St. Nuno Álvares Pereira

Who they were

Nuno Álvares Pereira was the Constable of Portugal, the military genius whose outnumbered squares at Aljubarrota in 1385 saved Portuguese independence for two centuries and made him, at twenty five, the most powerful and richest subject in the kingdom. He was also, throughout, a knight of a piety his soldiers found bracing: fasting before battles, Our Lady's name on his standard, and no looting of churches tolerated.

The second act is the reason he is a saint. Widowed in 1422, the old Constable distributed one of Europe's great fortunes, his veterans first, in pensions he funded personally, and entered the Carmelite friary he had built in Lisbon not as its patron but as a lay brother, the lowest grade, taking the name Nuno of St. Mary and serving at the door and in the kitchen while former enemies came to gawk at the Constable peeling vegetables. He died there in 1431 during the reading of the Passion. Portugal never stopped calling him the Holy Constable, and he was canonized in 2009.

Why people turn to St. Nuno Álvares Pereira

Veterans, and the soldier's road back to peace, which is his entire second act. If what came home with you needs more than prayer, ask him alongside the counsellor, not instead of one. And anyone laying down power, command, or a founder's seat, with St. Joseph Calasanz, who had his taken.

How to ask their intercession

For a veteran by name. And when it is your turn to hand something over, ask for his version of it: the sword hung up on purpose, with nothing to prove.