October 28 is the feast of the apostles Simon and Jude, kept together in the Roman calendar because their relics were brought together to Rome. They lie under the altar of the left transept of St. Peter's Basilica, the altar that carries their names.
Simon is called the Cananean in Mark and Matthew and the Zealot in Luke and Acts — the two are the same word, the Aramaic qan'ana rendered into Greek, marking zeal for the Law rather than membership of the later revolutionary party, which did not yet exist in his lifetime. Jude is Thaddaeus, named in John as the disciple who asks at the Last Supper why Jesus will show himself to the disciples and not to the world. The Letter of Jude is traditionally his.
Western tradition, following the late apocryphal Passion of Simon and Jude, sends the two together into Persia and has them martyred there, which is why they share a day. Eastern traditions separate them and send Simon to the Caucasus. The evidence for either is late, and the Church has never settled it.
Jude's patronage of desperate and hopeless causes has no early foundation and appears in the modern period; the common explanation is that his name's closeness to Judas Iscariot left him rarely invoked, so that petitions to him were thought to be answered readily. The devotion spread widely in the twentieth century through the Claretian shrine in Chicago and the Dominican shrine in Baltimore. In Rome the two apostles are reached inside St. Peter's, a short walk from the Pietà.
