Our Celestial Patrons – St. Thomas Aquinas & St. Frances Xavier Cabrini

St. Thomas Aquinas
The Angelicum Academy, as the name implies, takes for one of its patrons and protectors St. Thomas Aquinas. “Angelicum” is a sort of Latin nickname for a school referring to the Angelic Doctor of the Church – St. Thomas Aquinas. For example, it is often so used for the Pontifical University of St Thomas in Rome (an unrelated institution of higher learning). We use it as the formal name of our Academy. Numerous Popes have directed the Church to go to Saint Thomas for solid teaching in philosophy and theology, perhaps most memorably Pope Leo XII in his encyclical Aeterni Patris issued in 1879, subtitled “On the Restoration of Christian Philosophy in Catholic Schools in the Spirit of the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas”.

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini

Our other patron is St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, the patron saint of Catholic education. Each year we make a pilgrimage to her shrine located near Denver, Colorado. The picture below is a huge statue of the Sacred Heart on a mountaintop overlooking Denver from the west, at the Cabrini shrine. There Moses-like, she directed her sisters, who were considering abandoning the mountain-top location for lack of water,  to discover the miraculous fountain which still flows copiously.