St. Adalbert

Who they were

Adalbert, born Vojtěch, was a Bohemian noble whose clan was massacred by rivals while he served as Bishop of Prague, a see he twice took up and twice left because his flock would not be governed. Feuds, slave trading and the old customs defeated his reforms both times, and Rome kept sending him back.

Finally released to the missions, he went north to the pagan Prussians of the Baltic and was killed within weeks, in 997, speared near the Vistula lagoon. Then came the strange economics of holiness. Duke Bolesław of Poland ransomed the martyr's body for its literal weight in gold and enshrined it at Gniezno, which promptly became the seat of the new Polish church. The failed bishop's bones founded what his living administration never could.

Why people turn to St. Adalbert

Czech and Polish parishes, both of which claim him. And everyone whose work only bore fruit after they had left it or died: pastors, founders, and the parents of prodigals, with St. Ansgar and St. Rose Philippine Duchesne.

How to ask their intercession

Over the assignment that keeps failing. His pattern was to go, fail, come back, and go again, and it is worth praying honestly rather than pretending the failures were secretly successes at the time.