About St. Jude

ST. JUDE

1 AD — 65 AD
Feast Day October 28
Patron Saint of hopeless cases, desperate situations, impossible or lost causes, hospitals and hospital workers.

Jude, also called Thaddeus, was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus according to the New Testament. He was the brother of St. James the Less (also one of the Apostles) and the author of one of the epistles in Holy Scripture. Tradition holds that after the Ascension of Jesus, Jude went to Edessa, where he cured the king and established the Church there. He preached the Gospel in Judea, Samaria, Idumaea, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Lybia. According to Eusebius, he returned to Jerusalem in the year 62 and assisted at the election of his brother, St. Simeon, as Bishop of Jerusalem.

Tradition holds that after the resurrection of Jesus, Jude retrieved Our Lord’s burial cloth, which many believe to be the Shroud of Turin. He eventually brought it to Edessa in present day Turkey. From there, he traveled into the area of Armenia. The Armenian Rite traces its origins to Jude.

Jude then preached the gospel in Mesopotamia where he was joined by St. Simon. From there, they did missionary work in Persia, where they suffered martyrdom. Jude was beaten to death with a club then beheaded post-mortem and Simon was sawed into pieces. Jude's relics reside in Saint Peter's in Rome, in Rheims and Toulouse, France.

Jude is invoked in desperate situations because his New Testament letter stresses that the faithful should persevere in the environment of harsh, difficult circumstances, just as their forefathers had done before them.