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It is late at night, almost seven hundred years ago, in the lovely central Italian region of Tuscany. Inside a small room, a young woman is speaking animatedly about God.
Her hands fly back and forth, flickering in the candlelight. Opposite her, struggling to listen but barely able to remain awake, sits her confessor—a trained theologian and a saintly man.
Finally the young woman loses patience. “Fr. Raymond, have you no interest in God? Would you neglect your soul just to get a little sleep?”
No wonder the priest is trying not to doze off! The frank, dynamic speaker is Catherine of Siena, a mystic whose insights are treasured by the church. So valuable are Catherine’s teachings and writings, in fact, that Pope Paul VI declared her, along with St. Teresa of Avila, a Doctor of the Church in 1970. They were the first women to join this group of thirty saints, which includes such prominent figures as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.
Most of the Doctors were bishops or scholars…
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