St. Louis IX

Who they were

Louis IX ruled France for forty four years and is the only king of France the Church canonized, not for the crown but for what he did inside it. Contemporaries describe him sitting under an oak at Vincennes hearing the lawsuits of anyone, peasant included, who could reach him; feeding the poor at his own table and serving them himself; founding a college of the Sorbonne and the Quinze-Vingts hospital for the blind; building the Sainte-Chapelle as a reliquary of glass and light; and reforming royal justice, with a presumption of innocence and bans on trial by ordeal, in ways that outlived him by centuries.

The century's shadows belong here too. He led two crusades, both failures, dying of disease at Tunis in 1270, and his era's treatment of Jews included acts history rightly condemns. Stated, not excused. His most intimate legacy is the Enseignements, the letter of counsel he wrote in his own hand to his son and heir, on justice to the poor, honesty in judgment, and tenderness to the unfortunate, which makes him the patron of fathers trying to hand down what actually matters.

Why people turn to St. Louis IX

Fathers, and the letter is the patronage. Leaders with real authority over real people. Third Order members, whose royal brother he was.

How to ask their intercession

Fathers: write the letter. One paragraph to each child, and Louis's prayers over the writing of it. Leaders: the oak tree examination, which is simply who could not reach you this month.