Saint Angela Merici

With gentleness, good sense and a mother’s love, she started a quiet revolution: she raised up the dignity of women and made the education of families the foundation for rebuilding the moral life of society.

Not long afterwards her father and mother both died. Orphaned in her teens, Angela and her younger brother were taken in by a wealthy uncle in the nearby town of Salò.

In her uncle’s comfortable house Angela turned her back on a life of empty parties. She asked to join the Franciscan Third Order so that she could live in poverty, wearing coarse cloth and fasting.

That vision did not erase all of Angela’s grief for her sister, but it turned that grief into a seed. Many years later, looking back, she understood that her tears for the sister who had died without the last sacraments had quietly planted a longing in her: that no soul should ever again have to leave this world so alone, without God.

Angela gathered them in her own home, taught them their letters one by one, taught them to sew and patiently told them about the love of God.

She had no curriculum and no textbook, only a heart that could see that these country girls, left to themselves, would grow up without ever knowing they were children of God, worthy of respect and love. Every letter she wrote on her plain wooden board carried a silent message: you deserve to learn, even though you were born poor.

In 1516, recognizing her gifts and her kindness, the superiors of the Franciscan Third Order sent Angela to the city of Brescia to comfort a noble family who had just lost their beloved children. Brescia had just been ravaged by war, and Angela decided to stay there.

She rented a small, cramped room near the church of Saint Afra, an old church rebuilt in 1462 on the foundations of an abandoned Benedictine monastery, where an early bishop of Brescia had been buried in the crypt centuries before. Her simple room soon became a peaceful meeting place for every class of people. Wealthy nobles came to ask her advice in settling quarrels; scholars came to talk about the word of God; and above all, poor women and young women who had gone astray came to be welcomed with a gentle mother’s generosity.

They went on living with their families and earning their living in the world, but gave their hearts entirely to Christ by a promise of virginity. They were leaven and salt in society, teaching poor children, caring for the sick, visiting prisoners and showing what a pure, loving life looks like in the middle of the world.

In the “Counsels” and “Testament” she left her daughters, Mother Angela wrote words full of motherly love:

“I beg you to remember that you must treat others with gentle mercy and wise kindness, and never with harshness or force... Make people love you rather than fear you... Live in close unity with one another, and if something needs to be changed to suit the circumstances of the times, have the courage to do it after praying and taking careful counsel!”

Pope Clement XIII beatified her in 1768, and on May 24, 1807, Pope Pius VII solemnly canonized Angela Merici. The Church celebrates her on January 27 each year.

After her death, in response to the reforms of the Council of Trent, the Ursulines became an enclosed order devoted to education. They spread throughout the world and were among the first orders to build schools for girls, in Europe, North America and on every continent.