Catherine de Sienne
1347-1380 14th century Feast day: April 29
The audacity of speaking truth (to the powerful and to God) because love demands it.
Who was Catherine de Sienne?
Twenty-third child of a Siena dyer, a Dominican tertiary who remained a laywoman, with no formal schooling. She nursed plague victims, dictated a mystical treatise and nearly four hundred letters (to popes and prisoners alike) and threw her whole weight behind bringing the pope back from Avignon to Rome. She died at 33, a Doctor of the Church.
In their own words
You, eternal Trinity, are a deep sea: the more I enter you, the more I find, and the more I find, the more I seek you.
You are a fire always burning yet never consumed.
If you are what you ought to be, you will set all Italy ablaze.
Build yourself an inner cell, which you need never leave.