St. Ubaldus

Who they were

Ubaldus Baldassini was bishop of Gubbio for over thirty years, and the town has never once stopped celebrating him. The Festa dei Ceri, the mad joyful race of giant wooden candles up the mountain to his shrine every May, is among the oldest continuously held festivals in Italy.

The history underneath the festival is a reformer who rebuilt his cathedral and his clergy, and a peacemaker who twice saved his town. Once he walked unarmed into the middle of a street battle between factions and stood there until the fighting stopped out of shame. Once he went in person to Frederick Barbarossa and turned the emperor's army away from Gubbio's gates. His last decade was chronic and painful illness borne with a gentleness the sources make his signature. The old patronage, translated into modern language, is this: Ubaldus has been invoked for centuries against obsessive fears, tormenting thoughts, and molestation in the older sense of the word, meaning harassment and persecution by other people. For intrusive thoughts and the suffering around them, his prayers walk beside the therapist and never instead of one.

Why people turn to St. Ubaldus

People living with obsessive fear, intrusive thoughts and scrupulosity, with St. Alphonsus Liguori and St. Philip Neri, who both knew that territory. Victims of harassment and bullying, in a schoolyard or a workplace or online. And peacemakers who stand in the middle, with St. Elizabeth of Portugal.

How to ask their intercession

In the loop of the fear, one short prayer and not many, which is the standing counsel for scrupulosity, with his name attached. And for the harassed by name, that the tormentor tire and the tormented stand.