Saint of the Week Angela Merici 1470–1540 Feast Day—January 27 By age 26, Angela had lost most of her wealthy Italian family to death. As a Franciscan tertiary, she performed good works and taught catechism to girls in her home in Desenzano del Garda. Two visions “In the Renaissance, Angela Merici pre- inspired her to found a congregation ded- sented a path of holiness also to those icated to the religious training of young who were living in a secular environment.” women; she began this mission with a —Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus, school in Brescia in northern Italy. Earlier January 29, 2006 she had endured an episode of blindness while on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and had rejected a papal request to run all “St. Angela asked every Ursuline to be a charities in Rome. In 1535, she founded ‘true and unsullied Virgin and Bride of the the Ursulines and served as superior until Son of God’ (Introductory Letter to the Rule her death. This mystic, a patron of cat- of St Angela Merici): an ideal that requires echists, reportedly was fascinated from a ceaseless quest of holiness. to be able childhood by the legend of St. Ursula, an to respond to these expectations, in the first early virgin-martyr. place, you must strive for holiness with all your might, keeping in constant contact with Christ in prayer and contemplation.” —St. John Paull II, Message, July 12, 2002 Copyright ©2017 Catholic News Service–United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Washington, DC. All rights reserved. USCCB Quotes from Saint John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, copyright © 2002, 2006, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Vatican City State. All rights reserved. Used with permission. Image: CNS..