Columba

Holy Martyr Columba of Rome lived, according to legend, in the third century, in the time of Diocletian.

It is said that her parents gave her this name because in her angelic face all the purity and simplicity of the dove seemed to be reflected. She was a little over twelve years old when the persecution ordered by Diocletian on 24 February 303 began. Among the first arrested were Columba and her parents. Because she kept firm in her faith, she was subjected to terrible torments and died forgiving her persecutors, to the astonishment of the executioners. The Christians secretly gathered her remains, laid them in a niche of the catacombs of Saint Callixtus and covered them with a marble bearing the inscription "Columba puella". There they stayed until later, when the archaeologist Boldetti, who guarded the Roman catacombs, took them and sent them to the sanctuary at Anagni of the Cistercian nuns. In 1911, Daniel Figueroa, parish priest of San José de Flores in Buenos Aires, obtained from the bishop of Anagni, Antonio Sardi, the donation of the relics, in order to make the church a basilica. She is a saint of the undivided Church, honoured in the Catholic Church, without synodal canonization.