On December 13 the Church honors St. Lucy (c. 283-304), the virgin martyr of Syracuse in Sicily, who is patron of the blind and of those with eye ailments. Born at Syracuse around 283, she was vowed to virginity and gave her dowry to the poor — a decision that brought her to her death during the Diocletian persecution. The tradition that her eyes were torn out (a later addition to the passio) gives her name its enduring association with sight and light: Lucy comes from lux, "light." In the Scandinavian countries, her feast is kept with the festival of light — the Sankta Lucia procession of a girl in a white robe with a crown of candles — in the darkest week of the northern year.
Her relics are venerated in several places. The original burial site at Syracuse — the church of Santa Lucia al Sepolcro, with the weeping icon of St. Lucy — is the principal Sicilian shrine. Her body rests in the church of San Geremia in Venice, where it was translated in 1860. She is one of the very few female saints named in the Roman Canon, and her feast on December 13 was kept in the early Roman sacramentaries. She is patron of Syracuse, of the blind, and of those with eye diseases.
