I’m not very religious, but whenever I travel to European countries there’s always a local “Patron Saint” that the locals admonish or pray to (like Saint Sebastien – Patron Saint of Mallorca, or Saint Lucy in Venice being the Patron Saint of the blind). My question is, how is this not technically polytheistic? I thought you were only supposed to pray to God? Thanks!
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You know how when you need something from someone out of your league and you have a friend who knows that someone and you go “hey, introduce me” or “hey, maybe you can pull some strings for me”?
Thats one of the functions of Saints.
So saints are basically middlemen to God, or to use the proper term, they intercede for you or you ask for their intercession.
Now how is that not polytheism?
Pray comes from Latin precari, meaning “to ask”. That’s where the phrase “pray tell” comes from.
So basically, praying is just talking.
But **praying is not worship**.
Catholics (should) only worship God. You worship god through prayer (“asking” or talking). But you can also “talk” to saints with prayer, but you don’t worship them.
It’s a bit like, you can only have one boyfriend if you’re monogamous. If you talk to his best friend and only talk to his best friend, then that’s not cheating.
So now, why do they have these weird things they’re known for?
Saints also function as role models. A lot of older saints are martyrs, so they stand for the virtues and causes they believe in.
For example Saint Francis of Assisi wondered why they only preach to people and not animals. So he started doing that, because they’re also god’s creatures or something. So he values animals and presto, he’s the patron saint of animals. And if you want god to heal your cat, you talk to old Francis because he’s the animal guy and god knows if the animal guy says your cat should live, it probably should.
Meanwhile, [Carlo Acutis, the first millennial saint](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Acutis), is the patron saint of computer programmers, because, well guess what he used to do when he was alive. If your app just won’t run, god only knows one person who can vouch for you, so you gotta talk to my man Carlo.
So towns and even schools and such have patron saints based on the values they align with or have some other sort of association.
For example, Jesuit schools will likely have Saint Ignatius of Loyola as their patron saint, because he founded the Society of Jesus (aka the Jesuits). And then they teach stuff about generosity (Ignatius’ thing) and not to be a man whore (also Ignatius’ thing before he lost a leg to a cannonball and found Jesus).
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