Episode Description
Christina Sabo talks with writer, editor, and publicist Brian O'Neel about SaintsTombs.com, the twenty-three-year project that maps where servants of God, venerables, blesseds, and saints are buried across 133 countries. Brian traces it back to a 2003 trip to Rome, where he visited the tomb of Saint Monica without knowing that Venerable Giuseppe Minocchio lay beneath a small square of black marble in the same church. He and Christina talk about pilgrimage, relics, forgotten martyrs, and what happens when a person goes to pray where the saints are laid.
What We Talk About:
- The 2003 Rome trip, a guidebook that raised more questions than it answered, and the venerable buried steps from Saint Monica
- What a pilgrimage actually is, and why medieval penitents were sent to the Holy Land and Rome to make one
- Venerable Patrick Peyton, the reopening of his center in Massachusetts, and what a visit to a tomb can stir up in an ordinary person
- The 300-plus people who have died for the faith on US and Canadian soil—and the anti-Catholic history most Americans were never taught
- Twenty-three years of daily research: Google alerts, tombs that get moved, cloistered nuns who ask for privacy, and the three question marks that mark an unknown grave
Resources Mentioned:
- SaintsTombs.com
- 39 New Saints You Should Know
- Saint Who?
- 150 North American Martyrs You Should Know
- Hagiography Circle
Chapters:
- 00:00: Introduction
- 02:01: Opening Prayer
- 03:53: The Yes Behind SaintsTombs.com
- 11:17: The Aha Moment in Rome
- 13:20: Praying at the Tomb of a Saint
- 15:45: What a Pilgrimage Is—and Why It Matters
- 20:28: Writing About the Saints No One Remembers
- 23:02: The North American Martyrs and Catholic America
- 29:16: Twenty-Three Years of Research
- 32:58: How the Site Is Organized
- 38:34: The Camps and a Litany of the Unknown
- 45:29: What's Next for SaintsTombs.com
Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios
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