The patron saint of Biancavilla is Saint Placidus, celebrated on 5 and 6 October. His cult spread through the town in the 17th century, when the saint's relics, whose cult had spread throughout Sicily after the discovery in Messina of numerous martyrs' remains, arrived at the town's mother church. Saint Placidus was declared patron and protector of the land of Biancavilla on 23 September 1709 by the bishop of Catania, Monsignor Andrea Riggio, «for having escaped the cruel slaughter» of the January 1693 earthquake that destroyed Catania and all of eastern Sicily, and so that in future the town would not be struck by the same fate.
Saint Placidus's patronage joins the older ones the town has reserved since its founding for the Madonna dell'Elemosina and Saint Zeno, a martyr of Arabia venerated on 14 February and 2 October. Biancavilla was founded in 1488 by a group of Greek-Catholic Albanian refugees, coming from the Balkans and led by Cesare Masi, who obtained the licentia populandi from Count Giovanni Tommaso Moncada: they brought with them the Byzantine icon of the Mother of God of the Elemosina, still an object of devotion today in the collegiate basilica dedicated to her, and a silver reliquary with a relic of Saint Zeno. The basilica, whose bell tower designed by the Milanese architect Carlo Sada is the tallest in the province of Catania, is the destination every Holy Saturday of a solemn Easter rite: as midnight strikes, the statue of the risen Christ makes its entrance through the central door.
