He built something out of nothing.

Twelve followers became thousands.

And then he walked away from the movement he founded — straight into an active war zone, unarmed, expecting to die.

What he found instead was a Sultan willing to listen.

Picking up where Part One ended, this episode follows Francesco across enemy lines at Damietta, back to an order growing beyond his control, and finally up a mountain called La Verna — where his body would carry wounds that never healed, his eyes would fail him completely, and he would compose, blind and in pain, one of the most beloved prayers in Christian history.

This is the second half of the story of Saint Francis of Assisi.

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This episode draws on the earliest Franciscan sources — including the writings of Thomas of Celano and Bonaventure — alongside other historical accounts. While we've done our best to ensure accuracy and reverence, some elements have been adapted or dramatized for narrative and production purposes. Our goal is to honour the spirit and message of the saints while making their stories engaging and accessible to modern listeners.

Introduction Music Generated by Renee Annabelle Sieff
All credit belongs to Renee Annabelle Sieff for Intro Music

This episode is based on accounts from the Coptic Synaxarium, early church tradition, and other historical sources. While we’ve done our best to ensure accuracy and reverence, some elements have been adapted or dramatized for narrative and production purposes. Our goal is to honour the spirit and message of the saints while making their stories engaging and accessible to modern listeners.

A merchant's son.
A born performer.
A boy who wanted the whole town to say his name.

Francesco di Bernardone had everything money could buy in the hill town of Assisi — fine cloth, French songs, a crowd that gathered wherever he did.

What he wanted was glory. A knight's glory. The kind sung about in taverns a hundred years later.

He rode out to war to get it.

He came home in chains instead.

What followed was a year in a prison cell, a vision he couldn't shake, and a leper on a road he could no longer bring himself to ride past.

By the end of Part One, the boy who once needed an entire piazza to notice him has given away everything he owns — and found, without meaning to, the beginning of a family.

This is the first half of the story of Saint Francis of Assisi.

Part Two continues right after this episode.

🎧 For the best experience, listen with headphones to fully immerse yourself in the music and sound design.
🤝 If this episode moved you, share it with someone who needs to hear it.
☕ Support the podcast: buymeacoffee.com/Voicesofthesaints

This episode draws on the earliest Franciscan sources — including the writings of Thomas of Celano and Bonaventure — alongside other historical accounts. While we've done our best to ensure accuracy and reverence, some elements have been adapted or dramatized for narrative and production purposes. Our goal is to honour the spirit and message of the saints while making their stories engaging and accessible to modern listeners.

Introduction Music Generated by Renee Annabelle Sieff
All credit belongs to Renee Annabelle Sieff for Intro Music

This episode is based on accounts from the Coptic Synaxarium, early church tradition, and other historical sources. While we’ve done our best to ensure accuracy and reverence, some elements have been adapted or dramatized for narrative and production purposes. Our goal is to honour the spirit and message of the saints while making their stories engaging and accessible to modern listeners.

A priest. A wife who begged him to come inside. A street he refused to leave.

Sinai, 2013. Egypt has just broken open. The security outside the churches is gone. Everyone knows what that means. Abouna Mina Aboud knows too — and he stays anyway.

This is the true story of a boy who lost his father too young, found God in the silence that followed, waited years for a calling that seemed like it would never come — and became, in the end, a shepherd in the fullest sense of the word. Not the one who feels no danger. The one who stands where the danger is.

For the most immersive experience, we recommend listening with headphones.

If this story moved you, share it with someone who needs to hear that faith like this still exists — in our lifetime, on an ordinary street, in an ordinary year.

Producing these stories takes real time and real cost. If you're able to support this work, you'll find our Buy Me a Coffee link here: buymeacoffee.com/Voicesofthesaints

This episode contains dramatized scenes and dialogue based on documented historical accounts. Certain details of atmosphere and internal reflection have been recreated for narrative purposes while remaining faithful to the historical record.

Introduction Music Generated by Renee Annabelle Sieff
All credit belongs to Renee Annabelle Sieff for Intro Music

This episode is based on accounts from the Coptic Synaxarium, early church tradition, and other historical sources. While we’ve done our best to ensure accuracy and reverence, some elements have been adapted or dramatized for narrative and production purposes. Our goal is to honour the spirit and message of the saints while making their stories engaging and accessible to modern listeners.

Many climbed the mountain to find Him.

Only one stopped on the way.

Saint Bishoy was not a ruler. Not a philosopher. Not a man the world would have noticed.

He was a village boy from Shansa who walked away from everything familiar… and into the wilderness of Scetis.

There, he spent his life in prayer, fasting, and silence.
Tying his hair to the ceiling so sleep wouldn't take him.
Standing through the long, hidden hours when no one was watching.

But his greatest act of holiness wasn't a vision.
It wasn't a miracle.

It was stopping for an old man on the road.

While the other monks rushed ahead to see Christ…
Bishoy stayed behind.
He carried a stranger.

And that stranger revealed His wounds.

This is the story of the man who spent his life seeking God…
And found Him disguised as the burden no one else wanted to carry.

🎧 For the best experience, listen with headphones to fully immerse yourself in the music and sound design.
🤝 If this episode moved you, share it with someone who needs the reminder… that sometimes the holiest moment of your life looks less like reaching the mountain — and more like stopping for someone on the way.
☕ Support the podcast: buymeacoffee.com/Voicesofthesaints

This episode is based on accounts from the Coptic Synaxarium, early church tradition, and other historical sources. While we've done our best to ensure accuracy and reverence, some elements have been adapted or dramatized for narrative and production purposes. Our goal is to honour the spirit and message of the saints while making their stories engaging and accessible to modern listeners.

Introduction Music Generated by Renee Annabelle Sieff
All credit belongs to Renee Annabelle Sieff for Intro Music

This episode is based on accounts from the Coptic Synaxarium, early church tradition, and other historical sources. While we’ve done our best to ensure accuracy and reverence, some elements have been adapted or dramatized for narrative and production purposes. Our goal is to honour the spirit and message of the saints while making their stories engaging and accessible to modern listeners.

He was born close to power.
A brother of an emperor.
A man who had everything the world could offer.

And he left it all behind.

Not in anger. Not in defeat.
But because he had felt something greater than comfort, greater than honour, greater than the life everyone around him was fighting to protect.

And he could not unfeel it.

For fifty-seven years, Saint Karas lived alone in the inner desert of Egypt.
No human face. No familiar voice. No applause.
Only silence.
Only God.

But hidden lives have a way of being found.
And when a monk named Bemwa was sent into the wilderness to search for him…
What he discovered was not a forgotten hermit.

It was living proof that a soul can surrender everything…
And still lose nothing when it is held by God.

This is the story of Saint Karas.
A man the world forgot.
A man heaven never did.

🎧 For the best experience, listen with headphones to fully immerse yourself in the music and sound design.
🤝 If this episode moved you, share it with someone who needs to hear it.
☕ Support the podcast: buymeacoffee.com/Voicesofthesaints

This episode is based on accounts from the Coptic Synaxarium, early church tradition, and other historical sources. While we've done our best to ensure accuracy and reverence, some elements have been adapted or dramatized for narrative and production purposes. Our goal is to honour the spirit and message of the saints while making their stories engaging and accessible to modern listeners.

Introduction Music Generated by Renee Annabelle Sieff
All credit belongs to Renee Annabelle Sieff for Intro Music

This episode is based on accounts from the Coptic Synaxarium, early church tradition, and other historical sources. While we’ve done our best to ensure accuracy and reverence, some elements have been adapted or dramatized for narrative and production purposes. Our goal is to honour the spirit and message of the saints while making their stories engaging and accessible to modern listeners.

In a world that celebrates noise, recognition, and status…
some lives are lived very differently.

Father Raphael Moussa was not famous.
He didn’t seek attention.

He didn’t build a platform.

He simply stayed.

With the broken.
With the lost.
With those who felt unseen.

But behind that quiet life…
was a courage few could understand.

He faced danger when others would step back.
He gave when no one was watching.
And in his final days…
he spoke of a path he knew was coming.

A path that would ask everything.

This is not just the story of how he died…
but the story of how he lived.

And why, in the end…
he did exactly what he had always done.

He stayed.

🎧 For the best experience, listen with headphones to fully immerse yourself in the music and sound design.

🤝 If this episode moved you, share it with someone who needs to hear it.

☕ Support the podcast:
buymeacoffee.com/Voicesofthesaints

Introduction Music Generated by Renee Annabelle Sieff
All credit belongs to Renee Annabelle Sieff for Intro Music

This episode is based on accounts from the Coptic Synaxarium, early church tradition, and other historical sources. While we’ve done our best to ensure accuracy and reverence, some elements have been adapted or dramatized for narrative and production purposes. Our goal is to honour the spirit and message of the saints while making their stories engaging and accessible to modern listeners.

In a crowded street, surrounded by noise, movement, and urgency… one quiet touch stopped everything.

For twelve years, she lived in suffering.
Isolated. Overlooked. Unclean.

Every step she took had to be measured. Every interaction carried risk. Every day was shaped by something she could not control.

And then… she heard His name.

This episode tells the story of St. Veronica — the woman who reached through the crowd and touched the garment of Jesus.

But this is not just a story about a miracle.

It’s a story about waiting.
About silent suffering.
About the kind of faith that doesn’t shout… but still moves.

Because sometimes, faith isn’t certainty.

Sometimes… it’s simply having enough courage to take one step forward.

🎧 For the most immersive experience, we recommend listening with headphones.

🙏 If this episode moved you, consider sharing it with someone who needs to hear it.

☕ Support the podcast:
buymeacoffee.com/Voicesofthesaints

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Introduction Music Generated by Renee Annabelle Sieff
All credit belongs to Renee Annabelle Sieff for Intro Music

This episode is based on accounts from the Coptic Synaxarium, early church tradition, and other historical sources. While we’ve done our best to ensure accuracy and reverence, some elements have been adapted or dramatized for narrative and production purposes. Our goal is to honour the spirit and message of the saints while making their stories engaging and accessible to modern listeners.

He wasn’t a follower of Jesus.
He wasn’t searching for truth.
He was a Roman soldier… sent to carry out an execution.

In a time when the Roman Empire ruled with power and fear, crucifixion was the ultimate punishment — brutal, public, and final.

And on that day, one man stood closer than most.

As Jesus of Nazareth hung on the Cross — beaten, mocked, and sentenced to die — one soldier watched it all unfold.

The silence.
The words.
The darkness.

And then… the moment that would change everything.

This is the story of St. Longinus — the man who pierced the side of Christ… and walked away unable to forget what he had seen.

A story of power, truth, and the moment everything shifts.

If this episode moved you, make sure to follow the podcast, share it with someone, and help us continue telling these stories.

And if you’d like to support the podcast, you can do so here:
👉 buymeacoffee.com/Voicesofthesaints

Some moments change history.
Others… change the person standing closest to them.

Introduction Music Generated by Renee Annabelle Sieff
All credit belongs to Renee Annabelle Sieff for Intro Music

This episode is based on accounts from the Coptic Synaxarium, early church tradition, and other historical sources. While we’ve done our best to ensure accuracy and reverence, some elements have been adapted or dramatized for narrative and production purposes. Our goal is to honour the spirit and message of the saints while making their stories engaging and accessible to modern listeners.