Saturninus of Abitina

Holy Hieromartyr Saturninus of Abitina was a priest at Abitina in proconsular Africa (near Membressa, today Medjez el-⁠Bab in Tunisia). He suffered in the year 304 together with the Christians seized at the Sunday Divine Liturgy.

In 303-304 the Emperor Diocletian had issued four decrees ordering the destruction of places of worship and of the Holy Scriptures and requiring all Christians to sacrifice to the Roman gods; Christians were forbidden, on pain of death, to keep the Scriptures, to have places of prayer and to meet on Sundays. At Abitina, forty-⁠nine of the faithful, thirty-⁠one men and eighteen women, gathered in the house of Octavius Felix around the priest Saturninus, were surprised one Sunday celebrating the Holy Eucharist. They were arrested on 12 February and taken in chains to Carthage, where the proconsul Caius Annius Anullinus examined them. Asked why they had broken the emperor's command, a believer named Emeritus answered: "Sine dominico non possumus", that is, without the Sunday assembly for the Eucharist we cannot live. After terrible torments they were put to death.

They are commemorated on 12 February in the Roman Martyrology, by the Western calendar (new style). In 2005, at the Eucharistic Congress in Bari, Pope Benedict XVI held them up as an example of the joy of Sunday. They are saints of the undivided Church.