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The saints

St. Pancras

A fourteen-year-old who gave his life for Christ in Rome.

Feast: 12 May · died about 304 · The early Church · Rome

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Painted statue of St. Pancras as a boy with a halo, holding a palm and a book.

Didier Descouens, 2018. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Home / The saints / St. Pancras

The Via Aurelia, Rome

Pancras was a boy martyred in Rome around the year 304, according to tradition.1

His tomb on the Via Aurelia became a great place of pilgrimage.1

The legends say he was an orphan who came to Rome and was baptized there.

Patronage No official patronage we can cite yet. The Church remembers him as a boy martyr of Rome.

01St. Pancras

Fourteen

The tradition says he was only fourteen when he refused to sacrifice to the gods and was beheaded.1

Live it this week

Stand with a young person under pressure

Pancras was barely a teenager. This week, take a young person in your life out for food, ask what’s hard for them right now, listen, and tell them you’re praying for them.

Notes

How we know · 1 source for this page
  1. Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), “Sts. Nereus and Achilleus, Domitilla and Pancratius”. New Advent edition. newadvent.org

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: World English Bible, Catholic edition (public domain); Verse numbers are modern, with Douay-Rheims numbers in brackets where they differ. Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an errorCorrections.