St Catherine of Siena is The Seraphic Virgin, Mystic of the Incarnate Word, and Mystic of the Mystical Body of Christ. She is a Doctor of Unity for the church because of her wise and tremendous feat in advising the Pope to return to Rome. Her courage, holiness and cooperation with God's spirit is a marvelous prototype hardly matched in church history. She was not a nun but certainly belonged and dedicated to the Dominicans as a papal counselor, in a lay apostolic role, and a stigmatist. Both, the secular and religious, watched and admired her virtue carefully. The Holy Father eagerly sought her advice, and the pope listened to her attentively. Through her efforts the papacy retuned to Rome after almost a century in France.
What Catherine did for the church is comparable to the Second Vatican Council. Can anyone imagine the church not in Rome? Due to many problems that the church experienced both within and without, the headquarters of the Papacy resided in another country. Catherine was led by God to help correct this separation as a Papal Advisor.
She was intelligent, cheerful and intensely prayerful. From her prayer life developed a public apostolate. Catherine's spiritual testimony is found in the Dialogue contained as a link on this website below. She worked tirelessly for the poor, the church, and for peace between Florence and the Pope. |