Saint Angela of Foligno

Angela was born in Foligno in 1248, and her youth, according to the sources that tell her story, was “wild, adulterous and sacrilegious.” We’re not saying it for color: it’s the judgment that has come down to us along with her story, and it already says something about the kind of person she was. Her conversion came around 1285, with a confession to the bishop’s chaplain. Then life took everything from her in a short time: her husband, her children and her mother all died. Left alone, in 1291 she entered the Franciscan Third Order, and the other half of her story began. She meditated above all on the Passion, and she went as far as gestures that still shock people today: drinking the water used to wash the feet or the sores of the sick, especially lepers. It wasn’t for show; it was the way she had understood Francis. Around her gathered a small circle of spiritual children — among them Ubertino of Casale — and a relative, whom tradition calls Brother Arnaldo, began to write down what she confided to him. The result was the Liber, the Memorial, approved by Cardinal Giacomo Colonna before 1297. It’s because of those pages that today she is called Magistra Theologorum, teacher of theologians. She died on January 4, 1309; she was beatified in 1693 and canonized by Pope Francis in 2013. She rests in Foligno, in the Church of San Francesco. A moving detail: she wasn’t buried in a tomb of her own, but in the common grave of the Franciscan tertiaries. It may have been humility, or it may be that while she was alive no one had yet taken her for a saint. The two things, in the end, are alike. If your name is Angela, today is your name day, along with every Angelina and Angelica.