Saint Sebastian - Patronage

Patronage

In the Roman Catholic Church, Sebastian is commemorated by an optional memorial on 20 January. In the Church of Greece, Sebastian's feast day is on 18 December.

As a protector from the bubonic plague, Sebastian was formerly one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. The connection of the martyr shot with arrows with the plague is not an intuitive one, however. In Greco-Roman myth, Apollo, the archer god is the deliverer of pestilence; the figure of Sebastian Christianizes this folkloric association. The chronicler Paul the Deacon relates that, in 680, Rome was freed from a raging pestilence by him.

Sebastian, like Saint George, was one of a class of military martyrs and soldier saints of the Early Christian Church whose cults originated in the 4th century and culminated at the end of the Middle Ages, in the 14th and 15th centuries both in the East and the West. Details of their martyrologies may provoke some skepticism among modern readers, but certain consistent patterns emerge that are revealing of Christian attitudes. Such a saint was an athleta Christi and a "guardian of the heavens". In Roman Catholicism, Sebastian is the patron saint of archers and of a holy death. For this reason, his veneration has been linked to St. Sebastienne, (Our Beautiful Lady Sebastienne) or Santa Muerte, a saint not recognized by the Catholic Church and whose worship has been condemned by the Church in Mexico. He is also commonly referred to as a gay male icon, which remains an on-going controversial tie between the gay community and the Roman Catholic Church.

Sebastian is the patron and protector saint of the city of Qormi in Malta and the patron saint of Caserta, Petilia Policastro in Italy, Melilli in Sicily, San Sebastián as well as Palma de Mallorca in Spain. He also is the patron saint of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Informally, in the tradition of the Afro-Brazilian syncretic religion Umbanda, Sebastian is often associated with Oxossi, especially in the state of Rio de Janeiro itself.

He is also the patron of a college named for him in Manila, which is adjacent to the Parish of San Sebastian.

Sebastian is the patron saint of the Diocese of Bacolod, Negros Occidental, Philippines.

Saint Sebastian is the patron of Knights of Columbus Council #4926 in the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Jose in California, serving the cities of Mountain View and Los Altos.

In his 1906 Reminiscences, Carl Schurz recalls the annual "bird shoot" pageant of the Rhenish town of Liblar which was sponsored by the Saint Sebastian Society, a club of sharpshooters and their sponsors to which nearly every adult member of town belonged.