Patronages of the Immaculate Conception the Immaculate Conception is also one of the nine national and public holidays and a holy day of obligation. The patronage settles the dispute between a heated religious debate during the mid 1600s, when followers of the mythical figure Saint James Matamoros wished to impose him as the national patron saint versus the followers of Saint Teresa of Avila. On 11 September 1759, the elected members of the Spanish Cortes petitioned King Charles III of Spain to request from the pope the "universal patronage of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception in all the Kingdoms of Spain and the Indies".
The Patron Saint of Butterflies a Golden Sower Award Nominee and a Grand Canyon Reader Award Nominee. In 2011, "The Patron Saint of Butterflies" was banned from a school in Minnesota. The effect of which was to increase the popularity and visibility of the novel. The story is a fictionalized account of the little-known religious commune run by Herbert T.(Thomas) Schwartz (1903-1980) at Mount Hope in New York in the mid-20th century. (Unlike the Mount Blessing community, the Mount Hope religious commune was quite mobile. Schwartz started the community by gathering laypeople around himself in Greenwich Village. The community was housed in Ridgewood, Queens, New