Sts. Perpetua and Felicity

Who they were

Perpetua was twenty two, educated, wellborn, and nursing an infant son when she was arrested at Carthage in 203 for the crime of becoming a Christian. We know her because she wrote it down. Her prison diary, the earliest surviving text by a Christian woman, records her father's desperate visits begging her to recant, the ache of the baby taken from her, her dreams, and her calm.

Felicity, arrested with her, was enslaved and eight months pregnant. She feared not death but delay, since the law would not execute a pregnant woman and she wanted to die with her friends rather than later among strangers. Her daughter was born in prison days before the games and was given to a Christian family. In the arena the two women, patrician and slave, both new mothers, stood together, exchanged the kiss of peace, and died together. Their names are side by side in the Roman Canon, where the Church has said them daily for eighteen centuries.

Why people turn to Sts. Perpetua and Felicity

Mothers separated from their children, whether by hospital glass, by court order, by distance, or by death. And any friendship that crosses a line the world enforces.

How to ask their intercession

A mother apart from her child can borrow Perpetua's own situation word for word. Ask both women together, since together is what they insisted on.