Saint Catherine of Siena

Virgin and Doctor of the Church

Feast Day

April 29

Life

1347–1380

Canonized

1461

Doctor of the Church

1970

Order

Dominican Third Order (Mantellate)

Born

Siena, Republic of Siena

Caterina di Iacopo di Benincasa was born on March 25, 1347, in Siena, the twenty-third of twenty-five children of Iacopo Benincasa, a wool dyer, and Lapa Piagenti. From the age of seven, after a vision of Christ, she dedicated her virginity to him, and at sixteen she was admitted to the Mantellate, the third order of women associated with the Dominican friars of Siena.

For three years she lived in seclusion in her family's house, dedicated to prayer and severe penance. Drawn out into public life around 1370, she gathered a circle of disciples called the famiglia and undertook works of charity for the sick and poor of Siena, particularly during the plague of 1374. Her dictated letters (some 382 are preserved) treat spiritual direction, ecclesiastical reform, and political affairs and were addressed to popes, princes, and ordinary people.

Her most famous public action was her insistence that Pope Gregory XI return to Rome from Avignon. She traveled to Avignon in 1376 and her appeals contributed to Gregory's return to Rome in January 1377, ending the seventy-year Avignon papacy. During the subsequent Western Schism, she defended the legitimacy of Pope Urban VI.

Her principal written work, the Dialogue, was dictated in Siena in 1377-1378 and presents the soul's conversation with God the Father on truth, the Mystical Body, divine providence, and obedience. She received the stigmata at Pisa in 1375, visible only to herself in life.

She died at Rome on April 29, 1380, at age thirty-three. Pope Pius II canonized her on June 29, 1461. Pope Saint Paul VI declared her a Doctor of the Universal Church on October 4, 1970, the second woman so honored. Pope Saint John Paul II proclaimed her co-patroness of Europe on October 1, 1999.