Pope Francis makes a surprise visit to the Basilica of Sant'Agostino in Rome

Pope Francis made a surprise visit to the Basilica of Saint Augustine on Thursday to pray at the tomb of Santa Monica.

During his visit to the basilica in the Roman quarter of Campo Marzio, near Piazza Navona, the Pope prayed in the side chapel containing the tomb of Santa Monica on her feast day on August 27.

Santa Monica is honored in the Church for her holy example and for her devout prayerful intercession for her son, Saint Augustine, before his conversion. Catholics today turn to Santa Monica as an intercessor for family members far from the Church. She is the patroness of mothers, wives, widows, difficult marriages and victims of abuse.

Born into a Christian family in North Africa in 332, Monica was given in marriage to Patricius, a pagan who despised his wife's religion. She patiently dealt with her husband's bad mood and infidelity to their marriage vows, and her patience and long-suffering prayers were rewarded when Patricio was baptized into the Church a year before his death.

When Augustine, the eldest of three children, became a Manichean, Monica went in tears to the bishop to ask for his help, to which he famously replied: "the son of those tears will never perish".

He went on to witness Augustine's conversion and Saint Ambrose's baptism 17 years later, and Augustine became a bishop and doctor of the Church.

Augustine recorded his conversion story and details of his mother's role in his autobiographical confessions. He wrote, addressing God: "My mother, your faithful one, wept before you on my behalf more than mothers are accustomed to weep for the bodily death of their children."

Santa Monica died immediately after her son's baptism in Ostia, near Rome, in 387. Her relics were transferred from Ostia to the Basilica of Sant'Agostino in Rome in 1424.

The Basilica of Sant'Agostino in Campo Marzo also contains a sixteenth-century statue of the Virgin Mary known as Madonna del Parto, or Madonna del Parto Safe, where many women prayed for a safe birth.

Pope Francis offered Mass in the basilica on the day of the feast of St. Augustine on 28 August 2013. In his homily, the Pope quoted the first verse of Augustine's Confessions: “You made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. "

"In Augustine it was precisely this restlessness in his heart that led him to a personal encounter with Christ, led him to understand that the remote God he sought was the God close to every human being, the God close to our heart, who was" more intimate with myself ”, said Pope Francis.

“Here I can only look at my mother: this Monica! How many tears did that holy woman shed for the conversion of her son! And even today how many mothers shed tears for their children to return to Christ! Don't lose hope in God's grace, ”the pope said