In the words of Mike Wagstaffe, erstwhile webmaster and eagle–eyed post–match question assessor of Stockport Quiz League, "'Who is the patron saint of ... ' style questions are probably best avoided as they nearly always have umpteen possible answers."
When I binged "patron saints prostitutes" (it's just like googling), the first nominee was (surprisingly) St. Nicholas – yes, good old Santa Claus. According to MentalFloss: "Saint Nicholas ... is said to have aided the poor father of three marriageable girls who could not afford their dowries. To save them from a life of prostitution (a common fate for unmarried women in third-century Asia Minor), he dropped three sacks of gold down their father's chimney late one night ... Thus, he is known as the patron saint of prostitutes."
A blog called Redemption Church (which may be the source for the above) adds "Some stories put it as a single gold ball, about the size of an orange, which is the origin of the tradition of giving oranges on Christmas day."
The next nominee is not a saint at all, but someone who was once described as "the most distinguished Englishwoman of the nineteenth century". And you thought that was Queen Victoria (come on, she was born in Kensington Palace.) But no; this is Josephine Butler, a feminist and social reformer. She campaigned for women's suffrage, the right of women to better education, the end of coverture in British law, the abolition of child prostitution, and an end to human trafficking of young women and children into European prostitution. Author Helen Mathers entitled her 2014 biography of Josephine Butler Patron Saint of Prostitutes (hence all the Bing hits).
A website that my firewall advised me not to visit (CatholicSay.com) nominated Saint Margaret of Cortona as "the partron saint of reformed prostitutes".
By this time I was on Page 3 of my Bing search, and no mention of Mary Magdalene. I turned to Wikipedia's Mary Magdalene page, which lists no fewer than 17 things or places of whom she is patron saint, but "prostitutes" was not among them.
In fact, Wikipedia argues that Mary Magdalene was not herself a prostitute. "During the Middle Ages [it says], Mary Magdalene was conflated in western tradition with Mary of Bethany and the unnamed "sinful woman" who anoints Jesus's feet in Luke 7:36–50, resulting in a widespread but inaccurate belief that she was a repentant prostitute or promiscuous woman. Elaborate medieval legends from western Europe tell exaggerated tales of Mary Magdalene's wealth and beauty, as well as her alleged journey to southern France. The identification of Mary Magdalene with Mary of Bethany and the unnamed "sinful woman" was a major controversy in the years leading up to the Reformation and some Protestant leaders rejected it ... In 1969, the identification of Mary Magdalene with Mary of Bethany and the "sinful woman" was removed from the General Roman Calendar, but the view of her as a former prostitute has persisted in popular culture."
I changed my Bing search to "patron saint prostitute mary magdalane". This brought up lots of pages about Mary Magdalene and things she is the patron saint of, but I couldn't find one that mentioned prostitutes.
So, in summary: I could find absolutely no evidence to support the assertion that Mary Magdalene is the patron saint of prostitutes.
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