Peter Sinclair: Saint of Cyber

In a wired and godless world, saints increasingly struggle with irrelevance. My favourite, naturally, is St Clare, who beheld "visions from afar," thus securing an executive position in hi-tech as patron saint of TV.

St Valentine, whose day we celebrated last week, has ended up in marketing. Love has been leveraged into profits which even St Nicholas, CEO of another saintly conglomerate, might envy.

Now Catholic magazine The Tablet (last week's lead, "White House Backs God," will no doubt flatter the Almighty) announces it wants to anoint a Patron Saint of the internet.

Great idea, because if there's one thing you really need when you get a 404 it's someone to pray to. The Vatican is the most webcentric of religions — its servers are named Raphael, Gabriel and Michael, and you can tune in to Vatican Radio for the streamed hits of the last 1000 years.

Rome is already sifting through applications and the choice will eventually be made by Cardinal Medina Estevez, prefect of the Vatican's Congregation of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.

Front-runner is St Isidore of Seville, born into a family which made something of a specialty of sainthood — his older brother was St Leander, his younger brother St Fulgentius, and even his little sister Florentina made it (she is said to have ruled over 40 convents).

The most learned man of his age, Isidore was responsible for stamping out the Arian Heresy among the Visigoths. Today, his website features a prayer to be murmured before logging on.

It entreats that, during our journeys through cyberspace, Isidore will direct our mouse only to that which is pleasing to God — ruling out a fair number of sites immediately.

It also beseeches him to help us treat with charity and patience those souls we encounter in our wanderings.
But there are other powerful claimants such as St Pedro Regalado, a 15th-century saint who reportedly had the ability to appear in two places at once — very handy, certainly, but mightn't he make a better patron saint of multitasking? Besides, he already has a full-time gig as patron saint of bull fighting.

Then there's Saint Tecla of Catalan, whose name is at the root of the Spanish word for "keyboard." She already has her own virtual chapel which hears confessions, if you have sinned in Spanish, and also endorses software.

Martin O'Malley of CBC suggests yet another choice might be St Jude, the patron saint of Lost Causes.

Someone has even mentioned Marshall McLuhan, a good Catholic boy already honoured by the Vatican — he was appointed Consultor of the Pontifical Commission for Social Communications in 1973.

In addition to Isidore's godly work among the Visigoths, though, supporters point out that he is also credited with creating the world's first database, Etymologies, a 20-volume encyclopaedia.

But if that's their criterion, then why not go for Bill Gates, creator of Encarta? For a start, St Bill can heal computers from a distance.

Links

The Tablet

Vatican

Vatican Radio

Arian Heresy

Visigoths

Saint Tecla of Catalan

Encarta

St Bill Gates