According to a very ancient oral tradition preserved in Sicily, Sofia was born at Byzantium toward the end of the second century, about the year 192 or 193, the fruit of the fervent prayers of her mother, who had already embraced the faith of Christ. Her father, named Costante and thought to have been governor of the city, remained obstinately pagan; it was he who chose the child's name, dedicating her to Sophía, the Greek goddess of wisdom, without suspecting that she would one day belong wholly to the Wisdom of God made flesh.
Losing her mother while still very young, Sofia was shut up by her father in a tower under the care of a pagan nurse, so that her honour might be guarded until she came of age. Yet the walls that were meant to preserve her for the world became the cradle of her consecration. At the age of twelve she heard of the labours of a holy Christian preacher named Timothy and begged her nurse to let her meet him. Braving the danger, he came to her, instructed her in the precepts of the Gospel, baptized her, and left her the image of the Crucified with the Virgin Mary and Saint John standing beneath the Cross.
From that hour her prison became a sanctuary. Praying one day before that image, Sofia felt within her the call to give herself to God in perpetual virginity, and tradition holds that Christ appeared to her, saying: "I have chosen you as my bride. Take this jewelled ring: it shall be for you the crown of eternal happiness." The tower where she was confined was changed into a place of praise and contemplation, a mystical bridal chamber where the young girl kept watch with her Lord.
When her father learned of her conversion he tried by every means to make her deny the faith. Failing in this, he had her publicly scourged and then cast into prison. But some Christian guards, moved by her constancy, allowed her to escape. Sofia embarked in secret and came ashore on the coasts of Sicily, near Syracuse. Scarcely had she landed when she worked her first miracle: meeting a lame beggar who asked alms while invoking the pagan gods, she healed him in the name of Jesus and exhorted him to believe in the one and triune God, the only provident Lord and Saviour. Fleeing all applause, she withdrew into a cave in the district of Pantalica and there lived as a hermit, hidden in solitude, prayer, and penance.
Sanctity, however, cannot long remain concealed. Word of the young hermitess reached Martial, the Roman prefect of Pantalica, who questioned two shepherds and so discovered her refuge. He found her in the grotto, seized her by the hair, dragged her away, and had her sent back to the land of her birth. Delivered again into her father's hands, Sofia was subjected to fresh torments, among them the torture of the gridiron, and at last was beheaded on 18 September of the year 221, at the age of twenty-nine. The people who witnessed the execution were deeply moved by the martyr's steadfastness and began at once to venerate her memory; her father, overwhelmed by remorse, was converted to Christianity three years later — the last and greatest victory of his daughter's patient charity.
Her cult is documented in Sicily at least from the tenth century, in the years of the Byzantine presence on the island. At Sortino devotion first flourished outside the inhabited centre, at the rural church known as "Santa Sofia a rrassu" in the district of Rosso, traditionally held to be the place of her hermit life. In the sixteenth century, with the support of the aristocratic Gaetani family, feudal lords of the town, the cult was brought into the heart of Sortino and a new church raised in her honour. On 20 March 1535 Pope Paul III issued a Pontifical Brief confirming Saint Sofia as patroness and protectress of Sortino, a decree made executive in the Kingdom of Sicily on 29 August 1538. When the earthquake of 9 and 11 January 1693 laid waste eastern Sicily and levelled her church, the Marquis Pietro Gaetani promoted its rebuilding in Baroque style, with a façade of local stone, twisted columns, and rich interior decoration.
Her image spread beyond Sortino: the parish of San Nicolò at Zafferia near Messina preserves a fourteenth-century fresco showing her in monastic dress, and the church of San Sebastiano in Sortino holds two seventeenth-century canvases, one depicting her among other holy virgins, the other in adoration before the Holy Family. In her own church in the historic centre of Sortino are kept her statue and a precious arm-shaped reliquary enclosing a bone fragment attributed to the martyr.
Each year the town keeps her feast with the solemn Novena begun on 30 August, a preached Triduum, and the "Exposition" of the statue on 8 September. At dawn on 9 September the faithful make pilgrimage to the rocky hermitage "a rrassu" in the district of Rosso, then return to the mother church for Mass; at noon her condemnation and martyrdom are recalled by salvos, and in the afternoon the silver arm-reliquary is carried on the shoulders of the women of the town in procession. On 10 September the Archbishop of Syracuse presides at the Pontifical Mass, and at the joyful pealing of the bells the "Sciuta" of the simulacrum takes place, with the flight of four white doves; the wooden statue, borne on a fercolo weighing 475 kilograms, is lifted by thirty-two men through the streets, amid the auction of offerings in kind, the presentation of children to the saint, fireworks, and a torchlight procession. On 17 September a third procession crosses the newer quarters of the town, pausing at the monastery of the Perpetual Adorers of the Most Blessed Sacrament before the statue is returned to its niche.
In Sofia the Christian people have always recognised the virgin who preferred the ring of Christ to the safety of her father's house, the hermit who chose hidden prayer over fame, and the martyr whose courage converted even her executioner-father.
May Saint Sofia of Sicily obtain for us the grace to love purity of heart and to confess Christ without fear, even when fidelity costs us the affection of those closest to us.
