Anna Maria Boll Bachmann, who was born in Bavaria, immigrated to the United States and settled in Philadelphia. In 1851, when her husband Anthony was killed in an accident in a stone quarry, she found herself a widow with three young children and a fourth on the way. To support herself, she and her sister opened a small hostel for immigrant women. In time, they conceived the idea of joining a religious community. Their confessor, a Redemptorist priest, encouraged them in the direction of the Third Order Franciscans and wrote to Bishop John Neumann, then in Rome, on their behalf. This overture was well timed. Bishop Neumann had been seeking help from the pope in securing German Dominican sisters to help in his diocese. But the pope had encouraged him instead to start a local Franciscan community. Thus, on his return, he provided instruction to Anna, her sister, and another woman who had joined them, and accepted them into religious life. In 1855, the Franciscan Sisters of Philadelphia was established, with Anna, now Mother Mary Francis, as superior.
The sisters supported themselves by sewing and alms, while initially caring for immigrant women. Eventually, Bishop Neumann steered them into wider ministries: a school, an orphanage, and even a hospital for the sick poor. The latter undertaking followed their work in caring for the poor during an outbreak of smallpox, when no other hospital in the city would accept patients with contagious diseases.
Mother Mary Francis died of tuberculosis on June 30, 1863.
Ramon Lull was born in Majorca in 1232, the son of a Catalan military chief. His early life was spent in the frivolity of court life. At the age of thirty, however, prompted by a recurrent vision of Jesus on the cross, he underwent a dramatic and total conversion. Afterward, he gave up all his property to his family and the poor and determined to devote his life to God’s cause. In particular, he felt called to bring the Gospel to the Muslims – a vocation, he was sure, that would cost him his life.
He prepared for this mission with zeal. For over a decade he pursued studies in Latin and Arabic and immersed himself – to a remarkable degree – in the literature of Muslim religion and philosophy. He believed that a missionary must be fully knowledgeable about the beliefs of those he wished to convert.
At this point, the primary locus of Christian-Muslim encounter had been the battlefields of the Crusades. To most Christians of Lull’s day, the Muslims were irredeemable heretics whose slaughter brought glory to God. The Crusades were not even ostensibly concerned with the conversion of Muslims; their object was simply to drive the ‘infidels’ from the Holy Land, a sacred cause that justified any means. (A bright exception was St. Francis of Assisi.)
At sixty, Lull himself became a Franciscan tertiary. His vision never advanced so far as to reject all recourse to force in the service of the Gospel. But in his respect for the intelligence and good faith of non-Christians and his belief in the need to encounter them on their own terms he introduced a remarkably progressive path for this time.
Lull travelled throughout Europe lobbying and seeking sponsors for his projects, which included a series of missionary colleges where the best preachers of the world could study the languages and cultures of the non-Christians world. Such plans came to naught. He also wrote several hundred major works, as well as mystical poetry and allegorical romances about the Christian life. A Christian troubadour in the Franciscan mold, he has been called “the Catalan Dante.”
Lull made three trips to North Africa. On the first and second occasions, he was quickly arrested and deported. However, on his third trip in Tunisia he was accosted by a mob on June 29, 1316, and stoned to death. He had foreseen this fate from the outset of his vocation. As he wrote, “Missionaries will convert the world by preaching, but also through the shedding of tears and blood and with great labor, and through a bitter death.”
St. Jutta was born in Thuringia, in Germany. At the age of fifteen, she married a nobleman, with whom she enjoyed a happy marriage. Inspired by the example of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, a Thuringian princess who had renounced her royal station to embrace as a Franciscan tertiary, Jutta attempted to conform her life, and that of her family, to the principles of the Gospel: charity, service and a spirit of poverty.
While on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Jutta’s husband died, leaving her to raise their children alone. When, over time, each one of them entered religious life, she was free to pursue her heart’s desire. After giving away all her property to the poor, she donned a simple dress and became a wandering pilgrim. Though many were moved by her piety and the austerity she had exchanged for her precious privilege, others greeted her conduct with derision.
Jutta liked to say there were three things that brought one nearer to God: painful illness, exile from home and voluntary poverty. She experienced all three. Eventually she made her way to a distant corner of Prussia, where she became a Third Order Franciscan and took up residence as a solitary hermit. Many visitors found a path to her home, whether seeking nursing care, consolation in their troubles, or spiritual counsel.
She died at the age of sixty and was later embraced as a patroness of Prussia.
Thomas More was one of the most highly respected men of his time. A successful barrister, an honest judge, a famous scholar, he rose to the highest status of any commoner in England, appointed by Henry VIII to the office of lord chancellor.
More had little ambition for worldly success. As he later wrote, “Reputation, honor, fame, what is all that but a breath of air from another person’s mouth no sooner spoken but gone? Thus whoever finds his delight in them is feeding on wind.” More was a man of deep and demanding faith. In his youth he had considered a monastic vocation before discerning instead that he was called to serve God in the world. While outwardly he enjoyed a life of comfort, in the privacy of his spiritual life he wore a hair shirt, attended daily Mass, and practiced a strict discipline of prayer. He is believed to have become a Third Order Franciscan (and indeed his name is listed in the calendar of Franciscan saints).
More considered himself a loyal friend and servant of the king. But circumstances were to evolve to the point that Henry required a more absolute loyalty than More could offer. For some years Henry had been moving toward a fateful collision with the authority of the Catholic Church. The issue was his desire to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn. When the pope blocked his way, Henry divorced Catherine, married Anne, and required that all subjects repudiate “any foreign authority, prince or potentate.” Rather than oppose the king, More resigned his position, but when he refused to take an oath he was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London. The miseries of prison life, including cold, hunger and vermin were compounded by pressure from his family. When his wife tried to coax him to alter his course, he responded, “My good woman, you are no good at doing business. Do you really want me to exchange eternity for twenty years?”
After fifteen months, More was put on trial and convicted on the basis of perjured testimony. Now, with his fate settled, he at last broke his silence. He denied that Parliament had the authority to set up a temporal lord as head of the Church. He prayed, “that though your lordships have now here on earth been judges of my condemnation, we may yet hereafter in heaven merrily all meet together to everlasting salvation.”
On the day of his execution on July 6, 1535, he displayed his characteristic wit, asking for the executioner’s help in ascending the scaffold: “As for my coming down, let me shift for myself.” Addressing the gathered crowd, he spoke: “I die in and for the faith of the holy Catholic Church. Pray for me in this world, and I shall pray for you in that world. Pray for the king that it please God to send him good counselors. I die as the king’s true servant, but God’s first.”
Thomas More was canonized in 1935. In 2000, he was declared “the heavenly patron of statemen and politicians.”
Blessed Michelina was born in the town of Pesaro, on the east coast of Italy. At twelve she married a wealthy member of the powerful Malatesta family and went on to enjoy a rich and frivolous social life. By twenty, however, she found herself a widow with a young son. He became the center of her life. A Franciscan tertiary named Syriaca, whom she had befriended, urged her to put aside worldly occupations and devote herself to God, but Michelina resisted this counsel. When her son subsequently fell ill and died, however, she put on the habit of a Franciscan tertiary, gave away all her possessions to the poor, and took to begging alms from door to door.
Her sudden embrace of voluntary poverty did not inspire a corresponding charity on the part of her neighbors. Her family, thinking her mad, had her confined. In time, however, they were won over by her evident sincerity, and she was free to dedicate herself to works of mercy, especially care for the sick. In imitation of St. Francis, she had a special dedication to lepers, and there were stories of her effecting cures by the power of her kiss. Toward the end of her life, she went on pilgrimage to Rome, where she received a mystical share in the sufferings of Christ. She died on June 19, 1356. She was beatified in 1737.
