In this episode of Everyday Saints, a Catholic podcast about the real lives of the saints, host John O'Connor tells the story of St. Moses the Black — a former slave, murderer, and leader of a violent gang of seventy-five men who terrorized the Nile Valley in fourth century Egypt.

He once swam a river at night with a sword in his teeth to settle a score over a barking dog.

He died thirty-five years later with his hands open — greeting the men who came to kill him. Without raising a hand in defense.

What happened in between is one of the most dramatic transformations in the history of the Christian faith.

What you'll hear in this episode:
— A slave who became the most feared criminal in Egypt
— The sword in his teeth and the river he swam to settle a score
— The desert community he stumbled into while running from the law — and why he refused to leave
— Dragging four robbers into a chapel because he didn't know what else to do with them
— The sunrise sermon that changed how he measured his own progress
— The racial contempt he faced — and the dignity he answered it with
— Seventy-five criminals became seventy-five monks. Same number. Completely different direction.
— What his slow transformation means for wherever you are stuck right now

St. Moses the Black is the patron saint of African Americans, of people struggling with temptation, and of anyone who believes their past disqualifies them from a future.

Everyday Saints is a weekly Catholic podcast telling the real, human stories of the saints in plain language — for regular people with real jobs, real doubts, and real lives. No theology degree required.

New episodes every Thursday.

Host: John O'Connor

In this episode of Everyday Saints, a Catholic podcast about the real lives of the saints, host John O'Connor tells the story of St. Paul — one of the most recognizable names in all of Christianity, and one of the most misunderstood.

Before he wrote half the New Testament, he was dragging Christians out of their homes and throwing them in prison. He stood and watched the first Christian martyr get stoned to death — and approved.

Then a blinding light knocked him off his feet on a road outside Damascus. And everything changed.

What you'll hear in this episode:
— Who Saul of Tarsus actually was before Damascus — and why he was so dangerous
— The three days of blindness — and what was really happening in that darkness
— Why nobody in the early Church trusted him at first — and what changed that
— Thirty years of beatings, shipwrecks, imprisonments, and still going
— The letters that shaped Western civilization — written from prison
— How the man who watched Christians die ended up dying as one
— What Paul's story says about the energy you have been using in the wrong direction

Everyday Saints is a weekly Catholic podcast telling the real, human stories of the saints in plain language — for regular people with real jobs, real doubts, and real lives. No theology degree required.

New episodes every Thursday.

Host: John O'Connor

In this episode of Everyday Saints, a Catholic podcast about the real lives of the saints, host John O'Connor tells the story of St. Margaret of Castello — one of the newest saints in the Catholic Church, canonized by Pope Francis in 2021, and one of the most overlooked.

She was born blind, severely disabled, and a dwarf. Her own wealthy parents were so ashamed of her that they sealed her into a small room beside a chapel when she was six years old. When a pilgrimage they took her on didn't produce the miracle they were hoping for — they left her there. In a city she had never been to. Among people she did not know.

What she became in the years after that moment is one of the most unexpected things you will ever hear.

What you'll hear in this episode:
— The child born into privilege who was hidden from the world
— A decade sealed in a stone cell — and what she built inside it
— The pilgrimage, the missing miracle, and the moment her parents walked away
— The poor people of Castello who took her in — and what they found
— The nuns who couldn't handle her — and why
— The joy that made no sense given everything she had been through
— What Margaret's story says about the condition you have placed on your own peace

St. Margaret of Castello is the patron saint of the unwanted, the disabled, the abandoned, and the homeless. Her incorrupt body still lies beneath the altar of Saint Dominic's Church in Città di Castello, Italy — seven hundred years after her death.

Everyday Saints is a weekly Catholic podcast telling the real, human stories of the saints in plain language — for regular people with real jobs, real doubts, and real lives. No theology degree required.

New episodes every Thursday.

Host: John O'Connor