The story of “St. Philomena”

Ben Antao

Like many other houses in Goa, the ladainha was celebrated in our house in Velim before the family altar in the front hall flanked by a sitting room on the left and a bedroom on the right.

The altar featured a glass receptacle with the image of Our Lady wearing a gold chain with a crucifix, which was mounted on a wood plank on the right side five feet above the floor level. Two feet above the altar was hung a large framed picture of the Sacred Heart, which was matched on the far left side by a picture of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour.

Fronting the two pictures were candleholders on which four tall beeswax candles would be spiked and lit during a ladainha. Below the picture of the Perpetual Succour and aligned with the altar was a smaller framed picture of St. Filomena looking sideways and wearing a crown of thorns.

My first cousin from Tollecanto, Velim, was named Filomena D’Costa, who was ever kind and affectionate as we were growing up. She was about my age and I liked her a lot, and every time we celebrated the ladainha the picture on the wall made me think of her. And of all the saints, including St. Francis Xavier, I held a special regard for St. Filomena because of my cousin.

I was in Bombay in 1961, working and studying, when the news came out that the Vatican had removed St. Philomena (name Anglicized) from the Church’s calendar of saints. She and some other saints (St. Christopher comes to mind) were dropped from the calendar for historical reasons.

Apparently, the Sacred Congregation of Rites wanted to suppress the cult of St. Philomena because of research that showed she “never existed.” Her name was expunged from Butler’s Lives of the Saints, a book of biographies of saints approved for veneration by the Catholic Church.

I remember vividly that morning in January 1961. Joe Fernandes, a cousin of another cousin of mine from Zaino, and ten years older than me and with whom I was living in the Fort area, said to me: “Can you believe it, Ben? How can the Church do this? It’s a scandal. People are going to lose their faith in the Church now.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “People’s faith is a lot stronger. They are not going to stop worshipping the saint just because the Church has demoted her.” I was thinking of my cousin in Goa and of how she would feel about it.

“Still,” he said, “ the faith of the people has been shattered.”

That was true, I thought, what he said about faith being shattered. Whenever such dramatic news comes out, the faithful are stunned and the moorings of their faith are shaken.

For decades now, I have been wondering why the Church had dropped St. Philomena from the calendar of saints. Finally, I decided to do some research. Father Dan Donovan, a professor of theology at St. Michael’s College of the University of Toronto, and a resident priest at our parish, gave me a lead to follow.

Here then is the “story” of St. Philomena.

Philomena was supposedly a virgin and martyr of Rome during the early years of Christianity. In 1802, however, a tomb was discovered in a catacomb in Rome with the inscription Pax tecum Filumena (Peace be with you, Philomena). Inside the tomb were the bones of an adolescent girl of about fifteen, together with a vial of blood and a palm symbol, both of which were accepted then as a sign of martyrdom.

In 1805 the relics were given to the church of Mugnamo, where they were enshrined. Miracles and favors at her intercession were soon reported and her fame spread throughout Italy. A nun came along and said that Philomena was a Latin name meaning “daughter of light” when in fact it is a Greek name meaning ‘beloved.’ Then, a cure in 1835--Pauline Jaricot, foundress of the Association for the Propagation of the Faith, was reportedly dying when she suddenly recovered at the shrine of Philomena--led Pope Gregory XVI to authorize the cult worship of Philomena in several Italian dioceses, including Rome. Later, in 1855, Pope Pius IX approved a Mass and office for the saint.

Meanwhile, critical scholars, notably the Society of Bollandists, were not satisfied. A fraternity of Jesuit hagiographers, the Bollandists had begun the audacious task of publishing all that could be known and authenticated about each of Christianity’s venerated martyrs and saints. Using liturgical calendars as their guide and beginning with January, they researched the available material on each saint who had, in whatever part of the world, been commemorated, as least by some Christian churches, on every date of the year. (Kenneth L. Woodward, Making Saints, Simon and Schuster, New
York, 1990.)

The Bollandists’ commitment to rigorous scholarship and exacting standards received a deserving recognition from the Holy See, when in 1930 a historical section was established within the Congregation of Rites. Today, their on-going series the Acta Sanctorum Bollandistarum has become the standard against which all hagiographic works are measured.

It was in the 1920’s that the Bollandists of Belgium were reported to have looked at the cult of St. Philomena. Archaeological evidence pointed strongly to the bones discovered as not being those of the original burial. “The original burial (of bones) may, but need not necessarily, have been those of a martyr, who was either Philomena or was the beloved of some unknown person. Her body may well have been translated to other Roman churches with those of other martyrs in the 8th or 9th centuries.” (The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 1987, David Hugh Farmer, editor). Based on the historical facts and critical research of the Bollandists, the Holy See suppressed the cult of St. Philomena in 1960.

I did not know until last month when I was reading In search of self-fulfillment, an autobiography of Dr. Jose Francisco Martins, Goan freedom fighter, that in Mysore there was a cathedral of St. Philomena where devotees made novenas and sought her intercession. Before her marriage in 1959, Dr. Martins writes, his soon-to-be wife had gone there to make the novena. I don’t know whether the cathedral and such practice still exist there.

When I last saw and met my cousin in 1984, I didn’t have the heart to bring up the topic of the lately revered saint. Sometimes, it’s best to let faith do its work in its own way.

Ben Antao
July 17,  2000
c2000 Ben Antao

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Bambino Martins writes:

Dear Ben:

Thank you for your excellent article. It is very informative. I liked the article so much that I read it again and I noticed the following lines:

“I don’t think so,” I said. “People’s faith is a lot stronger. They are not going to stop worshipping the saint just because the Church has demoted her.”

To the best of my knowledge Catholics don't "worship" Saints or even Our Lady.

Despite that possible misunderstanding, your article is very scholarly and I want to thank you for sharing your research with the readers of the Goan Forum

Bambino Martins
July 18, 2000