Why Saint Joan?

Burned at the stake at Rouen in 1431, at the age of fourteen Saint Joan of Arc heard and saw Saint Catharine of Alexandria, Saint Margaret of Antioch and Saint Michael the Archangel.

The fourth century martyr Saint Catharine of Alexandria (Feast Day: 25th November), and the third century martyr Saint Margaret of Antioch (Feast Day: 20th July) were excluded from the new liturgical calendar in 1969, along with many other well-known saints and powerful intercessors such as Saint Philomena.

Devotion to the Holy Michael Archangel dates from the very beginnings of the Church. In 1969 Saint Michael was deprived of his sole Feast Day, known as Michaelmas. The Feast of the Apparition of Saint Michael on 8th May was also dropped. The sudden abandonment by the Catholic Church of such powerful and universally popular devotions is one symptom of the liturgical revolution described in the first publication of The Saint Joan Press by John Wetherell, "Lex Orandi Lex Credendi: An Examination of the Ethos of the Tridentine Mass and that of the Novus Ordo of Pope Paul VI."

The illustrations by Madeleine Sarah Beard are derived from fifteenth century French manuscripts in memory of the fifteenth century martyr Saint Joan, canonised by Pope Benedict XV in 1920.