Patron Saint of Anti-Procrastination

Many of us are born procrastinators. Even on those days when we are working diligently, someone we are working with is probably procrastinating. Believe it or not, the patron invoked against procrastination is St. Expeditus. He was one of six Armenian Christians, probably all soldiers, who were martyred in the fourth century. How he came to be the patron saint of procrastination is a bit complicated. In the 19th century, the relics of a martyr, along with a statue, were shipped from Rome to a convent in Paris. Neither the relics nor the statue was labeled, but the shipping crate was marked “Spedito,” which the sisters took to be the saint’s name (it actually means “sent” in Italian). They Latinized it to St. Expeditus, and devotion to him spread across France, then to New Orleans and on to South America. St. Expeditus is always depicted as a Roman soldier, holding a cross above his head bearing the word Hodie, Latin for “today,” and trampling on a raven marked Cras, Latin for “tomorrow.”

The feast of St. Expeditus is April 19.