The only historically certain detail we know about Saint Agatha is geographical: Catania, her city, despite the claims of Palermo. The Acts of her martyrdom are late and apocryphal, but they place her death during the persecution of Decius. All ancient traditions agree on today’s date, which must indeed correspond to the day of her passion.
In Rome, devotion to Agatha spread early. The patrician Ricimer built a church in her honor in the mid-5th century, known as Saint Agatha of the Goths, intended for the Arians. Pope Symmachus, at the turn of the 5th to the 6th century, introduced her liturgical cult in Rome and dedicated to her a basilica on the Via Aurelia.
Her name was later inserted into the Roman Canon of the Mass, most likely by Pope Gregory I, who had strong ties to Sicily. Perhaps the deep devotion that the popes felt for her explains the presence of Saint Peter in her legendary Acts, where he appears to her in prison and says: “Who are you who have come to me?” “I am the apostle of Christ.”
