What miracles did Saint Philomena perform?

Answer 1

A:

Saint Philomena provides an interesting case study of modern devotion. Her remains were found in the Catacombs of Priscilla in 1802, and from her age, around 13 years old, it was also assumed that she was a virgin. An Latin inscription on three tiles, that closed the hollow in which the bones lay, has been read as meaning "Peace with you, Philomena," from her name was deduced.

Sister Maria Luisa di Gesù later reported that she received revelations from Philomena about her former life. 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.

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. Canon De Lucia recounted that wonders accompanied the arrival of the relics in his church, among them a statue that sweated some liquid continuously for three days. A miracle accepted as proved in the same year was the multiplication of the bone dust of the saint, which provided for hundreds of reliquaries taken [and perhaps sold] without the original amount experiencing any decrease in quantity.

On August 10, 1835, Pauline received a miraculous cure of a severe heart ailment at Saint Philomena's shrine in Mugnano del Cardinale during the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. Immediately following, she appealed to Pope Gregory XVI to begin an examination for the beatification of Philomena. And on Jan. 13, 1837, the pope named St. Philomena Patroness of the Living Rosary, and declared her to be the "Thaumaturga," the "Great Wonder-Worker of the nineteenth century."

A twentieth-century discovery was that 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, while the body that had been found was of the fourth century. The three tiles that provided her name and the images around which a tale of martyrdom had been woven, had no relation to the person whose remains were found. There was no Saint Philomena and therefore no miracles.