outskirts of Paris. Since the Hilversum convent, City of God, was closed in 2014, only Utrecht remains as a rest home for the elderly among the sisters, and Casella, a woodland retreat near Hilversum, where young people are still welcome for a meditative sojourn. The city of Santa Monica, California, is named after Monica. A legend states that in the 18th century Father Juan Crespí named a local dripping spring Las Lágrimas de Santa Mónica ("Saint Monica’s Tears"; today known as the Serra Springs) that was reminiscent of the tears that Monica shed over her son's early impiety. As recorded in his diary, however, Crespí actually named the place San Gregorio. What is known for certain is that by the 1820s, the name Santa Monica was in use and its first official mention occurred in 1827 in the form of a grazing permit. There is a statue of this saint in Santa Monica's Palisades Park by sculptor Eugene Morahan; it was completed in 1934. Monica is honored in the Church of England and in the Episcopal Church on 4 May. In popular culture Patricia McGerr fictionalized her life in the 1964 novel My Brothers, Remember Monica: A Novel of the Mother of Augustine. In the 2010 film Restless Heart: The Confessions of Saint Augustine, Saint Monica is portrayed by Italian actress Monica Guerritore. In the oratorio La conversione di Sant'Agostino (1750) composed by Johann Adolph Hasse (libretto by Duchess Maria Antonia of Bavaria), Monica's role in the conversion of her son Augustine is dramatized. In his poem "Confessional", Frank Bidart compares the relationship between Monica and her son Augustine to the relationship between the poem's speaker and his mother. In “The Angel of Warning,” the fifth episode of season 3 of the TV series Evil, David explains that Monica was Black, although traditionally portrayed as white in religious art. In the tenth episode of season 3, he calls on St. Monica while jogging past a demonic apparition of sexual temptation in the guise of his colleague Kristen. He continues to pray for deliverance from temptation and is visited by St. Monica. Gallery References Citations Sources Further reading Everett Ferguson, Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, Taylor & Francis, 1998, p. 776 John J. O'Meara, The Young Augustine: The Growth of St. Augustine's Mind up to His Conversion, London, Longmans, Green and Co., 1954 Volker Schier and Corine Schleif, Opening the Geese Book: