St. Perpetua — The Catholic Martyr Who Wrote Her Own Death Sentence

Everyday Saints: A Catholic Podcast · Jun 18, 2026 · 21m · transcript

In this episode of Everyday Saints, a Catholic podcast about the saints, host John O'Connor tells the story of St. Perpetua of Carthage — a young Roman mother who wrote her own prison diary in the year 203 AD, knowing she would die for her faith. It is one of the oldest surviving documents written by a woman in the ancient world.

The sand is hot beneath her feet. She is twenty-two years old. She has a baby she will never hold again. How she got to that arena — and what she wrote in the days before — is a story most people have never heard.

In this episode:

— Who Perpetua was, and the Roman…