Meanwhile, having celebrated Earth Day last Sunday, 22nd April (did you sign the plastic petition and check your global footprint??), tomorrow, 29th April is the feast day of Catherine of Sienna. Born Caterina Benincasa in 1347, she was the 23rd of 25 children that her mother bore: they didn't all survive, including Caterina's own twin. After the death of her sister Bonaventura in childbirth, Caterina, then aged 16, refused to marry her widower brother-in-law, and chose instead to join the Dominican Order of Penance (later known as the Dominican Third Order), an organisation of religious lay people who lived at home, wore distinctive dress and worked with poor and sick people - of whom there were many, this being the era of the Black Death, which wiped out a third of the population of Europe.
Three years later Caterina experienced a vision of Jesus putting a ring on her finger, which she later described as a 'spiritual marriage' to Christ. While continuing her charitable work, Caterina became concerned by the corruption within the church, and, like many others, blamed this on the moving of the Papal court from Rome to Avignon, French politics and lifestyle being believed to be decadent and corrupt......... No comment!
So, from 1374 onwards, Caterina, and a group of those who followed her lead, began travelling throughout northern and central Italy, advocating clerical reform within the church, repentance, and renewal through total love for God. She also sent a series of letters to Pope Gregory XI, exhorting him to return to Rome, and she was even granted an audience with him in 1377 in Avignon. Caterina also wrote a major treatise about love for God, neighbour, and self, entitled 'The Dialogue of Divine Providence'.
She died at the age of 33, is revered for her writings, her political boldness, and her spirituality, and was proclaimed the first woman 'doctor of the church' in 1970 by Pope Paul VI. Her theology and spiritual experience are generally described as 'mystical'.
