Knights of St-Catherine of Sinai

Catherine of Alexandria, our saint Patron

Catherine of Alexandria was a virgin of great beauty and great intelligence, daughter of Constus, Governor of Alexandria in Egypt during the reign of Roman Emperor Maximin Daia (305-314). She lived in a hellenic knowledge center, and received an excellent education. Her mother was secretly a christian. She did not want to marry, but if she had to, she only wanted to web a man who would best her at everything. Her mother sent her her spiritual advisor. He recognized her tremendous faith and gave her an icon of the virgin and the infant. He baptised her and thaught her. While constantly praying, she had a vision of Virgin Mary and of the Lord that gave her a wedding ring. When she successfully defended her faith against 50 pagan philosophers sent by the Emporor to confound and convince her to renounce her christian mistake, the Emperor had her tortured on a 8 sharp point wheel during her visit to a pagan reunion in Alexandria. A divine angel the appeared and broke the wheel. After several torture sessions, Catherine placed her head on a log and was decapitated with a sword in the year 310. She was only 18 years old. Milk flowed from her body instead of blood, and her body, according to the legend, was transported by angels on a moutain in Sinaï.

The relic

Several years later, a few monks found her intact body at the top of this mountain, since then called Mount St-Catherine. They transported her body back to the Monastary. Today, part of her body is conserved in the Orthodox Monastary of Mount Sinaï. The Grand Priory of Canada is honored to posess a relic of St-Catherine, a finger, kept in a reliquary. We honor that relic on each investiture ceremony.

Each year, the celebration of St-Catherine's anniversary is held on November 25. She is the patron of single girls, wheelwrights, millers and moulders. Pope John Paul II replaced this saint on the calendar following his visit to Mount Sinaï's Monastary in the year 2000.