It
must have been an oversight. If there was no role for women in the
Church, no one told Caterina Benincasa. The 23rd of 25 children,
Caterina grew up in the Tuscan city of Siena, in a home from which she
could see a church simple in design but
grand in size: Saint Dominic’s, which stood atop a hill not far from her
family home. Illiterate but open to the promptings of the Holy Spirit,
Caterina dictated letters to some of the most powerful figures of the
mid-fourteenth century. Her letters were strong in tone, yet
unassuming. Perhaps because her words were in sync with the loving will
of God, and she herself deeply in touch with God though prayer and
mystical union, her letters changed the minds and hearts of their
recipients, whether Duke or Pope. A Doctor of the Church and co-patron
of Italy with Francis of Assisi, Saint Catherine of Siena did not wait
for an invitation to an office of power to have a profound effect on the
life of the Church. Just tell the Pope who received her rebuke while
in exile in Avignon after the fall of Rome to the barbarian tribes, that
women have no voice in the Church. She scolded him for not being in
Rome, where the Apostles Peter and Paul built the foundations of the
Church. Today one can visit the empty papal compound in Avignon, but to
see the successor of Peter, you’ll have go to Rome.
Msgr. William J. King
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