Fortunatus of Casei

Saint Fortunatus of Casei is a holy martyr venerated in the Roman Catholic Church. According to tradition he was a soldier of the Theban Legion and suffered at Agaunum with his companions. His commemoration is on 16 October and on the third Sunday of October. Our sources record only Catholic veneration.

His relics lay in the catacombs of Pope Callixtus I in Rome until 1746, when Cardinal Guadagni, Roman vicar to Benedict XIV, exhumed them again and displayed them in the collegiate church of Santa Maria in Via Lata in Rome. It is unclear how the relics of Fortunatus reached Rome from the saint's supposed place of death in the Swiss Alps. Another source says that he was venerated in the catacombs of Saint Priscilla in Rome until 1600, when some of his relics were taken to Turbigo, although Casei also claimed his relics from 1700 onward. There may have been two saints named Fortunatus. Some of the relics are also claimed by the parish of Lonate Pozzolo.

From Santa Maria in Via Lata the relics were taken to Casei Gerola, in 1764 according to one source, in 1765 according to another, as a gift of the Holy See to the church there. The gift was made by the provost of the church, Don Carlo Maria Bolardi, to his native country, Casei, where the saint became patron. Casei Gerola, in the province of Pavia, was an important village of the diocese of Tortona, which had close ties to the papacy. The relics were kept in an urn; Fortunatus's skull is crushed, which shows that the cause of death was a fatal blow to the head.

He is also regarded as patron of the island of Pantelleria, after he is believed to have aided the island through miraculous intervention in an earthquake in 1831 and a seaquake in 1891. On 16 October a procession is held in honour of the saint, in which his statue is carried on a boat.