The patron saint of Torregrotta is Saint Paulinus the Bishop, celebrated on 22 June. The church dedicated to him, opened on 29 June 1943 in Via Mezzasalma, holds inside a 1671 painting attributed to Francesco Iaconissa, depicting the Deposition of Christ from the Cross, which originally adorned the altar of the old church of San Paolino, formerly dedicated to Mary Most Holy of Pity.
The parish dedicated to San Paolino, the town's oldest, was canonically established in 1921, at the end of a long period of tension with neighbouring Roccavaldina, culminating in the so-called «war of the burials», when the inhabitants of Torregrotta began digging up their dead by night from the Roccavaldina cemetery to move them to their own town. Alongside the cult of the patron, the Torregrotta community also keeps that of the Madonna della Scala, dating from the 12th century, and that of Saint Roch, among the oldest in the area. The fief on which Torregrotta stands was donated in March 1168 by the Norman king William II and his mother Margaret of Navarre to the Benedictine monastery of Santa Maria della Scala in Messina; the grant was reconfirmed by his successors Henry VI and Constance I, and twice, in 1209 and 1221, by the Swabian emperor Frederick II.
