St. Dymphna: Feast Day, Patronage & Prayers
Updated: Oct 3
Feast day: May 15 (kept in some places; not on the General Roman Calendar)
Patron of: Those suffering from mental illness, anxiety, and depression, and their caregivers.
About St. Dymphna
St. Dymphna is honored as a virgin martyr of the seventh century. Her story was written down several centuries after her death, but devotion to her at Geel, in present-day Belgium, is very old and still flourishing. According to that tradition, Dymphna was the daughter of a pagan Irish king and a devout Christian mother, who died when Dymphna was young. Her grief-stricken father, his mind disturbed, sought to marry his daughter because she resembled her mother.
Dymphna fled across the sea with her confessor, a priest named Gerebernus, and they settled near Geel. Her father tracked them down. When she refused to return with him, he had the priest killed and struck off his daughter's head himself. She was about fifteen. The people of the region buried them and soon reported cures of the mentally ill at her tomb. A church was built in her honor, and by the Middle Ages pilgrims with mental illness came from far away. The townspeople began welcoming them into their own homes, a tradition of family care that continues in Geel to this day.
Prayers to St. Dymphna on Daily Catholic Prayers
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