Some IT professionals petitioned Pope John Paul II to designate a patron saint for them and their profession in 1999. They proposed St. Isidore of Seville (560-636) as their patron. It is all because of the Saint had codified all then-available knowledge into a system (a primitive encyclopedia, a database) that would make it possible for others to locate that learning. Isidore not only possessed towering erudition (his “Etymologies,” just one of his many works, comprises twenty volumes that cover thousands of subjects) but also rigorously investigated reality himself, studying plants, animals, rocks, road-building, metals, architecture, the heavens…, coming to understand that each thing and creature has meaning and is part of a spiritual and physical “worldwide web of things.”
In creating this system, Isidore was one of the scholars who saved classical learning and passed it along to the future. Above all this, Isidore was the archbishop of Seville for nearly thirty years. He worked tirelessly to help his parishioners. In short, Isidore had not only immense learning and technical acumen but a big heart and spirit. In this statue, Isidore is depicted laboring at his great work, a cat (from the “Etymologies”: “Some say its name is cattus, from capture; others that it is cattat [sees] because it sees so sharply that it overcomes darkness”) keeping watch as the saint compiles his great web of knowledge.