Who will face Martha of Bethany for the Golden Halo? That's the question for today after Martha stung Gobnait 51% to 49% despite a late swarm (and a whiff of overzealous Gobnait supporters) to reach the Lent Madness Championship round.

To get to this point, Zenaida took down Apollonia, Nicholas of Myra, and John Chrysostom, while Pandita defeated Damien of Molokai, Marguerite d'Youville, and William Wilberforce. Whoever wins, the Golden Halo will be decided on Spy Wednesday, with the results announced at 8:00 am Eastern Time on Maundy Thursday. The end is near!

SEC Reminder: We know people get swept up in the fervor of Lent Madness, and sometimes they get so excited they want to vote a few times. Yesterday, we observed quite a few cases of people voting for one saint several times, often 20 or more times. When we catch these, we ban those IP addresses and, assuming we can ascertain with confidence the number of votes, we reverse the votes. Our goal is to make Lent Madness fair and fun for everyone, one person making one vote. We use a combination of manual and automated systems to watch this and yesterday, to try to get these as early as possible, we set our triggers pretty low. So if you find yourself banned, do let us know. And make sure you’re only voting one time per contest! Big Lent is watching...

Oh, and if for some crazy set of circumstances, you missed yesterday's final in-season episode of Monday Madness featuring our first-ever in studio guest, make sure to catch it here.

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Welcome to the Faithful Four! Over the past few weeks we have whittled down the field from 32 saintly souls to a holy four: Martha of Bethany, Gobnait, Zenaida, and Pandita Ramabai. The spiritual nets have been cut down and one of these four will, in a few short days, be awarded the coveted 2019 Golden Halo.

This marks the first time in Lent Madness history that we have an all-female Faithful Four. This means that at the end of this 10th year of Lent Madness, we will have crowned five male winners and five female winners.

Today it's Martha of Bethany vs. Gobnait. To make it this deep into our little tournament, Martha got past Mary of Bethany, Nicodemus, and Photini, while Gobnait defeated Hrotsvitha, Paula of Rome, and Ignatius of Loyola.

Tomorrow Zenaida will tangle with Pandita Ramabai and then our respective Faithful Four winners will vie for the 2019 Golden Halo on Spy Wednesday, with the winner being crowned at 8:00 am on Maundy Thursday.

Throughout Lent Madness, our saintly heroes have battled via basic bios, quirks and quotes, and event kitsch. In this round, we let our remaining Celebrity Bloggers loose as they answer the question “Why should Saint XX win the Golden Halo?” In other words, they’ve been charged with letting us know why their particular saint is so awesome. We have also invited them to share their two favorite images of their saints. Away we go!

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