St. Agatha

St. Agatha is one of the most venerated virgin martyrs of the early Church. She was born in Sicily — Catania and Palermo both claim her — in the first half of the third century, and she died at Catania, most likely in the persecution of the emperor Decius around the year 251. Her cult is ancient and secure: she was honored in Sicily and at Rome from the earliest centuries, and her name is invoked in the Roman Canon of the Mass (Eucharistic Prayer I). The detailed story of her passion, however, comes from later hagiographical accounts whose particulars cannot be historically verified. According to these accounts, Agatha was a young woman of noble family who had consecrated her virginity to Christ. When she rejected the advances of Quintianus, a Roman official, he used the persecution edicts against her, handing her over to humiliation and torture — including, in the most famous episode of her legend, the cutting off of her breasts. Tradition relates that St. Peter appeared to her in prison and healed her wounds, and that she died in prison after further torments, faithful to her Spouse to the end. Devotion to Agatha spread throughout the Christian world. In Sicily she has long been invoked as a protector against eruptions of Mount Etna — her veil, carried in procession, is credited by tradition with halting the lava — and from this she became a patroness against fire more generally. Because of the nature of her torture, she is invoked today especially by those suffering from breast cancer and other diseases of the breast, and she is also honored as a patroness of nurses. Her feast is celebrated on February 5. Her relics are venerated in the cathedral of Catania, where the annual festival of St. Agatha each February remains one of the largest religious celebrations in the Catholic world, drawing hundreds of thousands of pilgrims through the streets of the city.