Patron Saint of Dogs

Why St. Roch?

Most animal patronages are symbolic. This one is not: there is a dog in the story, and the dog is the reason the man survived. Roch was a fourteenth-century pilgrim who spent years nursing plague victims in Italy and eventually caught it himself. Rather than infect anyone, he went into the woods outside Piacenza to die. A hunting dog belonging to a local nobleman found him, brought him bread from its master's table, day after day, and licked his sores. He recovered. The nobleman, following his dog, found him and became his disciple. That is why he is shown in almost every depiction with a dog at his side, usually with a loaf in its mouth, and lifting his tunic to show the plague sore on his thigh. St. Hubert is also invoked, particularly for hunting dogs and against rabies, and St. Francis for animals generally. But for a dog specifically, Roch is the one with the dog.

Who was St. Roch?

Roch was born at Montpellier about 1348, the son of the governor, and was orphaned in his twenties. He gave away what he had inherited and went on pilgrimage to Rome, arriving in the middle of the plague years.

He did not carry on to Rome as planned. He stopped in one plague town after another, nursing the sick, and the accounts credit him with cures. He was in Piacenza when he caught it himself, and left the town rather than be a danger to it, which is the detail that says most about him.

The end is worse than the middle. Returning home years later, unrecognisable, he was taken for a spy and imprisoned. He died in the cell, about five years later, at roughly thirty-two. His own uncle, the governor, had put him there and only learned who he was afterwards.

He was never formally canonised by a papal process. His cult was recognised by the Council of Constance in 1414, when plague broke out among the delegates and they processed with his image.

The feast: August 16

August 16. In parts of Italy, France and Latin America it is kept with processions and, in some towns, a blessing of dogs. He is one of the great plague saints of Europe, which is why so many old churches on pilgrim roads carry his name, and why he reappeared in public devotion during epidemics as recently as the twentieth century.

How to ask their intercession

Ask plainly, and if a parish holds a blessing of animals, bring the dog. There is no special formula. For a dying dog, ask for the household: the Church has never treated grief over an animal as a lesser grief, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.