Saint Angela of Foligno

She was born at Foligno, in Umbria, in 1248, to a rich family; Benedict XVI says about 1248, and Vatican News gives the day as January 4. ¹²³ Her father died early, and Benedict XVI says her mother brought her up "in a somewhat superficial manner." ²³ She was introduced young into the worldly circles of the town, and at twenty married a man by whom she had children. ² Vatican News calls him a notable local man. ³

None of the sources softens what came next. Paschal Robinson, writing in the Catholic Encyclopedia in 1907, says that she loved the world and its pleasures and, forgetful of her duties as wife and mother, led a disorderly life. ¹ Franciscan Media says she was immersed in the quest for wealth and social position. ⁴ Benedict XVI adds a detail that sharpens it: she was contemptuous of the penitents of her day, the people who sold their possessions to follow Christ in prayer, fasting and charity. ²

Her conversion did not start with love. Benedict XVI lists what shook her: the violent earthquake of 1279, a hurricane, and the long war against Perugia with its harsh consequences, after which, little by little, she became aware of her sins. ²³ He describes the starting point of her whole journey in her own phrase, the "great fear of hell". ²

Vatican News says that at first shame kept her from making a complete confession, and that she remained in torment. ³ In 1285, Benedict XVI says, she called on Saint Francis, who appeared to her in a vision and advised her to make a good general confession, and she made it to a friar at San Feliciano. ² Vatican News dates the beginning of her conversion to her thirty-seventh year; Franciscan Media says she was around forty. ³⁴

Then, in the space of a few months, her mother died, then her husband, then all of her children. ²³ Franciscan Media places the deaths shortly after her conversion; the Roman Martyrology mentions only that her husband and children died before she gave herself wholly to God. ⁴⁵ Benedict XVI describes it in a phrase that is hard to read: she "was released from any emotional ties." ²

She sold her possessions and gave the proceeds to the poor. ²³ Vatican News says she made a pilgrimage to Assisi, and in 1291 she entered the Third Order of Saint Francis. ²³ Franciscan Media describes her days as divided between meditating on the crucified Christ and serving the poor of Foligno, nursing them and begging on their behalf. ⁴ Vatican News says she cared for lepers and all the sick with great tenderness. ³

She did not write it herself. Robinson says the Book of Visions and Instructions, in seventy chapters, was taken down from her dictation by her Franciscan confessor, Father Arnold of Foligno. ¹ Vatican News calls the friar Arnaldo, a fellow townsman and relative of hers, and his text the Memorial, which divides her experience into thirty steps. ³ Benedict XVI notes that the confessor tried to sort what she told him into stages, without ever managing to put it entirely in order, partly because of what he called "her great and wonderful reserve concerning the divine gifts". ²

She was the first to admit that words failed. "I truly heard these words," she said after one ecstasy, "but it is in no way possible for me to know or tell of what I saw and understood". ² To a spiritual son she wrote: "My son, if you were to see my heart you would be absolutely obliged to do everything God wants, because my heart is God's heart and God's heart is mine". ²

What Benedict XVI drew out of the book was its center, the crucified Christ. Of the early stages she said: "The soul feels shame and bitterness and does not yet feel love but suffering". ² What saved her, in the end, Benedict XVI says, was not her union with God or her possession of the truth but, in her words, "his crucifixion for me". ² In one of her instructions she put it plainly: "The more perfectly and purely we see, the more perfectly and purely we love". ² And on prayer she said: "The more you pray, the more illumined you will be". ²

The reputation of her holiness, Robinson says, gathered around her a number of Tertiaries, men and women, who tried under her direction to grow in holiness, and she later established a community of sisters at Foligno who took the three vows of religion without enclosure, so that they could give their time to works of charity. ¹ Franciscan Media says simply that other women joined her in a religious community. ⁴ Vatican News adds that she was caught up in the controversies then dividing the Franciscan order. ³

Robinson records that the Jesuit Maximilian Sandaeus called her the "Mistress of Theologians", whose whole doctrine was drawn from the Book of Life, Jesus Christ. ¹ Franciscan Media renders the title "Teacher of Theologians", and Vatican News says she was known by it already in her lifetime, as Magistra Theologorum. ³⁴

She died at Foligno on January 4, 1309, surrounded by her spiritual children, and was buried in the church of Saint Francis there. ¹²³ Robinson says that numerous miracles were worked at her tomb and that Pope Innocent XII approved the veneration that had been paid to her from time immemorial. ¹ Franciscan Media dates her beatification to 1693. ⁴

Her canonization came more than three centuries later, and by an unusual route. ⁴⁶ On October 9, 2013, Pope Francis accepted a proposal from Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for Saints' Causes, declaring her a saint at once without the usual process and without formally recognizing a second miracle; the Vatican announced it on October 11. ⁶ Vatican News names the procedure as an "equipollent" canonization, and says that people called her a saint, unofficially, even before she died. ³

None of the sources consulted for this page names a patronage for Saint Angela, so none is given here. ¹³⁴ Vatican News sees in her one of the models of the feminine genius in the Church. ³

Saint Angela's feast is kept on January 4, the day she died: Vatican News gives it, and the Roman Martyrology enters her on that day at Foligno. ³⁵ Franciscan Media gives a different date for her liturgical feast, January 7, and in 1907 Robinson wrote that her feast was kept in the Franciscan Order on March 30. ¹⁴

She began in fear, and the sources do not tidy that up. Benedict XVI called hers, at the start, a faith "still poor in charity," moved more by the dread of hell than by love of God. ² It was a real beginning all the same.

Her family died in the middle of her conversion. ²³ Nothing on this page turns that into a lesson. What she is recorded as saying came later, and was about Christ: that she could not tell whether her own freedom from sin was greater, or "his crucifixion for me". ²

She also kept her past. Benedict XVI noted that even after a good confession she felt herself forgiven and still stricken, free and still conditioned by what she had done. ² For anyone who has confessed and not felt new, it is worth knowing that one of the great mystics felt the same.

Benedict XVI ended his audience by saying that God has thousands of ways of making himself present in a soul, and that Angela asks us to be attentive to them. ² Hers began with an earthquake and a war. ²