St. Catherine of Siena: Mystic, Doctor, and Mother of the Church
Feast Day: April 29 | Patron of Italy, Europe, the Philippines, Nurses, and Firefighters
Birth Into a World of Plague and Promise
St. Catherine of Siena was born during the outbreak of the plague in Siena, Italy on March 25, 1347. She was the 25th child born to her mother, although half of her brothers and sisters did not survive childhood. Catherine herself was a twin, but her sister did not survive infancy. Her father, Giacomo di Benincasa, was a dyer; her mother, Lapa, the daughter of a local poet.
From the very beginning, God had set this soul apart. Into a world ravaged by pestilence and death, He placed a child who would become one of the most audacious voices for life, truth, and reform the Church has ever known.
A Soul Consecrated from Childhood
She had her first mystical experience at the age of six, when she saw a vision of Christ in priestly vestments, and she made a private vow of virginity at the age of seven.
In her sixteenth year she took the habit of the Dominican Tertiaries, and renewed the life of the anchorites of the desert in a little room in her father’s house. Saint Catherine of Siena entered the Dominican Third Order at 18 and spent the next three years in seclusion, prayer, and austerity. Gradually, a group of followers gathered around her — men and women, priests and religious.
This is the pattern of every great apostolic soul: deep roots before wide branches. Three years hidden in prayer — then a life that shook kingdoms.
The Battle Against Marriage and the World
At twelve years of age, her parents thought of engaging her in a married state. Catherine found them deaf to her entreaties that she might live single; and therefore redoubled her prayers, watching, and austerities, knowing her protection must be from God alone.
Catherine disappointed her mother by cutting off her hair as a protest against being overly encouraged to improve her appearance in order to attract a husband. Her father ordered her to be left in peace, and she was given a room of her own for prayer and meditation.
Her parents, regarding her inclination to solitude as unsuitable to the life for which they designed her, endeavored to divert her from it, and began to thwart her devotions, depriving her of the little chamber or cell they had till then allowed her. They loaded her with the most distracting employments, and laid on her all the drudgery of the house.
Catherine responded not with rebellion, but with the genius of the interior life — she simply built her cell within her soul. In her admirable Treatise of God’s Providence, she wrote that “our Lord had taught her to build in her soul a private closet, strongly vaulted with the divine providence” — and to keep herself always close and retired there.
The Mystical Espousals
After three years of celestial visitations and familiar conversation with Christ, she underwent the mystical experience known as the “spiritual espousals,” probably during the carnival of 1366.
In a vision that was ever present in Catherine’s heart and mind, Our Lady presented her to Jesus who gave her a splendid ring, saying to her: “I, your Creator and Saviour, espouse you in the faith, that you will keep ever pure until you celebrate your eternal nuptials with me in Heaven.” This ring was visible to her alone.
In this extraordinary episode we see the vital centre of Catherine’s religious sense, and of all authentic spirituality: Christocentrism. For her Christ was like the spouse with whom a relationship of intimacy, communion and faithfulness exists — the best beloved whom she loved above any other good.
From the Cell to the Streets: Apostolic Charity
In her vision, she was told to reenter public life and to help the poor and sick. She immediately rejoined her family and went into public to help people in need. She often visited hospitals and homes where the poor and sick were found. Her activities quickly attracted followers who helped her in her mission to serve the poor and sick.
She became involved in caring for the sick, especially during the great famine of 1370 and the plague of 1374.
On one occasion, she visited a condemned political prisoner and was credited with saving his soul, which she saw being taken up to heaven at the moment of his death.
Holiness, for Catherine, was never private. The interior fire always found its way outward — into hospitals, prisons, streets, and eventually, into the courts of popes and kings.
The Stigmata and the Supernatural Life
It was on one of her preaching journeys that she claimed to receive the stigmata — wounds similar to the ones suffered by Christ in His crucifixion — but they were seen only by herself.
This profound union with the Lord is illustrated by another episode in the life of this outstanding mystic: the exchange of hearts. According to Raymond of Capua who passed on the confidences Catherine received, the Lord Jesus appeared to her “holding in his holy hands a human heart.”
Her confessor and biographer, Blessed Raymond of Capua, recorded these experiences with theological rigor and personal witness. He was not a credulous man — he was a scholar and a future Master General of the Dominican Order. And he believed her.
The Woman Who Moved a Pope
Perhaps the most astonishing chapter of Catherine’s life was her role in one of the gravest crises of the medieval Church: the Avignon Papacy, during which the popes had resided in southern France for nearly seventy years, held captive by the comfort of French influence.
In June 1376, she went to Avignon as ambassador of the Florentines to make their peace; but she was unsuccessful. Nevertheless she made such a profound impression upon the mind of the pope that, in spite of the opposition of the French king and almost the whole of the Sacred College, he returned to Rome on January 17, 1377.
Catherine spent the greater part of 1377 in effecting a wonderful spiritual revival in the country districts subject to the Republic of Siena, and it was at this time that she miraculously learned to write, though she still seems to have chiefly relied upon her secretaries for her correspondence.
A young laywoman — illiterate for most of her life — moved the Vicar of Christ with the force of her letters, her holiness, and her absolute confidence in the truth. This is not politics. This is the supernatural power of sanctity.
The Great Schism and the Final Battle
In 1378, the Great Schism began, splitting the allegiance of Christendom between two, then three, popes and putting even saints on opposing sides. Saint Catherine of Siena spent the last two years of her life in Rome, in prayer and pleading on behalf of the cause of Pope Urban VI and the unity of the Church.
In the Eternal City she spent what remained of her life, working strenuously for the reformation of the Church, serving the destitute and afflicted, and dispatching eloquent letters in behalf of Urban to high and low in all directions.
The Dialogue: A Masterpiece of Mystical Theology
The “Dialogue” especially, which treats of the whole spiritual life of man in the form of a series of colloquies between the Eternal Father and the human soul (represented by Catherine herself), is the mystical counterpart in prose of Dante’s Divina Commedia.
While those addressed to popes and sovereigns, rulers of republics and leaders of armies are documents of priceless value to students of history, many of those written to private citizens — men and women in the cloister or in the world — are as fresh and illuminating, as wise and practical in their advice and guidance for the devout Catholic today as they were for those who sought her counsel while she lived.
Despite being illiterate for most of her life, she dictated hundreds of letters and several important theological works that continue to be studied and prayed with today.
Death at Thirty-Three
She suffered a stroke in 1380 and died some days later, on April 29, which is now her feast day. St. Catherine of Siena died at age 33 in Rome.
Thirty-three years. The same age as the Lord she loved. The parallel is too perfect to be coincidence — it is the signature of a Providence that orders all things beautifully.
Catherine was buried in Rome in a tomb at the Basilica Santa Maria sopra Minerva. However, many of her relics are held in other cities and countries. Her head and thumb are preserved in reliquaries in the Basilica of San Domenico in Siena.
Doctor of the Church and Patron of Europe
Catherine was canonized in 1461, declared patron saint of Rome in 1866, and patron of Italy (with Francis of Assisi) in 1939.
Pope Paul VI declared her a Doctor of the Church, along with Teresa of Avila, on October 4, 1970, and Pope John Paul II proclaimed her patron saint of Europe on October 1, 1999.
St. Catherine of Siena is one of only four women who have been named Doctors of the Church, meaning that her writings, including the mystical The Dialogue and her prayers and letters, have special authority in Roman Catholicism.
What Her Life Says to Ours
The value Saint Catherine of Siena makes central in her short life and which sounds clearly and consistently through her experience is complete surrender to Christ. What is most impressive about her is that she learns to view her surrender to her Lord as a goal to be reached through time.
Catherine shows the Church — and the world — that holiness is not passivity. She was tender in prayer and fierce in truth. She wept over sinners and corrected popes. She nursed plague victims and wrote theological masterpieces. She lived the full range of the Christian vocation: Catherine truly lived St. Paul’s words, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).
Most importantly, Catherine’s life reminds us that the love of God and the love of neighbor are inseparable, and that true holiness is found in serving others with love and humility.
She was not educated at great universities like Thomas Aquinas. She had no political office. She was a young woman from a dyer’s household — and she moved the papacy, converted hardened sinners, and left behind a body of mystical writing that the Church still calls authoritative. This is what God does with a soul that says yes without reservation.
St. Catherine of Siena, pray for us.