29th April: St Catherine of Siena

Today is the feast day of St Catherine of Siena. Here are some things you might not know about her:

1. She is one of the two patron saints of Italy, together with St Francis of Assisi. She is also patron of Allentown, Pennsylvania, USA, Europe, illness, miscarriages, people ridiculed for their piety, sexual temptation, sick people, and nurses; and against fire and bodily ills.
2. Her birth name was Caterina di Giacomo di Benincasa and she was one of 25 (yes, 25!) children born to to Giacomo di Benincasa, a cloth dyer, and Lapa Piagenti, the daughter of a local poet. She was one of Twins born to Lapa at the age of 40. The other twin, Giovanna, died.
3. Catherine was a happy child and was given the nickname "Euphrosyne", which is Greek for "joy" and the name of an early Christian saint.
4. She is said to have had her first religious vision at the age of five or six, and vowed to give her life to God at the tender age of seven.
5. Her family didn't respect this wish - they had other plans for her. When one of her older sisters died in childbirth, her parents wanted her, at sixteen, to marry the widower. Not only was this incompatible with Catherine's religious vocation but the man had been inconsiderate to his first wife. So Catherine went on hunger strike and cut off her hair so she wouldn't be as attractive to men.
6. She finally got her wish after being taken by her mother to the baths for her health. You could say the baths weren't very effective - Catherine fell seriously ill with a violent rash, fever and pain so her mother finally agreed she should go to the local Dominican tertiaries. Within days of arriving at the convent, Catherine recovered. The tertiaries weren't keen on her being there at first because they were otherwise all widows. They taught her to read but she didn't live with them. She went back to her family home she lived in almost total silence and solitude.
7. Later, she was involved in politics. She travelled with her followers throughout northern and central Italy advocating reform of the clergy; she used what influence she had to sway Pisa and Lucca away from alliance with the anti-papal league; she worked to bring the papacy of Gregory XI back to Rome from its displacement in France and to establish peace among the Italian city-states. She wrote letters, including a long correspondence with Pope Gregory XI, asking him to reform the clergy and the administration of the Papal States.
8. She died of a stroke aged 33, probably caused by what today would be deemed severe anorexia. For years, she had eaten virtually nothing apart from Holy Communion every day. Even her confessor thought this was unhealthy and tried to persuade her to eat properly. Catherine claimed she was unable to, and that her inability to swallow was an illness.
9. Her followers tried to smuggle her head out of Rome in a bag and return it to Siena. When stopped by Roman guards, and ordered to open the bag, they prayed to St Catherine, believing she would want at least part of her body in her home town. When opened, the bag appeared to contain nothing by rose petals. Due to this story, St Catherine is often pictured holding a Rose.
10. She was canonised on 29 June 1461 by Pope Pius II; on 1 October 1999, Pope John Paul II named her as one of the six patron saints of Europe; In October 1970, Pope Paul VI named Catherine a Doctor of the Church; she and Saint Teresa of Ávila were the first women to receive this honour.