Teresa of Ávila possibly due to her mystical visions. The Spanish nuns who established Carmel in France brought this devotion with them, and it became widespread in France. Indeed, one of Teresa's most famous disciples, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, a French Carmelite, herself named for Teresa, took as her religious name Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face. In the 1620s, Spain debated who should be the country's patron saint; the choices were either the current patron, Saint James Matamoros, or a pairing of him and the newly canonised Saint Teresa of Ávila. Teresa's promoters said Spain faced newer challenges,
The Patron Saint of Eels the hagiography of a saint." The Patron Saint of Eels The Patron Saint of Eels (2005) is a novel by Australian author Gregory Day. It won the 2006 ALS Gold Medal. A moral tale, the novel tells the story of an Italian saint, Fra Ionio, who comes down from heaven to the small Australian town of Mangowak, to save some eels trapped in a ditch and to teach life lessons to some locals. Lisa Gorton in "The Age" noted that the novel "is gentle in spirit, reverent and celebratory", and "is as much a tribute to the life of a