Zopitus

Saint Zopitus is said, according to tradition, to have been a young martyr, a victim of the persecutions against Christians in the fourth century, commemorated on 12 October. It was first believed that the name Zopitus came from a probable inscription on a tomb slab in the catacombs of Saint Callixtus, which spoke of a martyr "sopitus in Domino", that is, "fallen asleep in the Lord". This belief weakened when a stone with a Greek inscription was found about a Zopyros, dead at about twenty on 12 October, which proves the existence of a young man of that name, different, however, from Zopitus.

The body of the presumed saint was moved to Penne, then definitively to Loreto Aprutino, in the collegiate church of Saint Peter, by the bishop of Penne and the abbot of Loreto in 1711. Zopitus is patron of the town of Loreto Aprutino. In the procession held in his honor, on the Monday after Pentecost, it was customary to lead into the church an ox, ridden by a child dressed in white, to kneel before the statue of the saint. He is venerated in the Catholic Church; his historical existence is uncertain.