On November 30 the Church honors St. Andrew the Apostle, the "first-called" — the one whom John's Gospel names as the first disciple to follow Jesus (John 1:40), and the one who brought his brother Simon Peter to the Lord. A fisherman of Bethsaida in Galilee, Andrew was originally a disciple of John the Baptist. After the Resurrection he is said to have preached in Asia Minor, Scythia, and Greece, ending at Patras in Achaia, where he was crucified on an X-shaped cross — the saltire, or St. Andrew's Cross, that bears his name.
His relics reached Rome in the 15th century (under Pius II), enshrined in St. Peter's at the altar opposite that of his brother Peter. In 1964, Pope Paul VI returned Andrew's head to Patras, Greece, where the Basilica of St. Andrew now keeps it. The Amalfi Cathedral in southern Italy also holds relics of Andrew, brought from Constantinople in 1208.
Andrew is the patron of Scotland (whose flag is the white saltire on blue, after the tradition that his relics appeared at the battle that gave the cross its national meaning), of Russia, of Greece, and of fishermen. The great monastic community of Mount Athos — the "Holy Mountain" of Orthodox monasticism — is dedicated to the protection of the Mother of God but traces its founding to Athanasius of Athos in the 10th century; Andrew's presence in the Greek East and his role as first-called give his feast a particular weight in the Orthodox tradition.
