Feast day: February 5

St. Agatha

Virgin & Martyr · c. 231–251

Patron of Breast cancer patients, nurses, Sicily

Sicilian noblewoman who refused a Roman prefect's advances, endured brutal torture, and died in prison rather than renounce Christ.

Agatha was a young Christian woman of Sicily — both Catania and Palermo claim her — martyred, the tradition holds, in the persecution under the Emperor Decius about the year 251. She was honored very early and very widely; by the sixth century her name was already among the celebrated virgin martyrs, and it was placed in the Canon of the Mass, where it is still spoken today.

According to her 'Acts,' which are legendary in their details but preserve the memory of a real martyr, Agatha came of a distinguished family and was remarkable for her beauty. A powerful official named Quintianus, attracted by her wealth and beauty, pursued her, and when the consecrated virgin firmly refused him, he used the persecution of Christians as a weapon, handing her over to cruel treatment to break her will.

She endured terrible tortures rather than renounce Christ or surrender her chastity — including, the tradition says, the cutting off of her breasts, after which she was consoled in prison by a vision of St. Peter, who healed her. She died of her sufferings, faithful to the end.

A year after her death, the story goes, an eruption of Mount Etna threatened to destroy Catania, and the people, carrying her veil, turned back the lava — and so she became a protector against fire, eruptions, and natural disaster, as well as the patron, because of her martyrdom, of those suffering from diseases of the breast. She remains the great patroness of Catania, which keeps her February feast with one of the largest religious festivals in the world.

Sicilians have invoked her against eruptions of Mount Etna for 17 centuries — and name a famous dessert after her.

“Lord, my Creator, you have protected me from the cradle. Receive now my soul.”
— St. Agatha

Image: Sailko (CC BY 3.0), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/01203c.htm