It had been exactly a year since martyrdom when Etna threatened to destroy Catania with an unstoppable and frightening lava flow. Only in the moment of greatest distress did someone remember the inscription on the marble tablet with which the angel had promised help to the city of Catania, the homeland of Agatha.
So the people of Catania, gently and with great devotion, took the red veil resting on the sarcophagus of the saint and, between prayers and invocations, carried him in procession before the front of the flow.The river of flaming magma stopped by miracle, leaving the inhabitants unharmed and intact the houses of the villages on the sides of the volcano.
It was a triumph: praise, celebration, hymns of thanksgiving. It was precisely after this event that Agatha was proclaimed a saint. After this first miracle the fame of Saint Agatha spread rapidly throughout the island and soon spread beyond the Strait of Messina. His tomb, venerated in a small chapel near the place of martyrdom, became the destination of many pilgrimages. HIS name was later inserted in the canon of the Mass and, until the recent reform of the Second Vatican Council, was pronounced every day by the priests at the top of the list of holy martyrs remembered by the Church.
With that first miracle obtained through the intercession of Saint Agatha, Catania indissolubly linked her name and her destiny to the powerful compatriot, who then knew how to save the city from the destructive fury of Etna and later would save it many more times from different enemies.