--- title: "Saints’ Feast Days in December: Day by Day · Bless" url: https://blessbible.app/saints/december/ description: "Catholic saints’ feast days in December, day by day: St. Stephen, St. John the Apostle and a saint for every date, with life and patronage." --- Saints by feast day # Saints’ feast days in *December* December has 31 saints in Bless’s calendar, one for each of its 31 days. In 2026–2028 the US calendar keeps the day of 7 of them as a memorial, feast or solemnity at least once, among them St. Stephen and St. John the Apostle. About these dates Feast days, titles and patronages come from the app’s calendar of saints; “Memorial”, “Feast” and “Solemnity” mark the saints whose day the US calendar keeps (at least once in 2026–2028). ## December 1 ### [St. Edmund Campion](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-edmund-campion/) Priest and Martyr · died 1581 The ornament of Elizabethan Oxford — the queen herself had marked him — who slipped away to Douai and the Jesuits, returned disguised as a jewel merchant, and for a year preached to hunted Catholics while his ‘Brag’ and Ten Reasons ran from secret presses. Betrayed, racked three times, offered preferment to conform, he told his judges that in condemning him and his companions they condemned all their own ancestors. [Upcoming dates for St. Edmund Campion](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-edmund-campion/) ## December 2 ### [St. Bibiana](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-bibiana/) Virgin and Martyr · died c. 363 A Roman maiden martyred under Julian the Apostate, her family destroyed around her — father, mother, sister — before she was scourged to death rather than yield her faith or her purity. Her small basilica on the Esquiline, rebuilt by Bernini, has kept her memory since the fifth century. [Upcoming dates for St. Bibiana](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-bibiana/) ## December 3 ### [St. Francis Xavier](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-francis-xavier/) Priest · died 1552 (Memorial) Patron of missions and navigators Ignatius’s Paris roommate, won over one argument at a time by the Gospel’s question: what good is the whole world to a man who loses his soul? He sailed east and never stopped: India, the Spice Islands, Japan. [The life of St. Francis Xavier, with 2 quotations](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-francis-xavier/) ## December 4 ### [St. John Damascene](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-john-damascene/) Priest and Doctor of the Church · died c. 749 Son of the caliph’s Christian treasurer at Damascus, who left office for the monastery of Mar Saba — and from safely beyond the emperor’s reach wrote the defenses of the holy images that steadied the Church through iconoclasm. His Fount of Knowledge summed Greek theology; his hymns still carry Easter in the East. He is the last of the Greek fathers. [Upcoming dates for St. John Damascene](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-john-damascene/) ## December 5 ### [St. Sabas](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-sabas/) Abbot · died c. 532 A Cappadocian who entered monastic life at eight and founded in the Judean desert the Great Laura — Mar Saba — mother of Palestinian monasticism, inhabited to this day. Twice he walked to Constantinople in extreme old age to plead his people’s causes before emperors, and was heard. [Upcoming dates for St. Sabas](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-sabas/) ## December 6 ### [St. Nicholas](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-nicholas/) Bishop · died c. 343 Patron of children, sailors, and those in need Bishop of Myra in Lycia, imprisoned in the last persecution and present, by tradition, at Nicaea. [The life of St. Nicholas](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-nicholas/) ## December 7 ### [St. Ambrose](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-ambrose/) Bishop and Doctor of the Church · died c. 397 (Memorial) Governor of Milan who was acclaimed bishop by the crowd while still an unbaptized catechumen — baptized, ordained, and consecrated within a week. He taught himself theology and became the most influential churchman of the West. [The life of St. Ambrose, with 4 quotations](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-ambrose/) ## December 8 ### [St. Romaric](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-romaric/) Abbot · died c. 653 A Frankish noble at the Austrasian court who, moved by the monk Amatus, freed his serfs and turned his mountain villa into the double monastery of Remiremont — ‘Romaric’s mount’ — where the praise of God was kept in unbroken relays, and where he died after thirty years a monk. [More on St. Romaric](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-romaric/) ## December 9 ### [St. Juan Diego](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-juan-diego/) Hermit · died 1548 Cuauhtlatoatzin, ‘the talking eagle,’ an Indian of Cuautitlán baptized in middle age, to whom the Virgin appeared on Tepeyac hill in December 1531, speaking Nahuatl, calling herself the merciful mother of all who dwell in this… [The life of St. Juan Diego](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-juan-diego/) ## December 10 ### [St. John Roberts](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-john-roberts/) Priest and Martyr · died 1610 A Welsh convert who became a Benedictine at Valladolid and returned to England repeatedly — expelled four times, he came back five — serving London heroically through the plague of 1603. Taken at Mass in his vestments, he told the court he would have brought them all back to the faith of their fathers, and went to Tyburn cheerful, aged thirty-three. [Upcoming dates for St. John Roberts](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-john-roberts/) ## December 11 ### [St. Damasus I](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-damasus-i/) Pope · died c. 384 The pope of the martyrs’ memory: he drained and adorned the catacombs, composing with his own hand the marble epigrams that still mark the tombs. He commissioned his secretary Jerome to revise the Latin Bible, defended Nicene faith East and West, and asked for himself only burial apart, judging himself unworthy to lie among the saints. [Upcoming dates for St. Damasus I](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-damasus-i/) ## December 12 ### [St. Finnian of Clonard](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-finnian-of-clonard/) Abbot · died c. 549 The ‘teacher of the saints of Ireland,’ whose great school at Clonard on the Boyne formed — tradition counts them — the Twelve Apostles of Ireland, Columba and Brendan among them. He taught the Scriptures to thousands and died of the plague, taken, his monks said, in ransom for his people. [Upcoming dates for St. Finnian of Clonard](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-finnian-of-clonard/) ## December 13 ### [St. Lucy](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-lucy/) Virgin and Martyr · died c. 304 (Memorial) Patron of the blind and those with eye trouble A young Christian of Syracuse in Sicily who secretly vowed her virginity to Christ and gave her dowry to the poor — enraging the suitor who denounced her under Diocletian’s persecution. [The life of St. Lucy](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-lucy/) ## December 14 ### [St. John of the Cross](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-john-of-the-cross/) Priest and Doctor of the Church · died 1591 (Memorial) A Carmelite of Ávila who joined Teresa’s reform and paid for it: his own brethren imprisoned him nine months in a cell scarcely bigger than himself. [The life of St. John of the Cross, with 5 quotations](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-john-of-the-cross/) ## December 15 ### [St. Maria Crocifissa Di Rosa](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-maria-crocifissa-di-rosa/) Virgin · died 1855 A Brescian merchant’s daughter who ran her father’s mill-girls’ welfare before she ran hospitals — through cholera, war, and the bombardment of Brescia, where her Handmaids of Charity walked the streets gathering the wounded of both armies. She could not go to bed with a quiet conscience, she said, on a day she had missed a chance to do good. [Upcoming dates for St. Maria Crocifissa Di Rosa](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-maria-crocifissa-di-rosa/) ## December 16 ### [St. Adelaide](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-adelaide/) Empress · died c. 999 Burgundian princess, widowed queen of Italy imprisoned by her husband’s rival, rescued and wed by Otto the Great — empress, regent for her grandson, and through every reversal a founder of monasteries and friend of Cluny. She died at the abbey of Seltz she had built, praying for the souls of all her dead. [Upcoming dates for St. Adelaide](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-adelaide/) ## December 17 ### [St. John of Matha](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-john-of-matha/) Priest · died c. 1213 A Provençal theologian who at his first Mass saw Christ between two chained captives, one Christian and one Moor — and founded the Trinitarians, vowed to ransom Christian slaves, a third of all revenues set aside for it. Across five centuries his order freed captives by the tens of thousands, sometimes leaving brothers in exchange. [Upcoming dates for St. John of Matha](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-john-of-matha/) ## December 18 ### [St. Flannan](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-flannan/) Bishop · died c. 640 An Irish monk of the royal house of Thomond, pilgrim to Rome and first bishop of Killaloe, remembered as a preacher who crossed to the isles — the remote Flannan Isles of the Hebrides bear his name and the ruins of his chapel — and for the blessing he left on his people’s land and cattle. [Upcoming dates for St. Flannan](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-flannan/) ## December 19 ### [St. Anastasius I](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-anastasius-i/) Pope · died c. 401 A Roman pope of few years and great friendships — Jerome, Augustine, and Paulinus of Nola all praised him — who steered the Church through the first Origenist controversy and lived, Jerome said, in such poverty and zeal that Rome did not deserve to keep him long. [Upcoming dates for St. Anastasius I](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-anastasius-i/) ## December 20 ### [St. Dominic of Silos](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-dominic-of-silos/) Abbot · died c. 1073 A Navarrese shepherd-monk exiled by a king for refusing to surrender his monastery’s goods, who rebuilt the ruined abbey of Silos into a wonder of Romanesque cloister and scriptorium. Spanish tradition brought expectant mothers his staff for blessing — the mother of St. Dominic Guzmán, who bears his name, among them by legend. [Upcoming dates for St. Dominic of Silos](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-dominic-of-silos/) ## December 21 ### [St. Peter Canisius](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-peter-canisius/) Priest and Doctor of the Church · died 1597 The Dutch Jesuit who almost single-handedly held the German lands for the Church — forty years of preaching from Vienna to Fribourg, founding colleges, attending Trent, and writing the catechism that went through two hundred editions in his lifetime. He assured the overburdened that with God’s help they would find time to do it all. [Upcoming dates for St. Peter Canisius](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-peter-canisius/) ## December 22 ### [Sts. Chaeremon and Ischyrion](https://blessbible.app/saints/sts-chaeremon-and-ischyrion/) Martyrs · died c. 250 Chaeremon, the aged bishop of Nilopolis, who perished with companions in the Arabian desert flying the Decian persecution; and Ischyrion, an Alexandrian steward impaled for refusing his master’s order to sacrifice. Dionysius of Alexandria recorded their deaths, tokens of the multitude whose names are written in heaven. [Upcoming dates for Sts. Chaeremon and Ischyrion](https://blessbible.app/saints/sts-chaeremon-and-ischyrion/) ## December 23 ### [St. John of Kanty](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-john-of-kanty/) Priest · died c. 1473 A Kraków professor of Scripture, unjustly ousted from his chair for years and made a country pastor — he feared the cure of souls, and won his parish anyway — then restored to the university he served till eighty-three. He walked to Rome four times, gave his cloak to beggars repeatedly, and ate no meat for thirty-five years; Kraków’s students still venerate his tomb. [Upcoming dates for St. John of Kanty](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-john-of-kanty/) ## December 24 ### [Sts. Adam and Eve](https://blessbible.app/saints/sts-adam-and-eve/) Our First Parents The father and mother of all the living, whose fall made the promise: the seed of the woman shall crush the serpent. The Church’s ancient calendars kept them on Christmas Eve — the old Adam remembered on the vigil of the New — and medieval mystery plays decked a ‘paradise tree’ with apples for their day: an ancestor of the Christmas tree itself. [Upcoming dates for Sts. Adam and Eve](https://blessbible.app/saints/sts-adam-and-eve/) ## December 25 ### [St. Anastasia](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-anastasia/) Martyr · died c. 304 A Roman matron who served the confessors imprisoned in the great persecution and was burned at Sirmium; her relics came early to Constantinople and her name into the Roman Canon. On Christmas morning for centuries the pope’s second Mass was sung in her basilica at the foot of the Palatine — the martyr remembered within the Nativity itself. [Upcoming dates for St. Anastasia](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-anastasia/) ## December 26 ### [St. Stephen](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-stephen/) First Martyr · died c. 34 (Feast) Patron of deacons and stonemasons One of the seven first deacons, ‘filled with grace and fortitude,’ whose debating opponents ‘were not able to resist the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking.’ [The life of St. Stephen](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-stephen/) ## December 27 ### [St. John the Apostle](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-john-the-apostle/) Apostle and Evangelist · died c. 100 (Feast) Patron of theologians, writers, and friendship The fisherman son of Zebedee, the disciple whom Jesus loved: he leaned on the Lord’s breast at supper, stood alone of the Twelve at the Cross, received the Mother, and outran Peter to the empty tomb. [The life of St. John the Apostle](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-john-the-apostle/) ## December 28 ### [The Holy Innocents](https://blessbible.app/saints/the-holy-innocents/) Martyrs (Feast) The boy children of Bethlehem, two years old and under, killed by Herod in his terror of a newborn King — the first blood shed for Christ, though they never knew his name. [The life of the Holy Innocents](https://blessbible.app/saints/the-holy-innocents/) ## December 29 ### [St. Thomas Becket](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-thomas-becket/) Bishop and Martyr · died c. 1170 Patron of the clergy Henry II’s brilliant chancellor and hunting companion, made archbishop of Canterbury by his king to bring the Church to heel — who instead resigned the chancellorship, took to hair shirts and the daily washing of beggars’ feet… [The life of St. Thomas Becket, with 1 quotation](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-thomas-becket/) ## December 30 ### [St. Egwin](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-egwin/) Bishop · died c. 717 Third bishop of Worcester, a protector of orphans and the widowed and a stern reformer who made enemies enough to seek vindication at Rome. With the herdsman Eof’s vision of the Virgin he founded Evesham abbey, one of great houses of medieval England, where he was buried. [Upcoming dates for St. Egwin](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-egwin/) ## December 31 ### [St. Sylvester I](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-sylvester-i/) Pope · died c. 335 Pope through the great turning: Constantine’s peace, the building of the first basilicas of St. Peter and the Lateran, and the Council of Nicaea, to which he sent his legates. Over his long, quiet pontificate the Church came out of the catacombs; the last day of the year bears his name across Europe. [Upcoming dates for St. Sylvester I](https://blessbible.app/saints/st-sylvester-i/) [Previous month Saints of November](https://blessbible.app/saints/november/) [Next month Saints of January](https://blessbible.app/saints/january/) Spotted a mistake in a date, a patronage or a quotation? [Report an error](https://blessbible.app/support/#report) and we’ll fix it in the app and here.