Saint Skull Relics: Agatha, Thomas Aquinas, Rose of Lima and Why Catholics Venerate Them

Agatha is Catania's own saint. According to the Christian tradition of the city, she was a virgin martyr of the third century who died in the Roman persecution after refusing to give up her faith. The details of her suffering come down through the *Passio Agathae*, the account of her martyrdom, and through centuries of devotion, so they are told as tradition rather than as a modern biography (Festival of Saint Agatha, history; Archdiocese of Catania). Her feast day is February 5.

Her remains are in Catania. The Cathedral Basilica states that Agatha's head and thorax are kept in its reliquaries: the famous silver bust and a larger reliquary chest (Catania Cathedral, relics). The bust was commissioned in 1376 by Bishop Marziale and made by the goldsmith Giovanni di Bartolo. It shows Agatha clad in silver, surrounded by ex-voto jewelry offered by the faithful.

The bust is not kept out of sight. Catania's great feast runs from February 3 to 6, and above all on February 4 and 5 the bust and the larger casket are carried through the city on a silver fercolo, a processional platform. A second, summer observance falls on August 17 and recalls the traditional return of Agatha's relics to Catania from Constantinople in 1126.

Catania's tradition also tells of her veil. On February 5, 252, the story goes, the veil was carried out against a lava flow from Etna, and the flow stopped. The story belongs to Catania's devotion rather than to the geological record.

That story helps explain why people call on her. She is the patron saint of Catania, and popular devotion invokes her against fire and volcanic danger, and for women's health. Her traditional martyrdom included the mutilation of her breasts, and for that reason she is also prayed to for protection of the breasts (Festival of Saint Agatha, history).

For most of its life the skull stays hidden inside the silver. In 2026 it did not. In July 2026, the Vatican Museums completed a restoration of the reliquary bust and Agatha's veil. While the work went on, her skull was taken out of the bust and placed in a separate reliquary so that people could still come and venerate it (Vatican City State).

The restored bust, the skull and the veil were shown together in Catania from July 20 to 22, 2026, in a special public exposition announced by the Archdiocese of Catania (Archdiocese of Catania). The skull was scheduled to go back into the bust on August 17, the day the city remembers the return of the relics from Constantinople. The Vatican's account praises the fourteenth-century bust and says its original polychromy, the painted color, and its ex-voto jewelry were restored.

A relic, in Catholic practice, is something connected with a saint, and a first-class relic is part of the saint's body itself: bone, hair, blood or a skull. The honor given to it is veneration, a form of respect, and the Church draws a firm line between that and worship, which belongs to God alone. The relic is honored because the saint's body was understood as a temple of the Holy Spirit and is destined for resurrection.

Canon 1186 of the Code of Canon Law gives the reason Catholics honor the saints in the first place: their example instructs the faithful, and their intercession supports them. Standing before a saint's skull is a way of standing near that example and asking for that help. The Church does not teach that relics work like magical objects (Herbert Thurston, Catholic Encyclopedia, "Relics").

The Church also sets rules. The Vatican's 2017 instruction "Relics in the Church: Authenticity and Conservation" says relics may be displayed for public veneration only with an ecclesiastical certificate of authenticity, and it forbids selling relics. That is why the skulls in this story stay in the churches and orders that keep them.

Thomas Aquinas, the great Dominican saint, died at Fossanova Abbey in Italy on March 7, 1274, and was canonized in 1323. The Dominican Province of St. Joseph says his skull is normally kept in Toulouse, France (Dominican Friars, "St. Thomas Aquinas on Tour").

In late 2024 it left Toulouse for its first tour of the United States, from November 29 to December 18. The tour marked a Dominican jubilee with three anniversaries at once: 700 years since his canonization, 750 years since his death, and 800 years since his birth, traditionally dated to about 1225. It stopped at Dominican churches, houses of study and other Catholic institutions, where people were invited to venerate the relic. Earlier that year, on the 750th anniversary of his death in March 2024, his relics were carried in procession, as Catholic World Report described (Catholic World Report).

The Dominicans describe what visitors were doing as prayer before the earthly remains of a saint, tied to the belief in the resurrection of the dead (Dominican Friars, "Thousands Flock to Venerate the Skull of St. Thomas"). The order presents the Toulouse skull as an authenticated major relic. Talk around the tour also brought up a second skull said to have turned up at Fossanova in 1585; that remains an unresolved claim, while the Dominican identification rests with Toulouse.

Rose of Lima's skull is kept in her own city. The Basilica and Convent of Santo Domingo in Lima keeps it apart from most of her remains, which rest in a mausoleum and crypt beneath the convent. Peru's state news agency Andina reports that the skull is shown in the church in a marble reliquary plated with gold and silver, and that it is displayed during liturgical acts for public veneration. Some of her other bones are kept at the Monastery of Saint Rose and at other places in Lima (Andina; Andina, relic locations).

Her skull is traditionally crowned with roses, which fits her name and is often what catches a visitor's eye. The rector of the basilica, speaking to EWTN News, says the skull has been in the basilica since the late nineteenth century, and that an earlier gold crown was replaced after it was stolen (EWTN News).

A few other saints come up often when people ask about skull relics, and each church describes its relic a little differently.

In Rome, a skull traditionally identified as Saint Agnes's is kept in the church of Sant'Agnese in Agone on Piazza Navona. Other remains associated with her lie beneath the altar of Sant'Agnese fuori le mura, built over her tomb in the catacomb that bears her name (Rome tourism, Saint Agnes catacombs). Our story on the catacombs of Rome follows those burial galleries. If you hope to see the skull, confirm the current relic display with Sant'Agnese in Agone before you plan your visit.

In Milan, the Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio keeps the body of Saint Ambrose beneath the altar in its crypt, together with the bodies of Saints Gervasius and Protasius. The basilica's history says the three were found together when the sarcophagus was opened in 1871 (Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio). Here the relic is the saint's body in the crypt.

Orthodox tradition places the skull of Saint Basil the Great at the Great Lavra Monastery on Mount Athos in Greece. Anyone hoping to see it there should confirm with the monastery.

And beneath Saint Peter's Basilica, the Vatican identifies a funerary niche as the burial place associated with the Apostle Peter. In a 2019 letter, Pope Francis wrote that bones uncovered there in 1952 can "quite reasonably be considered" Peter's (Pope Francis, 2019). The Vatican speaks of bones kept beneath the basilica rather than a skull on display.

Some saints' skulls are big enough stories to have their own pages, so here they get one line each.

Mary Magdalene is often shown holding or contemplating a skull in penitential art, and the skull venerated as hers rests at Saint-Maximin in Provence: Mary Magdalene's skull.

Saint Valentine's flower-crowned skull is venerated at Santa Maria in Cosmedin in Rome, a traditional identification among several churches that claim his relics: Saint Valentine's skull.

John the Baptist's head is claimed by several churches, including Amiens Cathedral and San Silvestro in Capite in Rome: the head of John the Baptist.

Siena keeps something a little different. Saint Catherine of Siena's relic there is not a bare skull but her preserved, mummified head, kept in the Basilica of San Domenico since Raymond of Capua had it carried from Rome in 1384, while her body lies beneath the high altar of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. Her story is told in full in the head of St Catherine of Siena.

The same impulse fills other churches across Europe with martyrs' remains: the jeweled catacomb saints of German-speaking churches, and the skulls of the martyrs kept in Otranto Cathedral.

A handful of questions come up whenever a saint's skull goes on view.

Whether it rides through Catania on a silver fercolo, wears roses in Lima or travels from Toulouse to a parish in the United States, each of these skulls is a real person's remains, kept by a community that prays before it. If you go to see one, treat the church as the place of prayer it is, and confirm the current display with the church that keeps the relic before you travel.

---