Skip to content
The One True Church

St. Helena

Feast 18 August

Empress. Mother of Constantine. Finder of the True Cross in the old telling.

Sacred art

Statues and images

No photograph of St. Helena is shown. The honour goes to the person, and through the person to God. It is not a substitute for the life written below.

The whole treasury

Pilgrim to Jerusalem in her old age. Churches on Calvary and at the Eleona. The West’s Holy Land map begins with her.

Signs that name Helena

If it belongs to Helena, it is here, with a door back into the story.

The True Cross — Jerusalem, then the whole Church
RelicLong veneration

The True Cross

Jerusalem, then the whole ChurchTradition: 326

St. Helena, mother of Constantine, is said to have found the wood of the Cross on Golgotha. Fragments were scattered across Christendom. The Church honors the Cross as instrument of salvation; the Church does not carbon-date every splinter.