The best-known prayer among American Catholics, after the Our Father and the Hail Mary, may be the one to Anthony of Padua, which goes, Saint Anthony, Saint Anthony, please come around. Something is lost and cannot be found. How many times have you turned to the Portuguese-born Franciscan after losing your keys?

Are joy, humor and laughter considered inappropriate for serious Catholics? If so, why?

I knew almost nothing about the town, except that it had some vague connection with Joan of Arc.

There are so many mistaken notions about St. John of the Cross (1542-91) that we might do well to clarify some of them.

Not only did Fra Giovanni paint like an angel; he was, in his personal life, an angel himself. The friar’s “angelic” style and “rare and perfect talent,” Vasari informs us, were the result of a “simple and devout life.”

I had planned to stay a few months, but was pretty quickly hooked and remained for five years - the last five years of Dorothy’s life, as it turned out.