We should not be surprised that the saints speak to us through the ages, how they responded in their own era – always with its own troubles and crises – offering us an example for how we should act in our own. As well, they intercede for us, that we, like them, may fulfill God’s holy and perfect will.
Such was Saint Frances of Rome (1384 – 1440). Born into privilege in 1384 into a Europe ravaged by the Black Death, which peaked from 1347 to 1351, killing a third of the population. These were tumultuous times, with Christendom sundered by the ‘Great Western Schism’, which had begun in 1378, eventually with three rival claimants to the papacy, none of them providing a particularly edifying example.
Frances did not enter into the controversy – she simply wanted to give her life to God, but was ordered at the age of twelve or thirteen to marry, as per custom back then. She was given to the wealthy Lorenzo di Ponziani, the commander of the papal troops. At first resistant, Frances eventually saw the marriage as God’s will, even if it was against her own proclivities and desires. The union proved a happy one for its four decades, and the saint did much to sanctify her husband and children. Frances’ liberal almsgiving and care for the poor did cause some consternation, but the continuous and miraculous replenishing of the supplies alleviated the anxieties of the Ponziani clan.
Rome was in ruin during her life. This was before the magnificent building boom of the renaissance in the next century – wolves wandered the deserted streets, and the sick, suffering from the recurrent plagues and pestilences, were often left to fend for themselves. Her care for them was renowned, even taking them into her own house. A contemporary wrote of Frances:
Many different diseases were rampant in Rome. Fatal diseases and plagues were everywhere, but the saint ignored the risk of contagion and displayed the deepest kindness towards the poor and the needy. Her empathy would first bring them to atone for their sins. Then she would help them by her eager care, and urge them lovingly to accept their trials, however difficult, from the hand of God. She would encourage them to endure their sufferings for love of Christ, since he had previously endured so much for them.
A lesson for our own time, and one which I hope we have learned from the past few years. Some of still reel from the fanatic obsession with ‘staying safe’, leaving the elderly and sick abandoned, bereft of friends, family and, alas, even the sacraments, for which there will be a reckoning. The saints always think of life and death sub specie aeternitatis, the greatest ‘evil’ was to die without charity after a self-absorbed life.
Frances, always solicitous, raised her children well, and cared for her husband until his death, after he was invalided in a battle. Even before that, they had agreed to practice continence. Frances’ charity and prayer life deepened immeasurably, and she was given many mystical graces: visions of saints, purgatory, hell, foretelling both the end of the schism and her own death. She could even see her own guardian angel, who would fade from view when she tended just a little towards sin.
But all these remarkable charisms were not what made her holy; rather, she was, as her biography attests, remarkable in her patience, kindness, humility and obedience. On the Solemnity of the Assumption, in 1425, Frances founded a confraternity of pious women, the Olivetan Oblates of Mary, and in 1443, a monastery of pious sisters at Tor de Specchi, eventually called the Oblates of Saint Frances of Rome. That monastery still continues to this day, its convent in the middle of Rome, with six sisters, ministering to the sick. The Sisters of the Tor de Specchi have the special privilege of making a wax ‘Agnus Dei’, which the Pope gives to those who have been of ‘notable service to the Church’ at Easter.
Saint Frances died on this day in 1440, after a life given to God in an age filled with scandals and bad examples, not much unlike our own. Her body was found incorrupt upon exhumation a few months after her death, and she was canonized on May 9th, 1608, by Pope Paul V. Pope Pius IX declared her the patron saint of automobile drivers in 1925 when those vehicles were becoming popular, since her guardian angel used to light her way through the dark streets of Rome. Just so we might invoke her before we make our own journeys, not least with family and loved ones.
A living lesson for our times, as all the saints are, really.
Saint Frances of Rome, ora pro nobis! +