Agatha
Saint Agatha is the patroness of breast cancer patients and of nurses because of the manner of her martyrdom: when she refused the prefect Quintianus, he had her breasts torn off — yet she was healed in prison, by tradition through a vision of Saint Peter. The instinctive link between her wound and the women who suffer the same affliction made her their natural intercessor and the patroness of those who tend such wounds. Bell founders and bakers claim her by a visual confusion: medieval art shows Agatha carrying her severed breasts on a platter, and the rounded loaves blessed on her feast (and the dome-shaped bells) resemble that image — bread loaves are still blessed in Sicily on her day as “Saint Agatha’s breasts.” She is invoked against fire and the eruptions of Mount Etna because, the year after her death, Catanians stopped a lava flow by carrying her veil against the advancing fire — which is also why she is patroness of her native Sicily.
Saint Agatha was a noble Christian woman from Sicily who was martyred around 251 AD. She rejected the advances of the Roman prefect Quintianus and was subjected to terrible tortures, including the removal of her breasts. She is invoked against fire and natural disasters, and her intercession is especially sought by those suffering from breast cancer.
