| Saint Philomena | |
|---|---|
Statue of Saint Philomena in Molve, Croatia |
|
| Virgin and Martyr | |
| Born | c. January 10, 291 (?) Corfu, Greece (?) |
| Died | c. August 10, 304 (aged 13) (?) Rome, Italy |
| Honored in | Catholic Church, officially only from 13 January 1837 until 14 February 1961[1] |
| Canonized | Not canonized[2] |
| Major shrine | Church of Our Lady of Grace in Mugnano del Cardinale |
| Feast | 11 August |
| Attributes | Youth, palm of martyrdom, flower crown, orange or white robes, palm, arrows, anchor, sometimes a partially slit throat |
| Patronage | Children, youth, babies, infants, priests, lost causes, sterility, virgins, Children of Mary, The Universal Living Rosary Association |
Saint Philomena is venerated as a virgin martyr saint of the Catholic Church, said to have been a young Greek princess martyred in the 4th century. Her veneration began in the early 19th century after the archaeological discovery in the Catacombs of Priscilla of the bones of a young woman, which were interpreted as those of a martyr. Nothing else was known about her, but an inscription found at the tomb was taken to indicate that her name was (in the Latin of the inscription) Filumena; corresponding to the English name Philomena.
The remains were removed to Mugnano del Cardinale in 1805 and became the focus of widespread devotion, with several miracles credited to the saint's intercession, including the healing of Venerable Pauline Jaricot in 1835, which received wide publicity. Saint John Vianney attributed to her intercession the extraordinary cures that others attributed to himself. Accounts of her life and martyrdom circulated on the basis of visions of a Neapolitan nun (see below).
Her liturgical celebration was never included in the General Roman Calendar for universal use, but, beginning in 1837, it was approved for some places. The 1920 typical edition of the Roman Missal included a mention of her, under 11 August, in the section headed Missae pro aliquibus locis (Masses for some places), with an indication that the Mass to be used in those places was one from the common of a Virgin Martyr, without any collect proper to the saint.[3] On 14 February 1961, the Holy See ordered that the name of Saint Philomena be removed from all liturgical calendars that mentioned her.[1] Accordingly, the 1962 Roman Missal, the edition whose continued use as an extraordinary form of the Roman Rite is authorized by the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, also has no mention of her.[4]
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On 24 May 1802 in the Catacombs of Priscilla on the Via Salaria Nova an inscribed loculus (space hollowed out of the rock) was found, and on the following day it was carefully examined and opened. The loculus was closed with three terra cotta tiles, on which was the following inscription: lumena paxte cumfi. It was and is generally accepted that the tiles were in a wrong order and that the inscription originally read, with the leftmost tile placed on the right: pax tecum Filumena (i.e."Peace with you, Philomena"). Within the loculus was found the skeleton of a female between thirteen and fifteen years old. Embedded in the cement was a small glass phial with vestiges of what was taken to be blood. In accordance with the assumptions of the time, the remains were taken to be those of a virgin martyr named Philomena.[5]
The belief that such vials were signs of the grave of a martyr was still held in 1863, when a 10 December decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites confirmed a decree of 10 April 1668.[6] But this view has been rejected in practice since the investigations of Giovanni Battista De Rossi (1822–1894).[7]
In 1805, Canon Francesco De Lucia requested relics for a new altar,[8] and on 8 June [6] obtained the remains discovered in May 1802 (reduced to dust and fragments)[9] for his church in Mugnano del Cardinale , where they arrived on 11 August, after being taken from Rome to Naples on 1 July.[6][10]
In 1827, Pope Leo XII gave to the church in Mugnano del Cardinale the three inscribed terra cotta slabs that had been taken from the tomb.[7]
In his Relazione istorica della traslazione del sacro corpo di s. Filomena da Roma a Mugnano del Cardinale De Lucia recounts that wonders accompanied the arrival of the relics in his church, among them a statue that sweated some liquid continuously for three days.[10]
The spread of devotion to her in France as well as in Italy was helped when Saint John Vianney built a shrine in her honour and referred to her often, attributing to her the miracles that others attributed to himself.[7] Another help was the cure of the near-dying Venerable Pauline Jaricot, founder of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith,[11] at Philomena's shrine on 10 August 1835[6][7][10][12]
Another miracle accepted as proved in the same year was the multiplication of the bone dust of the saint, which provided for hundreds of reliquaries without the original amount experiencing any decrease in quantity.[6]
Devotion included the wearing of the "Cord of Philomena", a red and white cord, which had a number of indulgences granted to it, including a plenary indulgence on the day on which the cord is worn for the first time. There was also the chaplet of Saint Philomena, with three white beads in honour of the Blessed Trinity and thirteen red beads in honour of the thirteen years of the saint's life.[13]
On 21 December 1833, the Holy Office declared that there was nothing contrary to the Catholic faith in the revelations that Sister Maria Luisa di Gesù (1799–1875), a Dominican tertiary from Naples, claimed to have received from the Saint herself.[10]
According to Sister Maria Luisa di Gesù, Saint Philomena told her she was the daughter of a king in Greece who, with his wife, had converted to Christianity. At the age of about 13 she took a vow of consecrated virginity. When the Emperor Diocletian threatened to make war on her father, her father went with his family to Rome to ask for peace. The Emperor fell in love with the young Philomena and, when she refused to be his wife, subjected her to a series of torments: scourging, from whose effects two angels cured her; drowning with an anchor attached to her (two angels cut the rope and raised her to the river bank); being shot with arrows, (on the first occasion her wounds were healed; on the second, the arrows turned aside; and on the third, they returned and killed six of the archers, after which, several of the others became Christians). Finally the Emperor had her decapitated. The story goes that the decapitation occurred on a Friday at three in the afternoon, as with the death of Jesus. The two anchors, three arrows, the palm and the ivy leaf on the tiles found in the tomb were interpreted as symbols of her martyrdom.[10]
In these visions, Saint Philomena also revealed that her birthday was 10 January,[10] that her martyrdom occurred on 10 August (the date also of the arrival of her relics in Mugnano del Cardinale),[7] and that her name "Filumena" meant "daughter of light". (It is usually taken to be derived from a Greek word meaning "beloved".)[7]
On 13 January 1837, in the aftermath of the cure of Venerable Pauline Jaricot, Pope Gregory XVI authorized liturgical celebration of Philomena on 11 August[8][10] or, according to another source, originally on 9 September,[7] first in the Diocese of Nola (to which Mugnano del Cardinale belongs), and soon in several other dioceses in Italy.
This permission that Pope Gregory XVI gave on 13 January 1837 for public celebration of Philomena in some limited places, not throughout the Church, has been interpreted as "raising Saint Philomena to the altars of the universal Church", a liturgical act proper only to a canonized saint.[14] The name of this Philomena was never included in the Roman Martyrology, the official list of saints recognized by the Catholic Church and in which the saints are included immediately upon canonization.[15]
In the 1920 typical edition of the Roman Missal Philomena is mentioned, under 11 August (with an indication that the Mass for her feastday was to be taken entirely from the common, so that there was no part, not even the collect, that was proper to her) in the section headed "Masses for some places", i.e. only those places for which it had been specially authorized.[3]
On 14 February 1961, the Holy See ordered that the name of Saint Philomena be removed from all liturgical calendars that mentioned her.[1] This order was given as part of an instruction on the application to local calendars of the principles enunciated in the 1960 Code of Rubrics, which had already been applied to the General Roman Calendar. Section 33[1] of this document ordered the removal from local calendars of fourteen named feasts, but allowed them to be retained in places that had a special link with the feast. It then added: "However, the feast of Saint Philomena Virgin and Martyr (11 August) is to be expunged from any calendar whatever."[16]
The Holy See's instruction to remove the name of Philomena even from local calendars followed the raising of questions by certain scholars, whose interest had been drawn to the phenomenon more especially in connection with the revelations of Sister Maria Luisa di Gesù.[10] However, the removal of a saint from the calendar (or even a saint never receiving a feast day) does not make them a 'non-saint.'[7] The questions were raised in particular by Orazio Marucchi, whose conclusions won the support of Johann Peter Kirsch, an archaeologist and ecclesiastical historian who is the author of the article on Philomena in the Catholic Encyclopedia,[7] but have been rejected by others.[17]
According to the research that stirred up this controversy, the phial initially believed to have contained blood, had been filled with perfume.[8][10] The inscription on the three tiles that had provided the Latin name "Filumena" ("Philomena" in English) belonged to the middle or second half of the second century,[7] while the body that had been found was of the fourth century, when the persecutions of Christians had ended.[10] Not only the name but also the leaf, the two anchors and the palm that decorated the three tiles, and which had been believed to indicate that Filumena was a martyr (though the necessary connection between these symbols and martyrdom has been denied), had no relation to the person whose remains were found.[7] The disarrangement of the tiles was something fourth-century sextons regularly did when re-using materials already engraved, with the aim of indicating that it was not the same person who was now buried in the place.[8]
The website of the shrine in Mugnano del Cardinale continues to argue against the conclusions thus outlined. See in particular Present Ecclesial Status of Devotion to St. Philomena, by Dr. Mark I. Miravalle.
The rector of the shrine reported that on 9 April 2005 a panel of scientists, priests and devotees declared that modern scientific tests had shown that it was to fit into the higher side of the tomb that the tallest of the three tiles with the inscription "Pax tecum Filumena" was misplaced; that the tomb was closed only once; that this was done in the year 202 (during the Roman persecution of Christians); and that the glass vial did in fact contain blood, and even a piece of bone, taken to indicate a violent death.[18]
After reporting the decision of the Sacred Congregation of Rites in 1961 as resulting from the studies of scholars, the Italian-language Enciclopedia dei Santi says that there still remain the miracles that occurred and the official recognition that the Church gave in the nineteenth century, the personal devotion to Saint Philomena of popes and people who were later canonized, and the widespread general devotion that still persists, particularly at Mugnano del Cardinale in the Diocese of Nola, where pilgrims from all over the world arrive continually, giving a display of intense popular devotion.[10]
For many, the 1961 withdrawal of Pope Gregory XVI's 1837 authorization of liturgical veneration of Saint Philomena in a limited number of places (which was not an official declaration that she never existed nor that she is not a saint) merely means that the situation has returned to that existing before 1837, when in many places there was fervent devotion to her, accompanied only by vague speculation about the circumstances of her life and death or by belief in the revelations of the Neapolitan nun.
A litany to Saint Philomena composed by Saint John Mary Vianney and a novena prayer to her appear on the EWTN website. The same litany appears on the catholic.org site, which in its account of her makes no mention of the 1961 decision. The same is true of the account on the site of Saint Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in Picayune, Mississippi.
A traditionalist Catholic group associated with the Society of St. Pius X sees the 1961 removal of the feast of Saint Philomena from those calendars in which it was inscribed as "the work of the devil in order to deprive the people of God of a most powerful Intercessor, particularly in the areas of purity and faith at a time when these virtues were so much being challenged as they continue to be up until now!"[19] Another group claims that Saint Philomena has given further revelations even in the twenty-first century.[20]
Places dedicated to St. Philomena: