Litaniae Sanctorum
An online dictionary of the saints, blessed, venerable and servants of God of the Catholic Church, checked against Vatican records.
Saints, the Blessed, the Venerable and the Servants of God: who they were, when they lived and died, how far their cause has come, and the miracles the Church examined and approved. Where no record exists — and for most of the older saints none does — this says so plainly instead of repeating legend as fact.
The saints are not a closed club of the distant past. The Church teaches that every one of us is called to holiness: “all the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or status are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity” (Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium 40). The men and women on these pages answered that call in every walk of life — mothers and fathers, priests and soldiers, children, scholars, the sick and the poor.
St Philip Neri told his followers to read the books whose authors’ names begin with S — for Saint. At the head of them all stands Our Lady, Queen of All Saints, who leads us to her Son; and the Rosary, prayed with her, is the simplest school of holiness there is — pray it here in English, or in Latin at Rosarium Sacrum. Christ is the centre of every life here. Each one is a proof that it can be done.
We are all called to holiness. It is easy to forget that, and easier still to think holiness belongs to other people, in other centuries.
The lives gathered here changed my mind. Servants of God, Venerables, Blessed and Saints: ordinary people who gave themselves to Christ so completely that they drew others to him. St Philip Neri did it with laughter, turning the streets of Rome into a school of holiness. Padre Pio did it in the confessional, hour upon hour. More inspiring still are the young saints and blessed of our own time: Carlo Acutis, who at fifteen did it with a laptop and a love of the Eucharist, and Blessed Chiara Badano, who met cancer with a smile at eighteen and taught us how to carry our cross: “For you, Jesus: if you want this, I want it too.” Each of them shows the same thing: holiness is within reach of all of us. We have only to trust our Lord Jesus Christ and the way he leads us.
I worship mostly with the 1962 Missal, and this dictionary is meant as a meeting place. The Tridentine rite and the Novus Ordo both belong to the one Catholic Church, and what is handed down is what forms the present. The saints make the point better than any argument could: the Church is truly universal, and she has gone on raising up holiness in every century, our own included.
They lived wholly for Jesus, through Mary, our Blessed Mother. As she does, the saints and the blessed pray for us before her Son, and we may ask the prayers of the venerable and the servants of God as well. This dictionary is here so that their lives can be known and followed, and their intercession asked before our Lord Jesus Christ.
By a Catholic layman
11,705 names. Every month we cross-check this site against the Vatican's own list of new decrees from the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, so new Venerables, approved miracles and canonisations appear here as soon as possible. Last checked against the Vatican: 21 September 2026. About this site and its sources.