St. Anthony of Padua, a beloved 13th-century saint from Portugal, holds many titles: Franciscan preacher, Doctor of the Church, wonder worker, friend of the poor and sick. But he is perhaps best known as the patron saint of lost things.
“It’s based on a great legend,” Father James Gardiner of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement at Graymoor in upstate New York said ahead of the saint’s feast day on June 13. “At one point, Anthony was in choir, in chapel, and a novice … ‘borrowed’ his breviary — and then, Anthony couldn’t find it to say his prayers.”
“Apparently, the novice realized what he had done, and he changed his mind and brought the breviary — the Psalm book — back to the choir stall for Anthony,” he added. “From then on, people started asking St. Anthony to help them.”
Today, he said, people turn to the saint for help to find “anything and anyone that’s lost in any way.”
A special devotion
The Franciscan Friars of the Atonement practice a special devotion to St. Anthony: For more than 100 years, since 1912, they have been praying daily for St. Anthony’s intercession through a perpetual novena.
The community, founded by Servant of God Father Paul Wattson, seeks to walk as brothers with those who are lost and in need of God’s healing. The New York-based order dates back to the late 1800s, when it began in the Anglican tradition in the Episcopal church. Its members were received into the Catholic Church in 1909. Today, the community at Graymoor includes 12 friars.
The founder, Servant of God Father Paul Wattson, called St. Anthony Graymoor’s “elder brother” and asked for the saint’s intercession whenever he faced difficulties, Father Gardiner said.
A weekend celebration
Father Gardiner pointed to St. Anthony’s popularity across different ethnic groups, something that he and the other friars witness firsthand during the celebrations they host for St. Anthony’s feast day.
This year, he said, the friars are extending the feast to last three-and-a-half days, June 12-15. While Father Gardiner is coordinating the event, he said that St. Anthony is in charge.
Visitors are welcome to attend the celebrations, which begin June 12 with a Jubilee Mass with Bishop Gerardo J. Colacicco, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of New York, at the St. Anthony Shrine at Graymoor. The Mass is part of the Jubilee Year of Hope, with Graymoor serving as a Jubilee pilgrimage site.
The rest of the weekend will include Masses in several different languages, including English, Italian, Spanish, Creole and French. The faithful will also have the opportunity to attend adoration, benediction and the friars’ novena.
A 100-year-old prayer
Father Gardiner spoke about the power of St. Anthony’s intercession and shared the story behind the friars’ perpetual novena to the saint, which is also available on their website, under “St. Anthony Prayer Corner.” The online page lists intercessory prayers, information about St. Anthony and the opportunity to submit prayer requests for the friars to remember in their novena.
“In our original chapel here, we have a statue of St. Anthony, almost life-size, that our founder, Father Paul Wattson, put in the chapel in the early 1900s,” he said.
That statue is associated with a miraculous recovery that occurred in 1912.
“Some woman had written to him and said that she needed prayers for her child, who was deathly ill,” Father Gardiner said of their founder. “He put her letter underneath the statue of St. Anthony and — lo and behold — the young child was cured.”
That child’s name happened to be Anthony.
Since then, the friars have received hundreds of thousands of prayer requests from people asking them to pray for St. Anthony’s intercession. The friars do so every day.
“Our novena prayers … it’s a tradition in the community,” Father Gardiner said, adding that their friars in Italy, Peru and Japan also join in prayer every day for people’s intentions. Among other things, he said, those intentions include prayers for healing an
by Katie Yoder
Originally published on Our Sunday Visitor, June 11, 2025
