Who was St. Jude Thaddeus?
Jude was one of the twelve apostles. That is the first and surest thing we know about him. Luke's Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles call him Jude; Matthew and Mark list the same man as Thaddeus. Franciscan Media points out that, apart from those lists, the Gospels do not mention him again. His name is the same as Judas Iscariot's, and English probably shortened it to "Jude" to keep the two men apart.
The New Testament also contains a short Letter of Jude, written by "Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James." Whether the apostle wrote it is an old question. The Catholic Encyclopedia, writing in 1910, says most Catholic commentators identify the author with the apostle "also called Thaddeus" and calls that view "most highly probable." Franciscan Media states the more common modern judgment: "Scholars hold that he is not the author of the Letter of Jude." The Church reads the letter as Scripture either way. It tells persecuted Christians to build themselves up in faith, to pray in the Holy Spirit and to wait for the mercy of the Lord.
Everything else comes from tradition, and tradition was written down late. Vatican News passes on the memory that his father, Alpheus, was a brother of St. Joseph and his mother, Mary Cleophas, a cousin of the Virgin, which would make Jude a cousin of Jesus. The St. Jude Shrine in Baltimore says he was born at Paneas in Galilee and worked as a farmer. After Pentecost, Vatican News says, he preached in Syria, Armenia and Persia, where the apostle Simon joined him. The two were arrested, taken to a temple of the sun and ordered to worship the goddess Diana. They refused and were killed. St. Fortunatus of Poitiers, Vatican News says, places their burial at Suanir in Persia; the Baltimore shrine dates the martyrdom to around the year 65 and says it happened "in Persia or Syria." His remains were later carried to Rome. Vatican News and both American shrines agree that they rest today in St. Peter's Basilica, and the Baltimore shrine records that Pope Paul III granted a plenary indulgence to those who visit his tomb on his feast.
One legend explains his picture. King Abgar of Edessa, the story goes, asked Jesus to cure his leprosy. Jesus pressed his face into a cloth and sent it with Jude, and the king was healed. That is why St. Jude is painted holding an image of Christ. The flame above his head is Pentecost.
Why Catholics pray to St. Jude for hopeless causes
No pope declared St. Jude patron of hopeless causes. The patronage is traditional, and it is one of the strongest in the Church. Franciscan Media lists him as patron of "desperate situations." The Baltimore shrine traces the title to his letter, written to Christians under persecution, and says that "his inspirational support of these early believers led to him becoming the patron saint of desperate causes." The shrine also passes on a tradition that St. Bridget of Sweden was told in a vision to turn to Jude in impossible matters.
What is documented is how the devotion grew in the United States. In 1929 a Claretian priest, Fr. James Tort, founded the National Shrine of St. Jude at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Chicago. Many of his parishioners depended on work in the nearby steel mills, jobs subject to national economic conditions of the 1920s. He held the first solemn novena on February 17, 1929. When the next one ended on the feast of St. Jude that October, the shrine's history says, "more than 1,000 people stood outside the church to hear the service." Through the Great Depression and the Second World War, thousands came. In Baltimore, the Pallottine Fathers had been entrusted with the St. Jude Shrine in 1917, and regular novena services began "around the outset of World War II"; before long four services were needed every Wednesday. Both shrines still receive petitions by the thousands each year.
Franciscan Media puts the theology in one line: "Jude, like all the saints, is the saint of the impossible: Only God can create his divine life in human beings." When a Catholic asks St. Jude's prayers for a marriage that seems finished, a diagnosis with no good options, a debt that cannot be paid or a child who will not come home, she is not asking a saint to override God. She is asking an apostle who stood by Christ when everything looked lost to stand by her now.
How to pray to St. Jude
Pray to him tonight if tonight is when you need him. His feast is October 28, which he shares with St. Simon; the General Roman Calendar ranks it as a Feast. The Chicago shrine prays a solemn novena from October 20 to 28, and the Baltimore shrine holds novena services every Wednesday. Both accept petitions, and either novena can be prayed at home over nine days. If you are ever in Rome, his tomb is in St. Peter's.
Say the prayer below slowly, then name the cause in your own words. Be specific. Then do the ordinary Catholic things that make a prayer honest: go to Confession, go to Mass, and keep doing the next practical thing. If the hopeless cause is an illness, prayer accompanies treatment and never replaces it; if it is a legal or financial crisis, call the lawyer or the counselor as well as the saint. The hope you are asking for is not that nothing bad will happen. It is that you will not be let go.