Patron Saint of Doctors

Why St. Luke the Evangelist?

This one needs no legend. Paul, writing to the Colossians, refers to Luke as the beloved physician, and that single description is the whole basis of the patronage. It shows in his Gospel. Luke is the evangelist most attentive to bodies and to the sick: he records more healings than the others, he notices details of condition and duration, and his account of the Good Samaritan lingers on the specific care given, oil and wine on the wounds, transport, and payment for continued treatment. He is also the one who preserves the parable of the Prodigal Son and the account of the Annunciation, so his attention to the vulnerable extends well past medicine. He travelled with Paul, wrote the Acts of the Apostles as the second volume of his own Gospel, and is traditionally held to have been a Greek from Antioch and the only non-Jewish author in the New Testament. Saints Cosmas and Damian, third-century twin brothers who practised medicine without charging their patients, are the other traditional patrons of physicians and are named in the Roman Canon of the Mass.

Who was St. Luke the Evangelist?

Luke is the author of the third Gospel and of the Acts of the Apostles, which together make up about a quarter of the New Testament. Paul calls him the beloved physician, and that one phrase in the letter to the Colossians is the origin of the entire patronage.

He was a Gentile, probably from Antioch, and he travelled with Paul: the sections of Acts that switch to we are traditionally read as his own account of being there. He is the only evangelist who records the infancy narratives in the detail we have them, which has led to a very old tradition that he had them from Mary.

His writing shows the interest you would expect from his profession. He notices illness, names conditions with more precision than the other evangelists, and his Gospel is the one that keeps returning to the poor, to women, and to people nobody else in the ancient world was writing down.

The feast: October 18

October 18. Many medical schools and Catholic hospitals keep a White Mass on or near the feast for doctors, nurses and other health workers, the counterpart of the Blue Mass for police. Guilds of Catholic doctors are commonly named for him.

How to ask their intercession

Doctors and medical students commonly ask his intercession at the start of training or before difficult work. There is also a long practice of patients asking for their own doctors by name, which is a quietly generous form of prayer and one most physicians never hear about.