Saints

Halloween is short for All Hallows’ Eve, the night before All Saints’ Day, when the Church celebrates every holy man and woman at once, the famous and the forgotten. Most people remember the costumes far better than the feast. And when you want to wish someone a happy saint’s day, the only saints emoji on offer is 😇, a haloed face mostly used to mean “I definitely didn’t eat the last cookie”.

The saints are not a club for star pupils. Their ranks include soldiers and queens, a shepherd girl from outside Paris, a thief crucified next to Jesus, mothers of families and even a computer-loving teenager, Carlo Acutis, who died in 2006 at fifteen. At great celebrations the Church calls on them by singing the Litany of the Saints, a long roll call answered again and again with “pray for us”.

We dream of emojis that let you recognize a saint without a caption: Peter’s keys, Catherine’s wheel, Lawrence’s gridiron, Thérèse’s roses. Pick your favourite saint, find their emblem and propose it: they have probably already been praying for someone to get around to it.