Mary is a central figure in the Catholic Church. For the uninitiated, Mary is the Mother of Jesus; in the Nativity narrative, she receives a message from the angel Gabriel that she has been chosen to bear a son, Jesus Christ. She submits to God’s will, and conceives and gives birth to Jesus.
There is a common misconception that Catholics worship Mary. This is incorrect, Catholics do not worship Mary, however they venerate her as the Mother of God. We honor her as our Blessed Mother with a great deal of reverence and devotion. Her role is of great importance in the Catholic Church. Without Mary, there is no Incarnation (God becoming man in Jesus), and if there is no incarnation, there cannot be salvation for the human race through Jesus’ passion and resurrection.
Catholics believe that Mary was preserved from original sin, in order to give birth to Jesus. She was also assumed into heaven, body and soul, at the moment of her death, and has been crowned the Queen of Heaven and Earth. She is considered to be the “New Ark of the Covenant”, just like the old Ark of the Covenant housed God in the Old Testament, Mary houses Jesus Christ in his initial state as an unborn child.
In addition to Mary, there are a multitude of Saints in Heaven that Catholics often communicate with through prayers. Just like Mary, they do not worship the Saints, and they do not venerate the Saints in the same way they venerate Mary. They however hold the Saints in very high regard, Saints are considered role models who we are called to emulate in order to join Christ in the Heavenly kingdom. Catholics will often pray to ask the Saints to intercede on their behalf with God, but this is not to be confused with praying to Saints.
For example, a famous prayer to a saint is the prayer to St. Michael, the archangel. The prayer asks St. Michael to “defend us in battle, to be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil”. In this example, they are not praying for St. Michael acts in a divine nature, they are asking him to intercede on their behalf and protect them from demons and temptations.
There are thousands of saints and the Vatican has a very thorough criteria to determine a saint and to canonize someone as a Saint. While we cannot know for certainty who is in Heaven or Hell after they have died, Catholic tradition holds that all Saints are in Heaven, they could not be a Saint (within the context of our earthly definition) without being in Heaven. Watch this video below for more information:
