Most holy Apostle St. Jude, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, the Church honours and invokes you universally as the patron of hopeless cases and of things almost despaired of. Pray for me, who am so miserable; make use, I implore you, of that particular privilege given to you, to bring visible and speedy help where help is almost despaired of. Come to my assistance in this great need, that I may receive the consolation and succour of heaven in all my necessities, tribulations and sufferings. Amen.
St. Jude Thaddeus
The apostle people turn to when nothing else has worked
Feast: October 28By AngelGuardUpdated Sep 1, 2026
Quick Facts
- One of the Twelve Apostles, named in every Gospel list
- Feast day October 28, shared with St. Simon the Zealot
- Patron of hopeless and desperate causes
- Shown with a club, a flame, and a medallion of Christ
- The National Shrine in Chicago opened in 1929
Who Was St. Jude?
Jude Thaddeus was one of the Twelve, and Scripture is careful to distinguish him from Judas Iscariot every time it names him. That distinction turns out to have shaped everything about how he is remembered. He asks Christ one recorded question, at the Last Supper: why he intends to show himself to the disciples and not to the world. It is a good question and he gets a real answer, which is more than most of the apostles manage. After Pentecost the traditions place him preaching in Mesopotamia and Persia, frequently paired with Simon the Zealot, and both are held to have been martyred there. He is shown with a club, the instrument of his death, a flame above his head for Pentecost, and often a medallion of Christ at his chest, from a legend that he carried the image to a king of Edessa. The letter of Jude in the New Testament is traditionally attributed to him, though the authorship is disputed among scholars. It runs to a single page and is mostly a warning about people who have quietly stopped believing what they still profess, which is a sharper subject than its length suggests. What is unusual about his cult is how recent its present shape is. Devotion to him as the saint of last resort was known in medieval Europe but became a mass movement in twentieth-century America, through the National Shrine of St. Jude in Chicago, opened by the Claretians in 1929 and spreading through the Depression among people who had genuinely run out of options.
Why St. Jude Matters Today
The patronage of hopeless causes has an origin that is half joke and half theology, and the joke is the good part. Because his name was close to Judas, people avoided invoking him for centuries in case the wrong man answered. The tradition that grew up in response is that being so rarely asked, he is unusually quick to respond. That is not doctrine, and no page should present it as such. It is the kind of thing families say, and it has kept a devotion alive for a very long time, which is its own argument. What makes him useful now is the specificity of the situations people bring him. Not general trouble: the diagnosis that is not responding, the marriage nobody will name out loud, the case that has stopped moving, the addiction everyone is tired of discussing. He is the saint you ask when you have already asked everyone else, and there is no shame built into that. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis carries his name because Danny Thomas, an unemployed actor in 1940, promised him a shrine if his career turned. It did. The hospital opened in 1962 and has never billed a family.
Prayer to St. Jude
When and How to Pray to St. Jude
Name the situation specifically and use the same words each time. The cases people bring him are usually ones they have stopped saying out loud, and vagueness is the enemy of this devotion in particular. A point worth making plainly: some published versions of the St. Jude novena carry a line saying the prayer has never been known to fail. The Church attaches no such guarantee to any prayer, and a novena is a request rather than a mechanism. What is true is that people have prayed this one for two centuries in situations where nothing else was left, and kept praying it when the ninth day came and nothing had changed.
Novena to St. Jude
Nine days, one prayer a day, keeping the same intention throughout. To close on his feast, begin on October 20. In practice the situation decides the date, which is why the National Shrine in Chicago runs solemn novenas five times a year rather than only in October. If you miss a day, pick it up the next day rather than starting again. The count matters less than the staying.
Frequently Asked Questions
Hopeless and desperate causes: situations that have stopped moving. By extension he is patron of hospitals, through the shrine in Chicago and the children's hospital in Memphis that carries his name. His feast is October 28.
Because his name is close to Judas, and for centuries people avoided invoking him in case the wrong man answered. The tradition holds that being so rarely asked, he is especially quick to respond. It is a family story rather than a doctrine, and it has kept the devotion alive for centuries.
No, and Scripture goes out of its way to say so, naming him Jude of James or Thaddeus in the apostolic lists precisely to keep them apart. The confusion is ancient and is the reason for his patronage.
Anything that looks closed: illness that is not responding, work that has run out, a family in trouble, an addiction, a court case. The devotion is specific to situations where other avenues have been tried.
No. Some published novenas carry that claim and the Church attaches no such guarantee to any prayer. A novena is a request, not a mechanism.
Related Saints
Upcoming · Sep 8
Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
See the full liturgical calendar — every feast this year, and an embed for your parish site.