St. Stephen of Hungary

Who they were

Stephen, born Vajk and baptized István, was the first crowned King of Hungary, his crown sent from Rome for the coronation at Christmas of the year 1000, and he spent nearly four decades on the unglamorous founding work: dioceses and abbeys erected, laws written, raiding turned into statehood.

Two documents of the heart survive him. The first is the Admonitions to his son Emeric, a father's manual of counsel whose most quoted chapter commands the welcome of strangers and guests, on the grounds that a kingdom of one language and one custom is weak and fragile. That is a sentence eleven centuries old and it needs no help from anyone. The second document is grief. Emeric, the prepared and beloved heir, was killed in a hunting accident in 1031, and the old king's last years were mourning and succession anguish, out of which came his final recorded act: on the Assumption of 1038, dying, he formally offered his crown and his country to Mary, which is why Hungary has called itself the Regnum Marianum ever since. He died that day.

Why people turn to St. Stephen of Hungary

Grieving fathers. That is his real patronage: the man who wrote down everything he knew for his son and then outlived him. Hungarian families. And the welcome the stranger sentence gives that whole intention a royal charter, with St. Frances Xavier Cabrini and St. Marguerite Bourgeoys.

How to ask their intercession

Fathers can do what he did and write the letter, which is also St. Louis IX's suggestion. And his harder second grace, asked only by those who need it, is for surviving the wrong order of loss.