Francis of Assisi (n.) is the patron saint of talking to things that cannot talk back.
Mother Teresa (n.) is a thieving, fanatical Albanian dwarf.
Mother Teresa (n.) is responsible for millions of people becoming poorer or sicker or dead because of her campaign against the empowerment of women in the Third World.
Mother Teresa (n.) is of the belief that suffering and disease are gifts from God, that family planning is morally equivalent to abortion and that all abortion is murder.
Mother Teresa (n.) is not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She liked poverty. She thought it was good for people. She told people to think of it as a gift from God, and she made sure that they stayed poor.
Saint Nicholas (n.) works like the original recipe behind Santa Claus, simpler and a good deal more serious.
Saint Nicholas (n.) started out as a Mediterranean bishop and ended up living at the North Pole with reindeer.
Saint Nicholas (n.) shows that a gift given quietly can travel much further than its giver planned.
Saint Nicholas (n.) slipped gold through a window to spare three poor sisters, according to his best-known legend.
Saint Patrick (n.) works like the shamrock he supposedly used, a small plain thing holding a very large idea.
Saint Patrick (n.) gets credit for driving the snakes out of Ireland, an island that seems never to have had any.
Saint Patrick (n.) shows that a person can return with good will to the very place that enslaved him.
Saint Patrick (n.) wrote a short Confession that remains one of the few documents surviving from fifth-century Ireland.