Is Uriel named in the Bible?

No. Uriel does not appear in the Old or New Testament as canonized by the Catholic Church. He appears in 2 Esdras (also called 4 Ezra) and in the Book of Enoch — Jewish texts from the centuries around the time of Christ that were never included in the Bible's official canon.

Does the Catholic Church officially recognize Uriel as an archangel?

No. Only Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael are named as archangels in canonical Scripture, and a Roman council under Pope Zachary in 745 specifically restricted licit veneration to those three, striking devotion to angels known only from apocryphal writings — Uriel among them.

Then why does devotion to Uriel exist at all?

Uriel has a long life outside the Roman Catholic mainstream. Eastern Orthodox tradition honors him among the archangels celebrated each November, and centuries of popular devotion and Christian art have kept his image alive even without formal Roman Catholic sanction — a tradition rather than a doctrine.

What does the name Uriel mean?

Hebrew for either "God is my light" or "God is my flame," depending on how the name is read — fitting for the angel who, in 2 Esdras, is sent to help a prophet see difficult truths more clearly.

Saint Uriel the Archangel

Who is Uriel?

Uriel's name is usually translated "God is my light," though some scholars read it as "God is my flame" — the Hebrew root can point either way, and both meanings suit an angel whose defining role, in the texts where he appears, is helping someone else see clearly. Unlike Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, Uriel never appears in a book that made it into the Catholic biblical canon. He belongs instead to a set of Jewish writings from the centuries around the New Testament era, most notably 2 Esdras (also called 4 Ezra) and the Book of Enoch.

Attributed to Bartolomé Román, "The Archangel Uriel," 17th century — public domain.

Where Uriel comes from, if not the Bible

In 2 Esdras, Uriel is sent to answer the prophet Ezra, who is wrestling with one of the oldest questions in Scripture: why God allows the righteous to suffer while evil seems to prosper. Rather than offering easy comfort, Uriel answers Ezra's anguish with harder questions of his own, pressing him to recognize the limits of human understanding before any answer can help. In the Book of Enoch, Uriel appears again as one of the angels who explain the order of the heavens and the natural world to Enoch during his visionary journeys. Both books were influential in Jewish and early Christian thought, but neither was ever accepted into the Bible as the Catholic Church canonized it.

Why Uriel isn't one of the "big three"

For a period in the early medieval Church, devotion to named angels beyond Scripture had grown widespread enough to concern Church authorities. A Roman council convened under Pope Zachary in 745 addressed the problem directly: it condemned the veneration of angels not named in the canonical Bible, and confirmed that only Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael could be licitly honored by name in the Roman rite. Uriel, known only from apocryphal writings, fell outside that boundary. That ruling is why Uriel has no official feast on the Roman Catholic calendar today, even though Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael share one on September 29.

This is a case worth being precise about: Uriel's absence from the official list is a matter of Church discipline regarding canonical sources, not a theological verdict on whether such an angel exists. Eastern Orthodox Christianity took a different path, and continues to honor Uriel alongside the other archangels at a shared feast each November — a reminder that this is a question tradition has answered differently across the Christian world, not one settled the same way everywhere.

What Uriel has come to represent

Across the centuries, and independent of any official ruling, Uriel's association with Ezra's hard questions has given him a lasting reputation as the angel of understanding — the one who helps a troubled mind make sense of what it cannot yet fully grasp. That is the quality most Christian art and devotion has held onto: not a warrior or a messenger, but a source of clarity for anyone wrestling with a question too large to answer alone.