page_title: Saint Monica
section_title: Veneration
hierarchical_section_title: Saint Monica / Veneration
caption_attribution_description: English: Saint Monica's burial, in Sant'Agostino church at Rome, by Isaia da Pisa.
context_page_description: Saint Monica was an early African Christian saint and the mother of St. Augustine of Hippo. She is remembered and honored in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, albeit on different feast days, for her outstanding Christian virtues, particularly the suffering caused by her husband's adultery, and her prayerful life dedicated to the reformation of her son, who wrote extensively of her pious acts and life with her in his Confessions. Popular Christian legends recall Saint Monica weeping every night for her son Augustine.
context_section_description: Saint Monica was buried at Ostia and at first seems to have been almost forgotten, though her body was removed during the 6th century to a hidden crypt in the church of Santa Aurea in Ostia. Monica was buried near the tomb of St. Aurea of Ostia. Her tomb was later transferred to the Basilica of Sant'Agostino, Rome.
  Anicius Auchenius Bassus wrote Monica's funerary epitaph, which survived in ancient manuscripts. The actual stone on which it was written was rediscovered in the summer of 1945 in the church of Santa Aurea. The fragment was discovered after two boys were digging a hole to plant a football post in the courtyard beside Santa Aurea.
  A translation from the Latin, by Douglas Boin, reads:
  Here the most virtuous mother of a young man set her ashes, a second light to your merits, Augustine. As a priest, serving the heavenly laws of peace, you taught [or, you teach] the people entrusted to you with your character. A glory greater than the praise of your accomplishments crowns you both – Mother of the Virtues, more fortunate because of her offspring.
  During the 13th century, however, the cult of St. Monica began to spread and a feast in her honour was kept on 4 May. In 1430, Pope Martin V ordered the relics to be brought to Rome. Many miracles are said to have occurred on the way, and the cultus of St. Monica was definitely established. Later the archbishop of Rouen, Guillaume d'Estouteville, built a church at Rome in honour of St. Augustine, the Basilica di Sant'Agostino, and deposited the relics of St. Monica in a chapel to the left of the high altar. The Office of St. Monica, however, does not seem to have found a place in the Roman Breviary before the 19th century.
  In 1934, in the Dutch city of Utrecht, the order of the 'Zusters Augustinessen van Sint-Monica' was founded, doing social work, offering a shelter for women with unwanted pregnancies or women who were the victims of domestic violence or abuse. The sisters also started a number of primary schools. In their heyday the order had six convents, in Amsterdam, Utrecht, Sittard, Maastricht, Hilversum and Arnouville on the outskirts of Paris. Since the Hilversum convent, City of God, was closed in 2014, only Utrecht remains as a rest home for the elderly among the sisters, and Casella, a woodland retreat near Hilversum, where young people are still welcome for a meditative sojourn.   
  The city of Santa Monica, California, is named after Monica. A legend states that in the 18th century Father Juan Crespí named a local dripping spring Las Lagrimas de Santa Monica ("Saint Monica’s Tears") (today known as the Serra Springs) that was reminiscent of the tears that Saint Monica shed over her son's early impiety. As recorded in his diary, however, Crespí actually named the place San Gregorio. What is known for certain is that by the 1820s, the name Santa Monica was in use and its first official mention occurred in 1827 in the form of a grazing permit. There is a statue of this saint in Santa Monica's Palisades Park by sculptor Eugene Morahan; it was completed in 1934.
caption: Saint Monica's tomb, Basilica di Sant'Agostino, Rome
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