Sources and method

First come Scripture and the liturgy of the Church. The Bible, the Lectionary of the Mass, the General Roman Calendar with the proper calendars of each country and the Roman Martyrology set the readings, the celebrations and the saints of each day. In the life of a saint, first come the saint's own words, the autobiography, the letters, the writings and what the saint said before witnesses; when a saint told something about their own life, it is narrated as what happened, because there is no more direct source. Next come the witnesses who knew them, the testimony gathered in the processes of beatification and canonization and the acts of the martyrs, and then the ancient lives written by disciples and early biographers. The documents of the Church, such as the bulls of canonization and the texts of the popes, settle dates, titles and the recognition of holiness. The work of modern historians places everything in its time and helps resolve what the ancient sources leave in doubt.

The complete Bible is published in one public-domain Catholic translation per language. In Spanish, that of Félix Torres Amat (1823–1825); in Portuguese, that of Father António Pereira de Figueiredo (1778–1790); in English, the Douay-Rheims, translated from the Vulgate and revised by Richard Challoner; in Italian, that of Antonio Martini (1769–1781); in French, that of Canon Augustin Crampon, made from the Hebrew and the Greek (1923); and in Latin, the Clementine Vulgate (1592). In Spanish, Portuguese and Italian only the spelling is updated, without changing the words. For comparison there are the Vulgate, the Greek Old Testament of the Septuagint and the Greek New Testament. Each text names its edition and the archive it was taken from, such as eBible.org, Wikisource or the Internet Archive.

The readings of each day are those set by the Lectionary of the Mass, in the calendar of each country. Since the official liturgical translation of each language is protected, in Spanish, Portuguese and Italian the text is a free, unofficial Fides Viva translation from the Vulgate; in English it is read in the Douay-Rheims, in French in the Crampon and in Latin in the Clementine Vulgate. The psalm response and the alleluia verse are taken from the same translation, pending the official text. Every page states the translation and leads to the official text of the liturgy on Vatican News.

The liturgical day follows the General Roman Calendar and the proper calendars of each country, with its rank, its color and its readings. The saints of each date come from the Roman Martyrology, the official list of the saints and blesseds the Church remembers each day.

Not everything told about a saint has the same documentary support, and the method makes that distinction without taking value away from anything. What is documented is told as history. Tradition, what the Church and the Christian people have handed down for centuries, is told as tradition, with the whole scene and with respect, without presenting it as a document and without debunking it. When a note on the origin of a story is useful, it goes in the sources, not in the middle of the story. When the testimonies disagree, that is said.

Quotations come from the saint's writings or from the earliest testimonies. Sometimes, words written centuries ago are adapted into today's language, so that younger people can understand them too. The form changes, never the idea or the saint's images, and the adaptation is identified as such. The original text and its reference stay in the sources.

In matters of doctrine, the reference is the teaching of the Catholic Church, as expressed in the Catechism and the Magisterium. Miracles are told with the source of each account, and those the Church recognized in a canonization process are presented as such.

The works of art of each day and of the Bible are public-domain paintings, taken from Wikimedia Commons with their artist and their link, and adapted to the portal's format. When no free work fits, the image is created with artificial intelligence and the page says so. The illustrations of the lives of the saints are recreations based on references from the period and, where they exist, on portraits, photographs and descriptions of the saint. They help to picture the story; they are not historical documents.

The news of the Church consists of headlines from Vatican News, the news portal of the Holy See, in the language of each page and with the link to the full story. In Latin, the weekly summary Hebdomada Papae.

A confirmed error is corrected on the page where it appears, whether a reading, a chapter of the Bible, a day of the calendar or a life of a saint. For a video already published, the correction is also noted in its description. To report an error, a message through the Contact page naming the page and the passage is enough. Every report is checked against the sources.