For his part, Fr. Martin claims he was using his own baldness as a conversation-starter, and only lifted a strand of the young woman’s hair as he joked of his envy of her ability to floss with it.
Martin is accompanying the holy relic of the arm of Saint Jude, the patron saint of lost causes; as well as of fools and losers, on its tour of the US. Although whether or not Martin actually flossed with the hair is unclear, nobody seems bothered by his roaming around with a mummified body part in his luggage.
But instead of the medallion, one just wears an acrylic sleeveless sweater vest, the white middle class signal to potential mates that one is safely vasectomied. V-neck for “sterility yet virility!”
I think she’s also the patron saint of firefighters, maybe pyrotechnicians just got lumped in with them. What St. Barbara has to do especially with fire, I don’t have a clue, but probably she was burned or even roasted, like so many Catholic saints.
ETA: I misremembered, St. Barbara is also the patron saint of miners, not firefighters, because according to legend, after her father murdered her (not by burning her, but beheading) for being Christian, he got struck by lightning and consumed by flames. So it’s perfectly logical (in a Catholic kind of logic) that she’s the saint of pyrotechnics (and also artillery).
In Robert Heinlein’s “Space Cadet”, St Barbara is also the patron saint of astronauts. But it was written 13 years before any humans actually got to space, and in reality, astronauts got St. Joseph Cupertino, who was already the patron saint of aviators (and mental handicaps, apparently). His connection is simpler - he could fly.
Then there’s Agatha of Sicily, who underwent, among other tortures, having her breasts torn off. She’s sometimes depicted holding a tray with her breasts on it; but it wouldn’t do to tell the kiddies what they really are, so we were told they were loaves of bread (and she’s one of the patrons of bakers). Whether or not it’s part of the deception, there’s a cake named in her honor.
I think that most patron saints of highly-specific endeavors are chosen by those who work in those endeavors. The Vatican keeps the official List of who is a saint, but I don’t think they’re particularly concerned with what they’re a saint of.
On another note, St. Scholastica (sister of Benedict; sainthood apparently ran in that family) is the patron saint of snow days.
St Honorious is the patron for bakers and pastry makers. So I like him and he has a cake named for him. He is often depicted as holding a baker’s peel with three loaves of bread, symbolic of the Holy Trinity.
