Blessed Angelina of Marsciano (1377-1435)
Angelina, who was raised in a noble family, married the count of Civitella when she was fifteen. Two years later, her husband died, and Angelina inherited his title and castle. Straightaway, she put on the habit of a Franciscan tertiary and gathered her female...
Mother Theodore Williams (1868-1931)
Elizabeth Barbara Williams was born to a large Catholic family in Baton Rouge. Though she felt called to religious life, there were at the time few options available for an African American woman in the South. For some years she worked as a receptionist for a convent...
Saint Francis Solano (1549-1610)
Francis Solano was born in the Andalusian town of Montilla, where he joined the Franciscans in 1569. While ministering in southern Spain, he cared for the victims of plague, a most perilous undertaking. At one point, he himself nearly died of the disease. Though he...
Saint Clelia Barbieri (1847-1870)
Clelia Barbieri was born in 1847 to a poor family on the outskirts of Bologna. After her father’s death, when she was eight, she went to work spinning hemp. Despite her own modest circumstances, Clelia sought every opportunity to serve her neighbors. She became well...
St. Birgitta of Sweden (1303-1373)
St. Birgitta of Sweden was one of the great women of the fourteenth century: the wife of a nobleman and the mother of eight children; a nun and founder of monasteries as well as a religious order; a pilgrim who crossed continents and seas; a mystic who filled many...
Eve Lavalliere (1866-1929)
For years, Eve Lavalliere was the toast of Parisian society, a famous beauty and the most popular actress on the French stage. While performing for royalty across Europe, she enjoyed the favors of numerous lovers. "I had everything the world could offer," she noted,...
Saint Veronica Giuliani (1660-1727)
Ursula Giuliani was born in the small Italian town of Mercatello. At the age of seventeen, after receiving a vision of the Blessed Mother, she entered the Capuchin convent of Citta di Castello in Umbria, and took the name Veronica. Early in her religious life, she...
Angelus Silesius (1624-1677)
Johann Scheffler (his given name), was born to a Protestant parents in Breslau, the capital of Silesia. After earning a doctorate in medicine, he served as court physician to Count Sylvius Nymrod, an ardent Lutheran. Over time, his public questioning of Lutheran...
Blessed Marija Petkovic (1892-1966)
Marija Petkovic was born to a poor family in southern Croatia. Committed to serving the poor, she entered a local convent of the Servants of Charity. Many of the sisters were Italian, and when, following the death of their superior, most of them decided to return to...
Saint Hermina Grivot (1866-1900)
As a young woman in Burgundy, Hermina Grivot joined a missionary congregation, the Franciscan Sisters of Mary, hoping to be sent overseas, praying for the grace to become a saint, worrying only that the time of martyrdom had probably passed. In 1898, the missionary...