A response to an inquiry from Sir Akachukwu Igbokwe KSJ

“The Internet is agog with the Relics of St. Agatha, which Catholics venerate and which non-Catholics, particularly Protestants, Pentecostals and perhaps Muslims criticise as tantamount to idolatry. What is the correct Church teaching on this, Padri?” (Sir Akachukwu Igbokwe KSJ)

A Response from Fr John Okoro Egbulefu CCE, Rome 22nd August 2026 (Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary as Queen, crowned female saving Ruler)

Dear Sir Akachukwu Igbokwe KSJ

The following is my response in two parts to your report about a devotional practice by Catholics accused of idolatry and your inquiry about the Church’s authentic doctrine underlying that practice.

Part One: The Authentic Doctrine of the Church

The Church’s teaching on the above matter descends as logical conclusion from two premises: her doctrine of faith and her doctrine of morals.

Her doctrine of faith most relevant for the issue at stake is this: Jesus is the crown of Virgins.

Her doctrine of morals most relevant for the issue at stake is this: the beauty of the human body is for the glorification of God the Maker, it should not be used for anything that does not give glory to God, it should not be used to seduce others to sin, to offence against God.

But today, the summer days have regrettably become the most morally lax period in the year, the period in which particularly women who believe they are pretty are driven by the pride of life and sheer vain glory to expose their bodies for admiration, for the seduction of men and fellow women, or even for sale to persons who are under the uncontrolled drive of the concupiscence of the eyes and concupiscence of the flesh.

And the Church, in her disciplinary tradition, insists that this must not be so; for there have been very beautiful women in the history of humanity in the world who used their beauty rather to glorify God through their option for virginity. Such a woman was St Agatha acclaimed to be one of the most beautiful ladies that passed through this sinful world without seducing anyone to sin nor allowing herself to be seduced to sin. Such women in the Church make reference to Jesus as the head of that mystical body called the Church of Christ the members of which the Christians, hence the Catholics, are.

Christ Himself was a handsome male Virgin all his life on earth, born of a mother, Mary, who was conceived without original sin, had no stain of sin in her, had a spotless womb, and remained a most blessed virgin all her life by that grace of God with which she was full, such that in her there was no space in her for disgrace to enter, no room in her for doing disgraceful things like sinning, offending God.

This year was the 900th Anniversary of the clamorous event of bringing back to the earthly place of birth the mortal remains, including the skull, of St Agatha as a cruelly killed beautiful young lady that had died in the state and fame of sanctity and was in the years of her life on earth from childhood to the day of her death acclaimed a most beautiful woman in all the places wherever she lived. The Church venerates her and presents her as heroic model for the women of the contemporary society who would want to live out the instruction of Jesus to all His disciples to be in the world but without being of the world, women who like the goose want to swim in the waters of this world without being soaked.

Since on the one hand Christ is the head of the mystical body to which Agatha with her shining and highly desirable and yet undefiled body and soul belongs, and on the other hand Christ is the crown of Virgins, that is why it is arguably logical and worthy, right and just, to put postmortem on the head of Virgins not yet buried, or on the post-decay remains of their buried head, namely on their exhumed skull, like recently in Italy on the skull of St Agatha as Virgin and Martyr, or on the head of their statue carved in stone, in marbel, or in wood, like for centuries now in many nations, on the head of the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Part Two: The Necessary Discernment and Differentiation Between Idolatry (Worship of Idols) and the Veneration of the Saints

Neither 1) the non Catholic Christian denominations (e.g the Protestants and the Pentecostal) accept the traditional devotion of venerating the saints by the Catholic Church, a Church that never imposes but only proposes to other such denominations the practice of her traditional devotions, like her veneration of the saints in signs and words and actions [wherefore the impression that the provocative public practice of the crowning of the statues of the Holy Mary Mother of God or of the skull of a Saint, a female saint like St Agatha of old, recruits a hidden Catholic agenda of persuading and insinuating the watching members of non-Catholic denominations to join suite is a fantasy, fiction, figment of the mind], nor 2) is the Catholic practice of venerating holy spiritual creatures, namely holy angels and humans, to be confused with the Catholic practice of worshiping/adoring (admiring devotedly - concentratedly and continuously and contemplatively - and with the highest praises and the greatest honour) the Creator God.

As long as the proper object of a veneration is a creature of God or a product/fabrication of human creativity, whereas the proper object of worship by the created - angelic and human - spirits is solely the Creator Himself of all creatures, it follows that the equation of the Catholic veneration of the angels and saints in general and of the Catholic particular practice of crowning of the statue or skull of venerated female saints as holy human person in heaven to idolatry as the present issue at stake is a gross mistake.

Like the creature is never equal to the Creator, so is veneration as the spiritual creature’s act/action/activity towards another creature or towards a product/fabrication of the human creativity never equal to, not to be equated with, worship as the spiritual creature’s act/action/activity towards only the Creator Himself.

On the one hand the venerated holy angels and humans are those created persons that have been sanctified by grace and whose holiness consists in their being good (suitable and hence useful and hence desirable) to the relatively superlative degree of goodness.

On the other hand the worshipped, not merely venerated, Creator God is the only one absolute and indivisible Spirit dwelling in an inaccessible Light and in whom there are the only three eternal, uncreated, supernatural persons that exist without any interval of space nor of time among them and hence that are inseparably united with one another and contemporaneously, not successively, existing and acting with one another and who, being inside God as in the omnipresent Spirit - Spirit that is present in all places at the same time at all times - are both present in one another, and hence are intertwined and inherent in one another, and present outside one another but, being inseparable from one another, are adherent to one another through adhering each to the one and indivisible divinity comprising the divine Name as the only one ineffable divine thing and the only thing expressing the essence of God, the divine essence which consists in God’s being (esse) the first and the last Being (Ens) and from which are deduced those essential attributes of God (like God’s absoluteness, eternity, all-embracingness/catholicity, omnipresence, omniscience, holiness, perfection, mysteriousness, etc) in the Union of which consists the divine Nature, a Union the unity resulting from which constitutes that all-embracing power which underlies and sustains the infallible efficacy of the words and signs and actions, and hence the infallible efficiency, of the three nameable eternal persons in the numerically one God, the three nameable eternal persons who - only united with the one divine Name as the only one ineffable divine thing and as the thing expressing the only one divine essence from which are deduced the essential attributes of God in the Union of which consists the one and indivisible divine Nature - constitute the triune God, the Trinity of God, the divine Trinity, whereby, on account of the underlying and sustaining character and function of that all-embracing power constituted by the unity resulting from the divine nature as from the union of the essential divine attributes such power, all-embracing power, omnipotence, is termed the substance of God, the one and indivisible divine substance, the omnipotence of God, embracing particularly all the three most powerful powers that can exist namely the power to do all good things and do each well at the absolutely superlative degree of its being well done, the power to do no evil and to make no mistake, and the power to overview and overpower and overthrow and overcome every evil and to eliminate all evils together and give way to the reign of only goodness, like in heaven, and the three nameable eternal persons called the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, respectively, are the only three persons that have jointly created the human being in their image and resemblance, and that are holy by nature, and whose holiness consists in their being good (suitable and hence useful and hence desirable) to the absolutely superlative degree of goodness.