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Saint Corona


One of the side effects of being married to a Catholic is that you learn of various saints you might never otherwise have heard of.  And it turns out, lo and behold, that there is a St. Corona.  And, what is more, she is the patron saint of treasure hunters and... epidemic victims.

Well, there is apparently some debate about the latter.  You can find quite a bit about it online.  Here is one piece, more interesting and less polemical than many, about her relics, which are being restored and will go on display in a cathedral in Aachen, Germany.

And you can even order holy cards of St. Corona.  I have some, in fact.  Protestant readers may not know what I am referring to, but Catholics have a kind of mania for holy cards, which typically have a picture of Christ, a saint, or some other holy person on one side and a short prayer on the reverse.  You can almost always find random examples near the entrance of a Catholic church.  They range from the quite attractive and tasteful to the extremely kitschy.

I always take one or two along when I find them, especially ones I haven't seen before.  And then I use them as bookmarks.  So at this point there are many books in my office that a reader will open, to discover a holy card inside.  I kind of like the idea.
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