Saint Lucy of Syracuse

According to longstanding Catholic Tradition, St. Lucy was born at Syracuse about 283 AD to rich and noble parents. Her father was of Roman origin and died while she was still a child. Her mother, Eutychia, did not remarry, and raised her in the faith of Christ.

Eutychia was ill for years with a flux of blood, and her daughter nursed her.

Tradition holds that St. Lucy, while still very young, vowed her virginity to Christ without telling her mother. Knowing nothing of it, Eutychia promised her to a young man of good family who was not a Christian, and pressed the match as an advantageous one.

She kept the wish to herself and put the wedding off with one pretext after another.

Saint Agatha had been executed at Catania fifty-two years earlier, and miracles were worked at her relics there. Tradition holds that St. Lucy took her mother to that tomb, to beg a cure no physician had managed. They came to the foot of Mount Etna on February 5, St. Agatha's own feast day.

She fell asleep at the grave and saw St. Agatha standing among the angels. St. Agatha announced to her both her martyrdom and her patronage of Syracuse. Her mother's bleeding stopped at the tomb.

Tradition holds that St. Lucy asked her mother there never to raise marriage with her again. Eutychia had held the patrimony nine years, and St. Lucy recovered it and dispersed it among the poor.

Mother and daughter gave daily until nearly all their property and their jewels were sold. Word of the selling reached the man she was promised to, and he demanded the truth of it.

Tradition holds that the rejected suitor went before Paschasius, the governor, and accused her of being a Christian and of breaking the emperor's law. Arrested and questioned, she refused to sacrifice to the gods and professed her faith. The Roman Martyrology records that Paschasius then ordered her handed over to profligates, so that her chastity might be insulted.

The men sent to take her away pushed and dragged at her until they streamed with sweat. Ropes were tied to her hands and feet, and then oxen were yoked to her. She did not move, and the Roman Martyrology records the same failure in its entry for her day.

Tradition holds that a fire was heaped about her with pitch, resin and boiling oil, and that she stood in it unharmed. She died by the sword at Syracuse on December 13, 304 AD. By the same Tradition, wounded and still living, she told the people standing by that the Church would have peace.

A church was raised on the place of her death, and her body was laid in the rock-cut galleries of the catacomb that bears her name. Two sites about a hundred metres apart, both within that catacomb, are pointed out as the place of the martyrdom.

A marble plaque cut in Greek at Syracuse in the early fifth century commemorates a young woman named Euskia. Her family dated her death by the feast of St. Lucy, and the stone is the earliest evidence of the martyr's cult. Paolo Orsi found it in the Catacomb of San Giovanni on June 22, 1894 AD.

The Gregorian Sacramentary keeps December 13 as her day, with a Mass of its own. Her name stands in the Roman Canon of the Mass among seven women martyrs, beside St. Agatha's.

The Venetians brought her body to their city in 1204 AD, during the Fourth Crusade. Since July 11, 1860 AD it has lain at the church of Santi Geremia e Lucia on the Canale di Cannaregio. The Archdiocese of Syracuse says the absence of the body has never weakened the devotion paid to her in her own city.

In 2024 AD the Patriarch of Venice consented to a temporary return and the Holy See authorised it. The body was carried to Syracuse on December 14, 2024 AD and stayed until December 26. Pope Francis wrote to the archdiocese on the feast day, and said that the martyrdom of St. Lucy educates the Church in weeping, compassion and tenderness.