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Saint Catherine of Siena, Patron Saint of Italy and Europe

Posted on 21. Oct, 2010 by admin in Archive, Culture

“Virgin and Doctor of the Church, she fought with strenght and without a pause for peace”: with this words Pope Pio XII declared Saint Catherine of Siena Patron Saint of Italy. Was the 18th June 1939, 500 years after the birth of the Saint.

Caterina Benincasa, this was her real name, was born in Siena, in the popular quarter of Fontebranda, now contrade of Oca (Goose), the 25th March 1347.

Jacopo Benincasa, the father who was a dyer, and Lapa Piagenti, the mother, had more than twenty children and is it told that Catherine had also had a twin sister, Giovanna, dead a few days after the birth.

When she was 6, the young mystica had his first vision in Basilica di San Domenico: Christ sitting on the throne, dressed with pontifical clothes and surrounded by Saints Pietro, Paolo and Giovanni. The parents, worried for what happened and for other prodigious behaviors of the child, thought to give her in marriage, so when she was 12 they organized the wedding.

Catherine, that vowed chastity when she was 7, cut her hair short and began to wear a veil without ever leaving home. Fasts, silences, vows, renunciations: ascetic choices that approached her to the great religious project that God had in store for her. When her father Jacopo saw a dove flying, a sign of the Holy Spirit, above his daughter absorbed in prayer, understood that was the moment of let go on her’s one way.

In 1367, at the end of Carnival, Catherine married Jesus instead of a young senese: Jesus appeared in a vision together with Virgin Mary and Saints to give her a ring with ruby, a symbol with she will often portait in iconographical artworks.

Catherine joined the Third Dominican Order, called also “Mantellate” for the habit of wearing a black cloak above the white dress. The young religious, in spite of hers illiteracy, started to dictate to scriveners great value works, not only literary, because are considered one of the highest examples of XIV century prose but also historic and religious.

In particular, with her “Letters”, Catherine communicated with the most powerful people at the time, like Popes, Cardinals, generals, kings and politics of every degree, persuading them with resolute words to act in a wise way and in the name of the peace.

Thanks to the action of a humbly born woman, guided by the hand of God, the quarrels between Florence and Papal States smoothed away, the Holy See retrurned in Rome, after seventy years of Avignonese captivity (1307-1377), started the reformation of the Church.

The 1st April 1375 at Church of Santa Cristina in Pisa, Catherine received the signs of her holiness: the sacred stigmata, invisible until her death, happened in Rome the 29th April 1380. The Saint died at 33, oppressed by fasts and deprivations, as for example abstain from drinking for one month.

Despite the distrust of many people toward the mystica (the Dominican interpellated her in Florence, on 1374, to judge her orthodoxy), over the centuries the Church assigned the right credits to the modern and revolutionary figure of Saint Catherine of Siena, until the canonization, happened in the year 1461, by Pope Pio II.

Then, before World War II she became Patron Saint, Pope Paolo VI proclaimed her Doctor of the Church in 1970, and 1st October 1999 Pope Giovanni Paolo II declared her Patron Saint of Europe.

The picture above is a pictorial reproduction by Silvia Salvadori, this is her official website: www.bottegadartetoscana.it

Tags: Santa Caterina, siena history