Catholic Sprouts: Daily Podcast for Catholic Kids

Meet St. Martin of Tours, the Roman soldier who cut his cloak in half for a freezing beggar.

That night, Martin dreamed of Jesus wearing the very cloak he had given away. In this saint story for kids, your family will follow Martin from soldier to monk to bishop, and hear how he hid from the people of Tours in a barn full of noisy geese. Plus, discover the surprising way his cloak gave us the word "chapel."

"Jesus told us plainly that when we give to the poor, we give to Him."

...

Meet Pope St. Leo the Great, the Pope who rode out alone to face Attila the Hun.

With no army and no emperor to protect Rome, an old Pope walked into the tent of the most feared conqueror in the world. This episode shows children how Pope St. Leo defended the truth that Jesus is fully God and fully man, and how his courageous trust in God protected his people. Your children will also hear what Attila said he saw standing behind the Pope.

When his letter was read aloud, the bishops cried out: "Peter...

Discover the Lateran Basilica, the Pope's cathedral and the mother church of every Catholic parish in the world.

For three hundred years, Christians in Rome worshipped in secret. Then an emperor made it legal to follow Jesus and gave the Pope a palace. In this episode, your children will learn why the Church celebrates the dedication of a building, and how their own parish is connected to the whole family of faith. It's a wonderful episode to listen to on the way to Mass.

"Every time we walk into our own parish church, we are...

Meet St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, the girl with a fierce temper who found God living inside her at her First Communion.

Elizabeth was known for her stormy temper, until the day she received Jesus for the first time. This episode shows children how Elizabeth learned interior prayer and how she patiently waited years to answer God's call. Her story is a beautiful reminder that God lives in every baptized soul in a state of grace, waiting for us to notice Him.

Her last words: "I am going to Light, to Love, to Life."

Meet St. Willibrord, the English monk who sailed with eleven companions to bring Jesus to a land that had never heard of Him.

Willibrord baptized new Christians in a spring the pagans believed was sacred, and the whole island waited to see what would happen. This missionary saint story shows children what courage and obedience to God's call look like. Willibrord spent nearly fifty years trusting God one step at a time, even when the road ahead was dangerous.

"Instead, He asks us to say yes, and then to keep saying yes, one step at...

Meet St. Joseph Khang, the young Vietnamese catechist who taught the Faith in secret during a fierce persecution.

Joseph was not a priest, but he gathered his neighbors after dark to teach them about Jesus. He served his bishop so faithfully that people called him the bishop's hands and feet. In this episode, your children will discover that every one of us can pass on the Faith, and that ordinary laypeople have kept the light of Christ burning in the darkest times. Plus, hear the surprising request Joseph made from prison.

"If the Bishop dies...

Meet Blessed Bernhard Lichtenberg, the Berlin priest who prayed out loud for the Jewish people in Nazi Germany.

After the Night of Broken Glass, most people stayed silent. Blessed Bernhard did not. Every evening for almost three years, he led his people in praying for the Jews and the prisoners in the camps. This gentle, age-appropriate episode shows children the power of intercessory prayer and the courage it takes to defend the dignity of every person. Every human life is a gift from God.

"The truth is still true, even when it is dangerous to...

Meet St. Charles Borromeo, the archbishop who stayed with his people when the plague came to Milan.

When everyone who could escape the plague fled the city, Archbishop Charles sold his silver and walked barefoot through the streets with a crucifix. This saint story for kids shows how St. Charles gave generously to the poor and made sure children were taught the Faith. Your family will see what it looks like when a shepherd truly loves his flock.

"He had given away almost everything he owned, and he was exactly where he wanted to be...

Meet St. Hubert, the grieving hunter who saw a crucifix between a stag's antlers on Good Friday.

Hubert was chasing a magnificent stag through the forest when the stag turned, and his whole life changed. In this episode, your children will hear how God met a man in the middle of his grief, and how Hubert answered with a converted heart. He went back into the same forest where he once hunted, this time to bring the Gospel to the poor villages who had never heard it. It's a powerful story for any child who has ever...

For All Souls Day, hear the story of Christina the Astonishing, the woman who saw purgatory and came back to pray for the holy souls.

Everyone believed Christina had died, until she sat up in the middle of her own funeral Mass. This All Souls Day episode helps children understand what purgatory is and why our prayers for those who have died truly matter. Christina spent the rest of her life offering prayer and penance for the souls she had seen.

"The story of Christina the Astonishing teaches us that God never gives up on...

Discover why All Saints Day belongs to every Catholic family, and why you are invited to this feast too.

On this Solemnity of All Saints, Sprouts travels to ancient Rome, where a pagan temple was turned into a church honoring God's holy ones. Your children will learn how the early Christians honored the holy dead, why the Church asks the saints to intercede for us, and how ordinary moms, dads, and grandparents fill the great crowd in heaven.

"The saints are not far away. They are close to us."

Want to keep the...

St. Denis was beheaded by Roman soldiers on a hill outside Paris — then stood up, picked up his own head, and kept walking.

The first bishop of Paris, Denis, was martyred alongside his priest and deacon for refusing to deny Christ, and witnesses said he walked several miles afterward, preaching the whole way, before laying himself down at the spot he'd chosen for burial. His story is a fitting one for All Hallows' Eve, the night before the Church celebrates every saint in heaven — a reminder that the saints are near, and that nothing the world does is e...

St. Charles de Foucauld lived a life of wealth, adventure, and no faith at all — until a single confession changed everything in an afternoon.

A former cavalry officer who'd lost his faith completely, Charles walked into a Paris church wanting instruction, but the priest told him instead to kneel and make his confession. He went on to live among the poorest people in the Sahara Desert, learning their language and calling himself a universal brother, until he was killed at his hermitage in 1916.

"I would like to be so good that people would say: if th...

Blessed Chiara Badano was sixteen and playing tennis when a sudden pain turned out to be bone cancer — and she chose to give it to Jesus.

An energetic Italian teenager active in the Focolare Movement, Chiara offered her illness to God from the very first moment of pain and refused painkillers so she could give her suffering to Jesus as fully as possible. She spent her final two years encouraging visitors from her hospital bed and planned her own funeral like a wedding, asking her parents to smile instead of cry.

"It's for you, Jesus. If...

St. Jude was one of Jesus's original twelve apostles — and for centuries, Catholics were too afraid of his name to pray to him.

Present at the Last Supper and at Pentecost, Jude preached the Gospel from Judea all the way to Persia before he was martyred for his faith. Because his name sounded too close to Judas's, Christians avoided praying to him for centuries — until people in truly desperate situations began calling on him anyway, and he became known as the patron of hopeless causes.

"Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us...

Blessed Contardo Ferrini was one of Europe's most celebrated law professors — and he stopped everything every day at noon to pray.

A brilliant scholar of Roman law who also lived a private vow of chastity and simplicity, Contardo believed that studying seriously was itself a form of worship. No matter how busy his day, he paused at noon to pray the Angelus, and spent his summers hiking into the Alps to study and pray in the mountain silence.

"The mind is a gift from God and studying is a way of honoring Him."

To...

Blessed José Gregorio Hernández trained with Europe's finest doctors — then spent his whole career treating Venezuela's poor for free.

One of the most gifted physicians of his time, José Gregorio walked the poor neighborhoods of Caracas with his medical bag, paying for patients' medicine out of his own pocket when they couldn't afford it. He went to Mass every morning and carried his rosary everywhere, and died delivering medicine to a sick woman when he was struck by a car in the street.

"Holiness is available to every person who takes the gifts God gave...

St. Antonio de Sant'Anna Galvão, known as Frei Galvão, turned tiny handwritten prayers into pills the sick could actually hold.

As the friary's confessor in colonial São Paulo, Frei Galvão listened patiently to the sick and suffering who had nowhere else to go, then wrote a prayer to Our Lady on a scrap of paper, rolled it into a tiny cylinder, and gave it to them in faith. The healings that followed were remarkable enough that his paper pills are still made and given out today.

"It was a pill. A pray...

An entire Christian city in ancient Arabia was given a choice — deny Christ or die — and chose Jesus together.

When King Dhu Nuwas surrounded Najran and demanded its Christians renounce their faith, the chieftain Arethas and his people answered as one, walking singing toward the fire dug to execute them rather than deny Christ. Their extraordinary public witness spread across the ancient world, remembered still today in the Church's oldest martyrologies.

"We will not deny Christ."

Today's challenge is just the start. Grab our free Family Pack — a saint calendar, activity pages, and discus...

St. John of Capistrano was a seventy-year-old friar with no sword — and he rode out to help save Europe from an Ottoman siege.

A former lawyer who joined the Franciscans after a dream of St. Francis changed his life, John became one of the greatest preachers of his age, drawing tens of thousands wherever he spoke. When Constantinople fell and Belgrade came under siege, he answered the Pope's call to preach the crusade, using fasting and penance to prepare himself before joining the charge that helped save the city.

"Courage in the service of God do...

St. John Paul II was shot in St. Peter's Square — and two years later, he sat in a prison cell forgiving the man who tried to kill him.

Shaped by devastating loss in his youth and years of secret seminary study under Nazi occupation, Karol Wojtyła became pope and spent twenty-six years telling the world not to be afraid. After surviving an assassination attempt, he entrusted the moment entirely to Mary and personally forgave his attacker face to face, hand in hand.

"Be not afraid."

Want to keep living John Paul's story aft...

St. Laura Montoya left a comfortable teaching career to paddle upriver into the Colombian jungle for children nobody else was looking for.

Convinced that the indigenous Chocó people were fully beloved by God even though society had dismissed them, Laura placed her entire mission under Our Lady's protection and set out with a small group of women in 1914. They lived simply among the people they'd come to serve, and Laura went on to become the first person from Colombia ever canonized a saint.

"Laura believed they were children of God. She believed that meant they c...

St. Paul of the Cross built an entire religious order around one conviction: that gazing at Jesus's suffering teaches us how loved we are.

After receiving the rule for his new congregation during forty days of prayer and fasting, Paul spent decades preaching so powerfully about Christ's Passion that hardened sinners wept and returned to confession after years away. Remarkably, he continued preaching that same love for forty-five years while experiencing almost no personal consolation in prayer himself, staying faithful through the driest, darkest stretch imaginable.

"You cannot gaze long at what God was willing...

St. Isaac Jogues escaped slavery among the Mohawk with broken, tortured hands — and then chose to go back.

A Jesuit missionary among the Huron people, Isaac was captured, enslaved, and tortured for over a year, secretly baptizing whoever he could reach even in captivity. After escaping to France, he received special papal permission to say Mass with his ruined hands, then returned to New France as a missionary of peace, ultimately giving his life for the very people who had once held him captive.

"It would be unjust that a martyr of Christ not drink th...

St. Lorenzo Ruiz was a father and calligrapher with an ordinary life in Manila — until a ship to Japan changed everything.

A devoted member of the Confraternity of the Holy Rosary who prayed and received Communion faithfully, Lorenzo fled the Philippines to escape a false accusation and ended up captured with missionaries in persecution-era Japan. Offered freedom if he'd only step on a sacred image, he and his companions refused, and Lorenzo became the first Filipino ever canonized a saint.

"I am a Catholic, and wholeheartedly do accept death for God. Had I a thousand li...

St. Ignatius of Antioch spent his final journey in chains writing letters that Christians still read two thousand years later.

Arrested for his faith and marched toward martyrdom in Rome, the bishop of Antioch used every stop along the way to write to churches, urging Christians to stay united with their bishop and hold fast to the Eucharist, which he called the medicine of immortality. He asked friends not to intervene on his behalf, wanting his death to become an offering rather than an escape.

"I am God's wheat, and I shall be ground by...

St. Gerard Majella was falsely accused of serious wrongdoing — and never once defended himself.

A humble Redemptorist brother known for astonishing miracles, from bilocating to healing the sick, Gerard accepted a false accusation from his superior without a word of protest, trusting God with his reputation entirely. Months later, the truth came out, and when asked why he never explained himself, Gerard simply pointed to his rule of silence.

"Does it not say in the rule that a penitent should not excuse himself?"

Want to keep living Gerard's story after the episode ends? Gr...

St. Teresa of Ávila spent twenty comfortable years as a nun before a statue of the suffering Christ stopped her in her tracks.

Charming and popular but only half-committed to prayer, Teresa fell to her knees before an image of Christ's Passion and realized how much of her faith had been comfortable half-heartedness. From that day she began to speak to Jesus the way a friend speaks to a friend, going on to found seventeen reformed Carmelite convents and write some of the greatest books on prayer in Christian history.

"She began to speak to J...

Servant of God Julius Nyerere led his country to freedom without a single shot fired — then walked away from power while he still had it.

A schoolteacher's son from Tanzania who converted to the Catholic faith and attended daily Mass for the rest of his life, Nyerere believed every human being carried the image of God, and let that conviction shape how he governed. After twenty-one years as president, he voluntarily stepped down and went home to farm, still remembered as Mwalimu — teacher — to the very end.

"He believed with everything in him that every human...

Blessed Alexandrina Maria da Costa was paralyzed at fourteen — and spent the next thirty years turning her suffering into prayer.

After a fall left her body broken and unable to walk, Alexandrina refused to let her pain go to waste, offering every ache as prayer for souls far from God. For the last thirteen years of her life she lived on nothing but the Eucharist, sustained by Jesus alone even as doctors confirmed she took no food or water at all.

"I die happy."

Want to keep living Alexandrina's story after the episode en...

St. Carlo Acutis was a completely normal kid who loved video games and dogs — and also visited Jesus in the Eucharist every single day.

From the day of his First Communion, Carlo went to daily Mass and spent an hour before the tabernacle, calling the Eucharist his highway to heaven. He used his gift for coding to build a website cataloguing Eucharistic miracles from around the world, and when leukemia took his life at fifteen, he offered his suffering for the Pope and for souls in Purgatory.

"I offer this suffering for the Pope and fo...

Pope St. John XXIII surprised a Roman prison by walking in on Christmas Eve to visit the inmates himself.

Elected as an elderly caretaker pope, Angelo Roncalli instead threw open the windows of the Church by calling the Second Vatican Council, insisting the Church offer mercy rather than condemnation to the modern world. Each night he handed his worries to God directly in prayer before sleep, trusting that the weight of the whole Church wasn't really his to carry alone.

"Lord, it's your Church. I'm going to sleep."

Pope John's challenge doesn't have...

St. Dymphna fled across the sea to protect her faith — and became the patron saint of those who suffer in their minds and hearts.

An Irish princess whose father's grief turned into something frightening after her mother's death, Dymphna escaped with her confessor rather than give in to his demands, praying simply to stay faithful no matter the cost. She was martyred for her refusal, and the Belgian village where she died went on to become a place where families have welcomed the mentally ill into their own homes for centuries.

"Lord, let me be fa...

St. John Henry Newman was one of England's most celebrated Anglican preachers — until years of studying the early Church led him somewhere he never expected.

Newman's deep study of Scripture and the early Church Fathers slowly convinced him that the Catholic Church, not the Church of England, held the faith of the apostles. Though it cost him his position, his home, and many friendships, he knelt on a stone floor at Littlemore in 1845 to be received into the Catholic Church, later devoting his priesthood to writing and walking alongside people who, like him, were searching in the da...

St. Hildegard of Bingen kept a secret light inside her for thirty-five years before the world ever knew she carried it.

From childhood, Hildegard experienced visions she called the Living Light, staying silent about them through decades of prayer and the Divine Office in her Benedictine monastery. When God pressed her to finally write them down, she obeyed, going on to write theology, music, and letters to popes and emperors alike — all while insisting she was only a small instrument God breathed through.

"a feather on the breath of God"

Want to keep li...

Today we celebrate an incredible naval victory that saved Christianity across Europe. Although greatly outnumbered, the members of the Holy League knelt on their ship decks and fervently prayed the Rosary, while people across Europe gathered to do the same. And Mary heard them! The wind shifted, and against all odds, the Holy League won a tremendous victory. This is just one example of the Rosary as been a powerful weapon that, again and again, has changed the course of history. Today, Mary, Our Lady of the Rosary, 

Our free Family Pack has a saint calendar, feast-day a...

Bishop Alphonse Gallegos drove straight into Sacramento's most dangerous neighborhoods and learned every young man's name.

Shaped by years of feeling overlooked after a childhood illness, Alphonse grounded his ministry in long hours of silent prayer before the Blessed Sacrament every day. He then walked into gang territory again and again, treating young men others had written off with real dignity and kindness, until his death on the very night he'd administered Confirmation.

"You matter to God."

Today's challenge is just the start. Grab our free Family Pack — a saint calendar, activity pages, an...

St. Bartolo Longo fell into the occult as a young lawyer — then found salvation through six words about the Rosary.

After years lost in dark spiritual practices, Bartolo returned to the Church through confession and Mass, but carried deep guilt over his past. Kneeling in the Valley of Pompeii, a remembered phrase about the Rosary changed everything, and he spent the rest of his life gathering people to pray it together, building schools for orphans and homes for the children of prisoners.

"Whoever propagates the Rosary shall be saved."

Bartolo's challenge doesn't have to...

St. Francis of Assisi gave up his father's wealth to kiss the hands of a leper and rebuild a crumbling Church.

Born into a prosperous merchant family, Francis walked away from comfort after an encounter with a leper on the road changed him completely, and a voice from a crucifix told him to repair God's Church. He begged for his food, cared for the sick with his own hands, and eventually bore the wounds of Christ himself after weeks of prayer and fasting on Mount La Verna.

"Until now I have called Pietro di Bernardone...

Venerable Matthew Talbot drank himself to ruin for sixteen years — then walked away from alcohol forever and never looked back.

A Dublin laborer trapped by addiction since his teens, Matthew made a pledge to his mother to stop drinking entirely, then went to confession and never touched another drop. He began attending daily Mass before work, gave most of his wages to the poor, and secretly wore penitential chains and cords under his clothes — a hidden life of holiness no one discovered until after his death.

"Go, in God's name, but don't take it unless you...