Saint Pancras: the teenage martyr behind London’s great station

SAINT OF THE WEEK: May 12 – Saint Pancras

Saint Pancras is the most famous saint in London who no one knows anything about. So far as we know, he was a Roman citizen of Phrygia born around AD 289. When Pancras was nine years old, his mother Cyriada died during childbirth; not long after, his father died of grief.

Entrusted to his uncle Dionysius’s care, Pancras moved to Rome and lived in a villa on the Caelian Hill. Both nephew and uncle were converted to Christianity by a man named Marcellinus and became steadfast upholders of their new faith. Dionysius died, leaving Pancras on his own at still a very young age.