Patron Saint of Students
St. Thomas Aquinas, feast day 28 January
St. Thomas Aquinas is the patron saint of students, universities and Catholic schools, with his feast on 28 January. He was formally named patron of Catholic education by Pope Leo XIII in 1880. St. Joseph of Cupertino is invoked before exams specifically.
Quick facts
Why St. Thomas Aquinas?
Aquinas is the obvious choice and the patronage is formally established: Pope Leo XIII named him patron of Catholic schools and universities in 1880. He is the author of the Summa Theologiae, a work that takes objections to Christian belief more seriously than most of its critics do, stating each opposing argument in its strongest form before answering it. That method is why he remains the model for students specifically. He did not win arguments by ignoring them. Two details are worth knowing. His fellow students nicknamed him the Dumb Ox, for his size and his silence, and his teacher Albert the Great is said to have replied that the bellowing of this ox would be heard around the world. And near the end of his life, after an experience he never described, he stopped writing entirely, saying that everything he had written seemed like straw. The greatest systematic theologian in the Western Church put down his pen because he had seen something the system could not hold. For exams specifically, students traditionally turn to St. Joseph of Cupertino, who struggled academically to a degree that makes him unusually sympathetic company the night before a paper.
How to ask their intercession
For study, ask for clarity rather than for marks. For exams, St. Joseph of Cupertino is the traditional recourse, and the story attached to him is that he was examined on the one passage he had actually mastered. That is worth praying for and is not a substitute for revision.