St Celia

SAINT CELIA (THE SAINT OF MUSIC)

During a visit to Italy this year my elder daughter and I visited the Catacombs.  Due to the Roman’s not allowing them to bury there dead in Rome itself they had found that they could carve underground caves and line them with niches to lay there dead in.  They believed that they needed to keep their bodies complete to enter Heaven. 

The guide told us of how the four Popes that had been buried there had been moved to the Vatican but the grave robbers had taken the remaining bones of and sold these as relics, allowing people to believe that they were from the Popes. 

We were also shown the effigy of a young girl who had been beheaded for her faith.  She was laying face down, for although she came from a prominent family she was placed this way so that she would be obscure, like all other Christians, the finger on one hand pointing down to denote the one God three on the other hand to represent ‘the father, the son, and the Holy Ghost’.   In their ‘wisdom’ the church decided not to go along with this.  She is now buried in the Vatican and has been made the Saint of music.