To celebrate one year since the reopening of the Chapel of Saint Agatha and the intense activity organised inside it by the Cultural Association Il Mosaico, on Sunday 5 February at 3 p.m., a Holy Mass will be celebrated by Archbishop Giuliano Catarsi inside the Chapel, owned by the Municipality of Pisa.

It was exactly 5 February 2022 when Archbishop Monsignor Giovanni Paolo Benotto and Mayor Michele Conti reopened the chapel of Saint Agatha after a long restoration, which then remained open this year thanks to the voluntary work of the Cultural Association Il Mosaico led by Riccardo Buscemi.

The cult of St Agatha probably arrived in Pisa with the liberation of Catania from the Saracens: the first certain attestation is in the privilege with which Pope Honorius II on 21 July 1126 extended to the archbishop of Pisa the use of the pallium on the feast of St Agatha, 5 February. On that feast day and for the following two days, the saint's alleged skull was exposed, which is still preserved in the church of San Paolo a Ripa d'Arno: the event still aroused a great deal of enthusiasm among nursing mothers at the end of the 19th century. The importance of the cult is also testified by the octagonal oratory dedicated to her, erected within the monastic complex around the middle of the 12th century.