When I was growing up in the Philippines, which was predominantly a Catholic country, we always get free calendars from our “suki” (favourite shops& vendors), which usually bore saints’ names with their corresponding feast days.

St Marcella – Matron Saint

I always remember St Marcella, because her feast day is 31 January, my birthday.  My mother did say that I should have been named Marcella, as it was rather customary to name a child after the saint’s whose feast day is also the child’s birthday, but my father would not have it.

I know St Marcella’s name and feast date, but otherwise she was really an unknown saint to me.

So I thought, maybe it is about time that I found out more about this remarkable woman.

Apparently she was known as a matron Roman saint.  She was only 9 months into her marriage when she became a widow.

Despite suitors, she opted for a pious and celibate life and founded a legion of like-minded sisterhood in her mansion in Aventine Hill.

St Marcela was a woman of great intellectual ability which impressed St Jerome, who took this band of women under his wing for Religious and intellectual learning.

She was in her late 70s when the Goths headed by Alaric ransacked Rome.  Poor Marcella suffered personal violence from the Goths because they wanted her to reveal the whereabouts of her jewelries and treasures, which were already sold off to pay for her charitable work.  Within days she died as a result of the torture she received.