For almost thirty years, a noblewoman in fifteenth-century Rome said she could see an angel at her side, so bright that she read by his light. A young mystic in Tuscany handed him her letters. A stigmatised friar complained that other people's angels kept him awake at night. A Polish nun travelled with hers on the train to Warsaw. And a pope sent his ahead to every difficult meeting.

Frances of Rome, Gemma Galgani, Padre Pio, Faustina, John XXIII — and Cecilia, Isidore, Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Ávila, Rose of Lima, Catherine Labouré, Don Bosco, the children of Fátima. This documentary tells the stories of the saints who saw their guardian angels, what Scripture and the great teachers of the Church say about them, and the nine-hundred-year-old prayer that millions still say every night.

Feast of the Holy Guardian Angels: October 2.

⏱ CHAPTERS
0:00 Five Saints, One Claim
1:25 I. The Scriptures
3:56 II. The Teachers
6:16 III. Legends of the Angel
9:11 IV. Frances of Rome
11:12 V. Gemma Galgani
13:26 VI. Padre Pio
17:15 VII. Faustina
19:00 VIII. The Angel and the Children
21:36 IX. A Pope and His Angel
24:12 The Companion on the Road
25:53 Angel of God

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Told with sacred art, real period photographs of the saints and quotations from Scripture, the saints' own writings and sworn testimonies. Legends and private revelations are presented as they have been handed down.

🎨 SACRED ART (public domain or CC0 unless noted)
Works by Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg, Abbott Handerson Thayer, Giovanni Baglione, George Inness, Jan Both, Jean-Charles Cazin, Jules Dupré, Workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, E. Jacobs, Fra Angelico, William Powell Frith, Filippino Lippi, Bernardo Strozzi, Bernhard Plockhorst, Carl Hartmann, Carl Larsson, Carlo Dolci, Carlo Saraceni, Caspar David Friedrich, Francesco Botticini, Pietro da Cortona, Briton Rivière, Leonardo da Vinci and Andrea del Verrocchio, Dieric Bouts, Eugeniusz Kazimirowski, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Edward Burne-Jones, Albin Egger-Lienz, Alonso Cano, Evelyn De Morgan, Marcantonio Franceschini, Francesco Naselli, Giotto, Félix Castelo, Domenichino, Guercino, Guido Reni, Hans Memling, Henri Decaisne, Giovanni Paolo Panini, Italian, Alessandro Tiarini, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Carl Bloch, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Manuel Villegas Brieva, Melozzo da Forlì, Thomas Sully, Simone Cantarini, Sir George Hayter, Jan Brueghel the Elder, Camille Corot, Meyndert Hobbema, Johan Christian Dahl, Antonio da Viterbo, Master of Charles of France, Jean Bourdichon, Carl Gustav Carus, Giulio Carpioni, Horace Vernet, Bartolomeo Cavarozzi, Orazio Gentileschi and Giovanni Lanfranco, Orazio Gentileschi, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Jusepe de Ribera, Jan van Cleve, Peter Paul Rubens, Carlo Crivelli, Jusepe Leonardo, After Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Simon Vouet, Claudio Coello, The Angel of Paradise with a Sword, Juan de Valdés Leal, Thomas Cole, James Basire after Domenico Passignano, Karel van Mallery after Jan van der Straet, Pietro Aquila after Carlo Maratti, William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

📷 ARCHIVE & SOURCES
Photographs of Padre Pio, Gemma Galgani, Faustina Kowalska, Don Bosco, John XXIII, Pius XI and the children of Fátima (public domain). Images via Wikimedia Commons, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, Wellcome Collection and the Library of Congress.
CC BY: Carlo Dolci, The Guardian Angel, 1670–75 (photo Fabrizio Garrisi, CC0); Fra Angelico, Christ Glorified in the Court of Heaven, c. 1423–24 — National Gallery, London (photo Sailko, CC BY 3.0); Francesco Naselli, Saint Frances of Rome with her Guardian Angel, 17th century — San Giorgio fuori le mura, Ferrara (photo Sailko, CC BY 3.0); Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Ecstasy of St Teresa, 1647–52 — Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome (photo Bradley Weber, CC BY 2.0); Melozzo da Forlì, Music-making Angel, fresco, 1472–74 — Vatican Museums (photo Richard Mortel, CC BY 2.0).
Maps drawn from Natural Earth data (public domain).

🎵 MUSIC
Opening and closing: Pixabay Content License (pixabay.com/music). Score: original composition.

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