Thank You, St. Jude : Women's Devotion to the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes

by Robert A. Orsi

• ISBN13: 9780300064766
• ISBN10: 0300064764
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 1996-07-24
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

This prize-winning book tells the story of American women's devotion to St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes, one of the most popular saints in the American Catholic pantheon. Robert Orsi examines St. Jude's rise from obscurity to national popularity; beginning in Chicago in 1929, and he shows how the daughters and granddaughters of Catholic immigrants called on the saint to help them make lives for themselves in the tumultuous years of depression, war, and changing workplaces and family lives.

Author Biography

Robert A. Orsi is professor of religious studies at Indiana University.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
"From South Chicago to Heaven": The Making of the National Shrine of Saint Jude	p. 1
Hopeless Causes and Things Despaired Of	p. 40
Imagining Women	p. 70
"I Recognize Him When He Turns": Women Imagining Jude	p. 95
"She Would Tell Me Her Troubles, and I Mine": Hagiography as Stories in Two Voices	p. 119
Healings	p. 142
"There's Miracles, and Miracles, and Miracles": The Cult of Hopeless Causes	p. 185
Notes	p. 213
Bibliography	p. 271
Index	p. 295
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