Daria: Name Day and Patron Saint

St Chrysanthus was born to a pagan family of Alexandria that had settled in Rome. A well-educated young man, he read what the pagans wrote about the Christians and wanted to read the Christians’ own books; he found the New Testament, and it enlightened him. The presbyter Carpophorus, hiding from persecution, taught and baptized him, and Chrysanthus began to preach the Gospel. To turn him back, his father arranged his marriage to Daria, a priestess of the goddess Minerva. Instead Chrysanthus led Daria to Christ, and the two agreed to live together in purity as brother and sister. Many young men came to the faith through him, and many devout women gathered around her. Complaints reached the authorities, and Chrysanthus was handed to the tribune Claudius for torture; seeing his firmness, Claudius believed and was baptized with his wife Hilaria, their sons and his soldiers, and under the emperor Numerian Claudius, his sons and his soldiers were put to death. Daria was sent to a house of shame, where, the tradition says, a lion guarded her. In the end Chrysanthus and Daria were buried alive in a sandpit on the Via Salaria about the year 283, and Christians who later gathered at their tomb were sealed in and died there. The Church remembers them on 19 March (1 April on the Old Calendar), and the faithful ask their prayers for purity and faithfulness in marriage.

What the faithful pray for

• husbands and wives who wish to live their marriage in faith and purity
• the gift of chastity
• young people seeking Christ and the Scriptures
• the conversion of family members who do not believe
• steadfastness under persecution