Saint Frances of Rome

Lives of the Saints

by Alban Butler, Benziger Bros. edition

[1894]

March 9.—ST. FRANCES OF ROME.

FRANCES was born at Rome in 1384. Her parents were, of high rank. They overruled her desire to become a nun, and at twelve years of age married her to Rorenzo Ponziano, a Roman noble. During the forty years of their married life they never had a disagreement. While spending her days in retirement and prayer, she attended promptly to every household duty, saying, “A married woman must leave God at the altar to find Him in her domestic cares;” and she once found the verse of a psalm in which she had been four times thus interrupted completed for her in letters of gold.

Her ordinary food was dry bread. Secretly she would exchange with beggars good food for their hard crusts; her drink was water, and her cup a human skull. During the invasion of Rome, in 1413, Ponziano was banished, his estates confiscated, his house destroyed, and his eldest son taken as a hostage. Frances saw in these losses only the finger of God, and blessed His holy name.

When peace was restored Ponziano recovered his estate, and Frances founded the Oblates. After her husband’s death, barefoot and with a cord about her neck she begged admission to the community, and was soon elected Superioress.

She lived always in the presence of God, and amongst many visions was given constant sight of her angel guardian, who shed such brightness around him that the Saint could read her midnight Office by this light alone.

He shielded her in the hour of temptation, and directed her in every good act. But when she was betrayed into some defect, he faded from her sight; and when some light words were spoken before her, he covered his face in shame.

She died on the day she had foretold, March 9, 1440.

Reflection.—God has appointed an angel to guard each one of us, to whose warnings we are bound to attend. Let us listen to his voice here, and we shall see him hereafter when he leads us before the throne of God.

Lenten Weekday Saint Frances of Rome, Religious Jer 17:5-10/Lk 16:19-31 (233).

https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/saints/frances-of-rome-567
CATHOLICISM SAINTS ST. FRANCES OF ROME

*Saint Francesca Romana – Poussin.

This is a painting of St. Frances of Rome, holding broken arrows and appearing to a holy woman to announce the end of the plague. In the background, an angel with a sword, symbolizing the plague, inflicts death on the people. Artwork by N. Poussin.

**Frances was born in 1384 in Rome to a wealthy and aristocratic couple, Paolo Bussa and Iacobella dei Roffredeschi, in the up-and-coming district of Parione and christened in the nearby Church of St. Agnes on the famed Piazza Navona. When she was eleven years old, she wanted to be a nun, but, at about the age of twelve, her parents forced her to marry Lorenzo Ponziani, commander of the papal troops of Rome and member of an extremely wealthy family. Although the marriage had been arranged, it was a happy one, lasting for forty years.

On August 15, 1425, the feast of the Assumption of Mary, she founded the Olivetan Oblates of Mary, a confraternity of pious women, under the authority of the Olivetan monks of the Abbey of Santa Maria Nova in Rome but neither cloistered nor bound by formal vows, so they could follow her pattern of combining a life of prayer with answering the needs of their society.

In March 1433, she founded a monastery at Tor de’ Specchi, near the Campidoglio, to allow for a common life by those members of the confraternity who felt so-called. This monastery remains the only house of the Institute. That July 4, they received the approval of Pope Eugene IV as a religious congregation of oblates with private religious vows. The community later became known simply as the Oblates of St. Frances of Rome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_of_Rome

Frances herself remained in her own home, nursing her husband for the last seven years of his life from wounds he had received in battle. When he died in 1436, she moved into the monastery and became the superior. She died in 1440 and was buried in Santa Maria Nova.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Baciccio-Saint_Francesca_Romana_Giving_Alms.jpg

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.  

1 Jn 1:7