Free Republic

The statue of King St. Louis IX stands outside the St. Louis Art Museum in Missouri. Creative Commons photo.Catholic laity in St. Louis have formed a group dedicated to visiting, protecting and praying for the safety of the city’s monument to King Saint Louis IX, a statue that some residents have recently called to tear down, calling the former French king an anti-Semite and Islamophobe. The group, St. Louis Forever, formed June 21 with an informal email sent out to local Catholics asking them to attend a rosary prayer group at the base of King Saint Louis IX’s statue. “This...

Who says Jews and Muslims can’t work together? In St. Louis, an Israeli-American restaurant owner and a pair of Muslim activists have joined forces in order to exact retroactive justice against a historical figure that hated both groups. Their target is King Louis IX of France (1214-1270) who was canonized by the Catholic Church as St. Louis, after whom a great American city was named. But as the St. Louis Jewish Light reports, Ben Poremba (the Israeli), and Umar Lee and Moji Sidiqui (his two Muslim colleagues) have launched an effort to not only remove a famous statue of the...

Image of King St. Louis, taken from Recta Ratio (The following is the legend of the breviary for King St. Louis IX of France, as quoted in Dom Prosper Guéranger's entry in The Liturgical Year for 25 August, in Volume XIV of the 1983 Marian House edition of the English translation by the Benedictines of Stanbrook.) "Louis IX, king of France, having lost his father when he was only twelve years old, was educated in a most holy manner by his mother Blanche. When he had reigned for twenty years, he fell ill and it was then he conceived the...