in 1938. While the circumstances of his martyrdom in Auschwitz are unrelated to journalism, Kolbe was sent to Auschwitz in the first place in large part due to his influence
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