We don’t know very much about Saints Simon and Jude the Apostles.
This Saint Simon is not Peter but “Simon the Canaanite” or “Simon the Zealot.” That means this apostle was, before he followed Jesus, probably a Jewish nationalist revolutionary against the authority of Rome.
Jude, who also was called Lebbaeus and surnamed Thaddeus, is mentioned in Saint John’s Gospel as a brother of Saint James the Greater (brother also of John and son of Zebedee), and therefore is also a family member of Christ himself. The New Testament Epistle of Jude is traditionally ascribed to this Jude. For many centuries, Saint Jude Thaddeus has been regarded in popular devotion as the ‚Äúpatron saint of desperate or lost causes,‚Äù but the basis of this tradition is obscure.
Saints Simon and Jude are linked together as apostles to Persia (Iran) and martyrs there. The churches they founded, in spite of centuries of persecution, still exist.
