Practices

Veneration of saints and Mary

Devotional Practices

Citation Formats

General Reference

Divinity Atlas. "Veneration of saints and Mary." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://www.divinityatlas.com/practices/veneration-of-saints-and-mary.

APA Style

Divinity Atlas. (n.d.). Veneration of saints and Mary. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://www.divinityatlas.com/practices/veneration-of-saints-and-mary

BibTeX

@misc{divinityatlas-veneration-of-saints-and-mary,
  author = {Divinity Atlas},
  title = {Veneration of saints and Mary},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://www.divinityatlas.com/practices/veneration-of-saints-and-mary},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

Origin 150 to 500 CE

Catholics and Orthodox ask the saints, and Mary above all, to pray to God on their behalf, on the understanding that the dead in Christ are alive and can intercede as a living friend might. In practice that means prayer before an image or a relic, patronage of a particular saint for a trade, an illness or a country, name-days kept in place of birthdays, novenas, votive candles, and offerings left at a tomb. Mary receives a distinct and heavier devotion: the Rosary, the Hail Mary, a dense calendar of feasts, and apparition shrines such as Guadalupe and Lourdes that draw millions a year. The tradition insists on a hard distinction between worship, due to God alone, and honour paid to a creature. Most Protestants reject the practice on the grounds that the distinction does not survive contact with what people actually do.

Facts

Origins

Origin Period

150 to 500 CE 1

Held By

Veneration of saints and Mary is affirmed by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches and, in more limited form, some High Church Anglican and Lutheran practice, while most other Protestant traditions reject it as inconsistent with prayer being addressed to God alone. 1

Origin Period

Marian devotion develops from the fifth 1

Place of Origin

The Roman Empire, with Marian devotion later centred on Ephesus and Alexandria 1

Observance

Observance Note

Mary receives a distinct and heavier devotion: the Rosary, the Hail Mary, a dense calendar of feasts, and apparition shrines such as Guadalupe and Lourdes that draw millions a year. 1

Controversy

Point in Disputethe subject's own account

Catholic and Orthodox teaching insists on a hard distinction between worship, due to God alone, and honour paid to a saint or to Mary as a creature; most Protestants reject the practice specifically on the grounds that this distinction does not survive contact with what believers actually do. 3

Practice

Category of Practice

Devotional 1

Who Performs It

All adherents of the tradition 1

Solitary or Communal

Performed alone or together 1

Attributions

Tradition

Roman Catholicism and Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy, honouring departed holy figures and especially Mary as intercessors, through prayer, feast days, icons and pilgrimage, distinct from the worship reserved for God alone. 1

Status

Status Today

Living tradition, practised today 2

Learn More

The Honour of the Holy Ones

The veneration of the saints, and pre-eminently of Mary the mother of Jesus, is a major devotional practice of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, in which the holy men and women of the faith are honoured, taken as examples, and asked to pray to God on behalf of the living. The practice rests on the belief in the "communion of saints", that the church embraces both the living and the dead in Christ, and that those who have died in holiness are alive with God and can intercede for those still on earth. As with icons, the tradition draws a firm theological line: the saints are venerated, honoured as friends of God and asked for their prayers, while worship is reserved for God alone. Mary, as the mother of the Lord, receives the highest veneration among the saints, though still categorically less than the worship due to God.

In practice this devotion fills the calendar and the landscape of Catholic and Orthodox life: saints' days commemorate the holy ones through the year, churches and persons take saints as patrons, relics are honoured, and countless prayers ask particular saints to intercede for particular needs. Marian devotion is especially rich, expressed in prayers such as the Hail Mary and the Rosary, in feasts, apparitions and pilgrimages, and in the many titles under which Mary is invoked. The Protestant Reformers largely rejected the invocation of saints as unwarranted by scripture and as obscuring the sole mediation of Christ, and the practice remains one of the sharpest divisions between Catholic and Orthodox Christianity on the one hand and most of Protestantism on the other, a difference less about honouring holy examples, which most Christians accept, than about whether the departed saints may and should be asked to pray for those on earth.

A Contested Devotion, a Case in Point

The Protestant Reformers broke with the cult of the saints as sharply as they broke with almost anything else in late medieval practice. Luther and Calvin both argued that invoking saints had no scriptural warrant, that it obscured Christ as sole mediator, and that shrines, relics and pilgrimage had become a trade in indulgence and fee rather than piety, an economic complaint as much as a theological one.

Reformed and Lutheran churches abolished saints' days, closed shrines and stripped altars of images within a generation, and the divide has held: most Protestant traditions still regard prayer to the saints as a practice with no biblical basis, whatever pastoral value Catholics and Orthodox claim for it. Marian apparitions supply the clearest instance of how the devotion actually spreads.

At Guadalupe in 1531, an apparition reported by an indigenous convert, Juan Diego, produced an image on his cloak that became the object of the most visited Marian shrine in the world and, within a few generations, a central symbol of Mexican and wider Latin American Catholic identity, cited by clergy at the time as instrumental in the mass conversion of the indigenous population. The Catholic church treats such apparitions cautiously and formally, requiring a bishop's investigation and a finding of worthy of belief before public devotion is approved, which keeps the vast majority of reported apparitions worldwide without official recognition even where local devotion is intense. Guadalupe's case shows both halves of the practice at once: an intercessory devotion that Rome polices carefully, and a popular movement that routinely outruns any formal approval it receives.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Mary

The veneration of Mary, distinguished in Catholic theology from the worship owed to God alone.

Paso, the Holy Week Float

The float carries polychrome sculpture of Christ and of the Virgin, dressed and lit for the procession.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Saint

Veneration of saints and Mary is the practice the category exists to license, and the distinction the churches draw between veneration and the worship owed to God alone is itself disputed between denominations.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Belongs to Tradition

Armenian Apostolic Church

Kept in the Armenian Apostolic Church. The Coptic and Ethiopian churches keep an unusually heavy Marian devotion, with monthly as well as annual feasts and widely reported apparitions such as Zeitoun in 1968, and honour their own martyrs, of whom the Coptic calendar counts very many.

Church of Cyprus

Kept in the Church of Cyprus, autocephalous since the Council of Ephesus in 431. The Orthodox honour Mary as Theotokos, God-bearer, and glorify saints by decision of a synod rather than through a Roman-style process; they reject the Immaculate Conception as answering a doctrine of original sin they do not hold, while keeping the Dormition.

Church of Greece

Kept in the Church of Greece. The Orthodox honour Mary as Theotokos, God-bearer, and glorify saints by decision of a synod rather than through a Roman-style process; they reject the Immaculate Conception as answering a doctrine of original sin they do not hold, while keeping the Dormition.

Coptic Orthodoxy

Kept in the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. The Coptic and Ethiopian churches keep an unusually heavy Marian devotion, with monthly as well as annual feasts and widely reported apparitions such as Zeitoun in 1968, and honour their own martyrs, of whom the Coptic calendar counts very many.

Eastern Orthodoxy

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople

Kept in the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the see of first honour among the Orthodox churches. The Orthodox honour Mary as Theotokos, God-bearer, and glorify saints by decision of a synod rather than through a Roman-style process; they reject the Immaculate Conception as answering a doctrine of original sin they do not hold, while keeping the Dormition.

Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church

Kept in the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The Coptic and Ethiopian churches keep an unusually heavy Marian devotion, with monthly as well as annual feasts and widely reported apparitions such as Zeitoun in 1968, and honour their own martyrs, of whom the Coptic calendar counts very many.

Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The Coptic and Ethiopian churches keep an unusually heavy Marian devotion, with monthly as well as annual feasts and widely reported apparitions such as Zeitoun in 1968, and honour their own martyrs, of whom the Coptic calendar counts very many.

Georgian Orthodox Church

Kept in the Georgian Orthodox Church, which has used its own language and script in worship since the fifth century. The Orthodox honour Mary as Theotokos, God-bearer, and glorify saints by decision of a synod rather than through a Roman-style process; they reject the Immaculate Conception as answering a doctrine of original sin they do not hold, while keeping the Dormition.

Greek Orthodox Church

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches. The Orthodox honour Mary as Theotokos, God-bearer, and glorify saints by decision of a synod rather than through a Roman-style process; they reject the Immaculate Conception as answering a doctrine of original sin they do not hold, while keeping the Dormition.

Oriental Orthodoxy

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Roman Catholicism

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Romanian Orthodox Church

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. The Orthodox honour Mary as Theotokos, God-bearer, and glorify saints by decision of a synod rather than through a Roman-style process; they reject the Immaculate Conception as answering a doctrine of original sin they do not hold, while keeping the Dormition.

Russian Orthodox Church

Kept in the Russian Orthodox Church, in the Slavonic recension of the Byzantine books. The Orthodox honour Mary as Theotokos, God-bearer, and glorify saints by decision of a synod rather than through a Roman-style process; they reject the Immaculate Conception as answering a doctrine of original sin they do not hold, while keeping the Dormition.

Serbian Orthodox Church

Kept in the Serbian Orthodox Church. The Orthodox honour Mary as Theotokos, God-bearer, and glorify saints by decision of a synod rather than through a Roman-style process; they reject the Immaculate Conception as answering a doctrine of original sin they do not hold, while keeping the Dormition.

Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church

The saints and the Theotokos are venerated, in the Byzantine forms rather than the Latin ones.

Ukrainian Orthodox Church

Kept in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The Orthodox honour Mary as Theotokos, God-bearer, and glorify saints by decision of a synod rather than through a Roman-style process; they reject the Immaculate Conception as answering a doctrine of original sin they do not hold, while keeping the Dormition.

Critiqued By

African Methodist Episcopal Church

Kept in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first denomination in the United States founded by Black people. The Articles name the invocation of saints in the same place, and Methodist prayer is addressed to God alone.

African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church

Kept in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. The Articles name the invocation of saints in the same place, and Methodist prayer is addressed to God alone.

Anglican Communion

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. Article XXII names the invocation of saints in the same sentence, and the Prayer Book addresses no prayer to any saint.

Anglicanism

Article XXII names the invocation of saints in the same sentence, and the Prayer Book addresses no prayer to any saint.

Source The Thirty-Nine Articles of ReligionChurch of Englandthe holders' own account

Baptist

Prayer is offered to God alone, and the saints are not asked to intercede.

Calvinism (Reformed)

Prayer is to be made to God alone and, since the fall, in the name of Christ, and to no other.

Source The Westminster Confession of FaithWestminster Assemblythe holders' own account

Christian Methodist Episcopal Church

Kept in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. The Articles name the invocation of saints in the same place, and Methodist prayer is addressed to God alone.

Church of England

Kept in the Church of England, the province from which the Prayer Book tradition comes. Article XXII names the invocation of saints in the same sentence, and the Prayer Book addresses no prayer to any saint.

Church of Ireland

Kept in the Church of Ireland. Article XXII names the invocation of saints in the same sentence, and the Prayer Book addresses no prayer to any saint.

Church of Scotland

Kept in the Church of Scotland, the established Presbyterian church of that country. Prayer is to be made to God alone and, since the fall, in the name of Christ, and to no other.

Church of Sweden

Kept in the Church of Sweden, which retained the historic episcopate through the Reformation as few Lutheran churches did. The Augsburg Confession permits the remembrance of the saints as examples of faith and forbids their invocation, since Christ alone is the mediator.

Church of the Nazarene

Kept in the Church of the Nazarene, which stands in the Wesleyan holiness line. The Articles name the invocation of saints in the same place, and Methodist prayer is addressed to God alone.

Dutch Reformed Church

Kept in the Dutch Reformed tradition, which holds the Heidelberg Catechism among its confessional standards. Prayer is to be made to God alone and, since the fall, in the name of Christ, and to no other.

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Kept in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The Augsburg Confession permits the remembrance of the saints as examples of faith and forbids their invocation, since Christ alone is the mediator.

Free Methodist Church

Kept in the Free Methodist Church. The Articles name the invocation of saints in the same place, and Methodist prayer is addressed to God alone.

Global Methodist Church

Kept in the Global Methodist Church, formed in 2022. The Articles name the invocation of saints in the same place, and Methodist prayer is addressed to God alone.

Jehovah's Witnesses

Prayer is directed to Jehovah through Christ alone, and no saint is invoked and no image used.

Lutheranism

The Augsburg Confession permits the remembrance of the saints as examples of faith and forbids their invocation, since Christ alone is the mediator.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon

Methodism

The Articles name the invocation of saints in the same place, and Methodist prayer is addressed to God alone.

Source The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist ChurchUnited Methodist Churchthe holders' own account

National Baptist Convention of America

Kept in the National Baptist Convention of America International. Prayer is offered to God alone, and the saints are not asked to intercede.

Presbyterianism

Prayer is offered to God alone through Christ, and to no saint.

Source The Westminster Confession of FaithWestminster Assemblythe holders' own account

Progressive National Baptist Convention

Kept in the Progressive National Baptist Convention. Prayer is offered to God alone, and the saints are not asked to intercede.

The Episcopal Church

Kept in the Episcopal Church, whose own Prayer Book descends from the Scottish rather than the English line. Article XXII names the invocation of saints in the same sentence, and the Prayer Book addresses no prayer to any saint.

The United Methodist Church

Kept in the United Methodist Church. The Articles name the invocation of saints in the same place, and Methodist prayer is addressed to God alone.

Wesleyan Church

Kept in the Wesleyan Church. The Articles name the invocation of saints in the same place, and Methodist prayer is addressed to God alone.

Sources

1. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition

F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005View the Source

2. Encyclopedia of Religion

Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source

3. The Westminster Confession of Faith

Westminster Assembly, 1646the holders' own accountView the Source

The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion

Church of England, 1571the holders' own accountView the Source

The Augsburg Confession

Philipp Melanchthon, 1530View the Source

The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church

United Methodist Church, The United Methodist Publishing Housethe holders' own accountView the Source

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