Wednesday after the Fourth Sunday of Easter (Good Shepherd)

Catherine Benincasa was born on March 25, 1347, in Siena, the daughter of a wool dyer and one of twenty-five children. From childhood, she reported mystical experiences and visions. Around age seven, she experienced a vision of Christ and resolved to dedicate herself to contemplative life. Against her family's wishes for marriage, she joined the Dominican Third Order (Tertiary Sisters of Penance) at age sixteen, committing to celibacy, prayer, and service. She lived as a tertiary in her father's house, not in a convent, observing strict ascetical practices (rather extreme fasting and extended vigils).

Beginning in 1370, she engaged in active mission work, serving plague victims in Siena's hospitals and prison, gaining a reputation for spiritual counsel and miraculous healings. During this period, she wrote 383 surviving letters to popes, cardinals, nobles, religious leaders, and spiritual seekers, addressing both personal spiritual direction and major ecclesiastical issues. Her letters are remarkable for their spiritual intensity, political insight, and unflinching criticism of church corruption. Between 1377 and 1378, she dictated or wrote her major theological work, *The Dialogue* (*Il Libro della Divina Dottrina*), a mystical dialogue between the Soul and God addressing sin, redemption, discretion, virtue, and the Christian life. One of the famous images within the book is Jesus as a bridge between heaven an earth through His wounds condescending to earth, "out of mercy you have washed us in his Blood, out of mercy you have wished to converse with creatures. O crazed with love! It did not suffice for you to take flesh, but you also wished to die!... O mercy! My heart drowns in thinking of you: for no matter where I turn to think, I find only mercy" (chapter 30).

In 1376, at age twenty-nine Catherine turned much of her attention toward political activism, particularly lending her voice to restoring the Papacy to Rome from its political exile in Avignon, France. 71 years earlier, King Phillip IV of France and Boniface VIII struggled over the control of the French clergy and church revenue. Philip sought to control both, and Boniface issued *Unam Sanctam* in 1302, asserting that submission to the pope was necessary for salvation in response, a definitive "no" under threat of damnation. In response, Philip's soldiers assaulted Boniface VIII in 1303, and Boniface died from the resulting trauma. Boniface died a few weeks later, and in that climate of political violence, his successor, Clement V, was enthroned in Lyon, France and eventually settled the court in Avignon.

Into this drama of the 14th century, Catherine traveled to Avignon to attempt to help unravel the political machinations that had brought the Papacy to Avignon, where Pope Gregory XI was then pope. She urged him to return to Rome, her arguments were less political and framed theologically and morally. She urged Gregory to keep a vow he purportedly made to return the papacy to Rome, argued for Rome as the designed place for Peter's chair, insistence on the Pope leading clerical reform in Rome itself, and that cowardice in the face of political pressure was a sin. She expressed surprisingly directly that she saw Gregory as failing through fear of men rather than his fear of God, essentially accusing him of spiritual effeminacy when she desires to see him become a "manly man, free from any fear or fleshly love toward yourself, or toward any creature related to you in the flesh." If he would not exercise his authority, she suggested that he should resign saying, "you should use your virtue and power: and if you are not willing to use it, it would be better for you to resign what you have assumed; more honor to God and health to your soul would it be." Pope Benedict XVI [described her](https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20101124.html) as a woman who "impels us to walk courageously toward holiness to be ever more fully disciples of the Lord."

Her spiritual authority, boldness, and moral conviction—unusual for anyone, and in that era particularly unusual for a woman without formal theological training—impressed the pope, and Gregory XI departed Avignon in late 1376. He arrived in Rome in January 1377. Catherine's intervention and encouragement was celebrated as a major spiritual and political achievement in helping end the politically motivated "Babylonian Captivity of the Church" in Southern France. However, after Gregory's untimely death in March 1378, rival papal claimants arose creating a new crisis. Catherine supported Urban VI, the Roman pope, against the Avignon anti-popes who desired to return the seat of the papal court to Avignon. She spent her final years writing letters and negotiating on behalf of the unified papacy. She died on April 29, 1380, in Rome, aged thirty-three, reportedly from extreme ascetical exhaustion. Catherine was canonized by Pope Pius II on June 29, 1461, and declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Paul VI alongside Saint Theresa of Avila on October 4, 1970—the first women to receive this honor.

Catherine is celebrated in tradition for her mystical marriage to Christ, a mystical experience she recounted during her life. She also reported feeling the wounds of invisible stigmata during life, wounds that became visible after her death. She adopted several ascetical practices— reportedly consuming only the Eucharist and water, for extended periods. Raymond of Capua was her confessor and spiritual director. After her death, he wrote about her emphasizing her mystical intimacy with Christ and His role as a bridge between earth and heaven. The Western tradition sees in her a model of contemplative action: her deep prayer life informed and motivated her medical mercy ministry and prolific political engagement. She is revered as a reformer who, though she never held ecclesiastical office, exercised spiritual authority first through prayer, then through the force of her sanctity, clarity of conscience, and persistent communication even to the rebuke and encouragement of popes. Her influential letters survive to this day, displaying first hand her courageous and extraordinarily candid messages to many influential figures of her day. Traditionally she bore invisible stigmata in her body, bearing Jesus' wounds from the cross in her own body. The stigmata tradition was common in medieval stories about saints, (hers were a bit unique and symbolic of her humility, invisible during life, only manifesting after death) reflecting medieval mystical theology wherein the soul invisibly bears Christ's wounds spiritually.