Who was St. Anthony of Padua?
The Basilica that keeps his tomb says it plainly: it is difficult to write a biography of St. Anthony because we have so few details about long stretches of his life, and much of what circulates comes from pious legends of limited historical value. What follows is what the Basilica, the Catholic Encyclopedia and Benedict XVI agree on.
He was born in Lisbon in 1195, the firstborn of an influential family with great plans for him, and baptized Fernando. He entered the Augustinian canons at St. Vincent's in Lisbon and then at Holy Cross in Coimbra, and was ordained a priest. In 1220 the relics of five Franciscan friars martyred in Morocco were exposed in Coimbra. Fernando wanted what they had. He joined the Friars Minor, took the name Anthony, and set out for Morocco to preach and, as the Basilica puts it, to die there. Illness forced him to turn back, and he ended up in Italy. In 1221 he was at the Chapter of Mats in Assisi, where he met St. Francis.
He asked for nothing and was sent to a hermitage at Forlì to do menial work and pray. Franciscan Media tells how he was found: at an ordination where no one had prepared to preach, he was told to speak, and the friars discovered a preacher. Benedict XVI quotes Francis's note that he would like Anthony "to teach the brethren theology," and Franciscan Media says Anthony became the first friar to do so; Benedict XVI places it in Bologna. Then came years of preaching in France and northern Italy, where he served three years as provincial. Franciscan Media says he was sent to preach to the Albigensians, who denied Christ's divinity and the sacraments. The Catholic Encyclopedia is more cautious: he "probably" preached against them in the south of France, "though we have no authorized documents to that effect." Benedict XVI describes the two cycles of sermons he left, the Sunday Sermons and the Sermons on the Saints, written as material for other preachers. His last base was Padua.
In 1231, worn out by travel and illness and suffering from dropsy, he withdrew to Camposampiero, where a nobleman named Tiso had a shelter built for him in a tree. On June 13 he came down for the midday meal and collapsed. He asked to be taken to Padua. He got as far as the Poor Clare monastery at Arcella, just outside the city, was anointed, began a hymn to the Virgin, said "I see my Lord," and died. He was thirty-six. Children ran through Padua shouting that the saint was dead. Gregory IX canonized him at Pentecost, May 30, 1232, within a year of his death, and in 1263 his relics were moved into the church built for him, with St. Bonaventure present. On January 16, 1946, Pius XII declared him a Doctor of the Church and gave him the title Doctor Evangelicus.
Why Catholics pray to St. Anthony for lost things, for the poor and for the family
Franciscan Media is honest about the first patronage: "popular devotion has nominated" him finder of lost objects. No pope did. The story behind it, which the Capuchin Franciscans tell with the words "according to pious tradition," is this. A novice leaving the order took Anthony's psalter, the book of psalms with the notes he used for teaching. Anthony prayed that it would be found and returned. The novice brought it back, begged pardon, and asked to be readmitted. The psalter is said to be kept at the Franciscan friary in Bologna.
The devotion is at least as old as the responsory printed below. Friar Julian of Speyer wrote the Si quaeris for Anthony's office in 1233, two years after his death, and it already says that the sea obeys him, fetters break, and lost things are found again when young or old implore his aid. Catholics have taken that line at its word for eight centuries. The Basilica sings it every Tuesday.
The poor come second and are nearer to the man himself. Benedict XVI, in his 2010 audience, says Anthony urged the rich to welcome the poor and pointed them to the true riches of the heart, and he quotes a line from the sermons: "Charity is the soul of faith, it gives it life; without love, faith dies." Franciscan Media lists him as patron of the poor and of travelers and calls him a saint for people whose lives are "completely uprooted," which was his own story twice over, once leaving Lisbon and once leaving Morocco. The Basilica publishes prayers to him for spouses, for parents and for the family, and families bring him their quarrels and their bills. All of these patronages are traditional.
How to pray to St. Anthony
His memorial is June 13, the day he died. The Basilica keeps the Tredicina, thirteen days of prayer before the feast, and the Thirteen Tuesdays, a novena spread over thirteen weeks, and it streams Mass and the chapel of his tomb for those who cannot come to Padua. Any Tuesday will do. Any day will do.
Say the responsory below, or just its middle verse, and then say what you have lost. If it is a thing, keep looking while you pray. If it is money, Anthony's own answer was the poor, so find the parish or the charity that helps with bills before the problem grows, and see a debt counselor if it already has. If it is a person, call the police, not only the saint. If it is faith, or peace in the house, bring it to Confession and to Mass. Benedict XVI says he placed Christ, in the manger and on the cross, at the center of everything he said. That is still the point of asking him for anything.