Saint Fabiola
saint
Feast: 27 December (not on the universal Roman calendar; kept in the Roman Martyrology or local calendars)
Who they were
Fabiola, of the patrician Fabian family, divorced a vicious husband and married again, against the Church's law. After her second husband's death she did public penance at the Lateran on Holy Saturday and was received back into full communion.
She gave her great wealth to the poor and sick, founded a hospital in Rome where she nursed the patients herself, and studied Scripture at Bethlehem under St Jerome. She died on 27 December 399 or 400.
The miracles
There was never a formal cause: she has been honoured as a saint since before the Church's formal processes began.
Why that counted as sanctity
A penitent who spent her wealth nursing the sick.
- Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), via New Advent - St. Fabiola
- Wikidata Q163275 — dates, feast day and identifiers (CC0)
- English Wikipedia — Saint Fabiola (CC BY-SA)
Checked against the sources listed on 21 September 2026. Corrections welcome.