St. Catherine of Siena Parish

Did You Know that on April 30, 1960, St. Catherine of Siena's Parish celebrated our first Mass on the Cornell campus? Did you know that on March 4, 1962, the first Mass was celebrated in our church? This spring, St. Catherine's will begin a 2-year celebration of our 50th Anniversary. On April 25, 2010 we will celebrate our Anniversary Mass with Bishop Clark. A concluding Mass will take place on April 29, 2012 (the feast day of St Catherine of Siena). In between, we will celebrate and rejoice together in many other ways. In preparation for the celebrations, Michael Twomey, a member of our Adult Faith Enrichment Committee, will write for the bulletin a "Did You Know?" weekly question and answer about St. Catherine of Siena. Michael will help us learn more about our patron saint.

Did You Know that Catherine loved to be sent on errands for her mother? But one day when her mother sent her to church with candles and an offering, Catherine stayed to hear a Mass, and so when she arrived home, her mother greeted her with a sarcastic proverbial rebuke: "Cursed be the evil tongues that said you would never come back." Catherine replied: "Dear Mother, if I have done wrong or more than you meant me to, beat me so that I remember to behave better another time. That is just. But I beg you not to let your tongue curse anyone, good or evil, for my sake. It is unseemly at your age, and it hurts my heart." (5/9/10)

Did You Know that as Catherine began to practice her spiritual disciplines, even as a child, she became more calm and serene? Already obedient, the child who once because of her merriment had been called Euphrosyne was not known for her patience. She later perceptively called patience "the marrow of piety." (5/2/10)

Did You Know when our patron St. Catherine lived, when she was canonized, and what is her feast day? Catherine was born in 1347 (date unknown) in Siena, Italy, the 22nd child born to Jacopo and Lapa Benincasa (whose name means 'well housed'), in a building that still stands today. She died in Rome in 1380 and was canonized in 1461; her feast day is the day of her death, April 29th. Catherine was named a Doctor of the Church in 1970. (1/3/10)

Did You Know that Catherine of Siena was her mother's favorite daughter? Catherine had a twin sister, Giovanna, who was sent to a wet nurse; Catherine was the only Benincasa child that Lapa was able to nurse before becoming pregnant again. Lapa's love for her daughter was heightened by the fact that both Giovanna and another daughter born later died in infancy, leaving Catherine the baby of the family. (1/10/10)

Did You Know that Catherine of Siena's birthday is the feast of the Annunciation, March 25? This date is given in the *Legenda,* the first biography of Catherine of Siena, which was compiled partly from recollections by Catherine's mother Lapa Piagenti Benincasa. The author was Raymond of Capua (ca. 1330-1399), Catherine's spiritual advisor and confessor, who was known as the "second founder of the Dominican order" (St. Dominic being the founder). Raymond would have interviewed Lapa when she was already an aged widow, and she was known to be living still when he completed his biography in 1395. (1/17/10)

Did You Know that St Catherine is one of two patron saints of Italy? The other is St. Francis of Assisi. Pope Pius XII named Catherine a patron saint on May 5, 1940. Moreover, Catherine of Siena and Theresa of Avila were the first women to be named doctors of the Church when Pope Paul VI gave them this distinction in 1970. (1/24/10)

Did You Know that in the same year (1461) that he canonized St. Catherine, Pope Pius II began a crusade against the Turkish occupiers of the Balkans? Pius himself led the European army, but he died in Ancona, Italy in 1464. The Turkish empire continued to gain ground in eastern Europe until it was finally halted at the Siege of Vienna in 1683. Meanwhile, Catherine's feast day was not added to the Church's calendar of saints' feasts until 1587. When it was finally added, her feast was April 29th, the day of her death; but in 1628 her feast was moved to April 30th because it conflicted with the feast of Peter of Verona, a 13th century saint. When the calendar of saints was revised in 1969, shortly before Catherine was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church, Catherine's feast was returned to April 29th. The date of St. Peter of Verona's feast was then left up to individual churches to decide. (1/31/10)

Did You Know St. Catherine’s father Jacopo, a wool dyer by trade, was a famously mild-mannered man? According to Catherine’s biographer Raymond of Capua, who got his information about Catherine’s childhood from Catherine’s mother Lapa, once when Jacopo refused to make extortion payments demanded of him by another Sienese, he preferred to suffer slander rather than say a word against the man. When Lapa denounced the man to her husband, Jacopo replied, “Leave him in peace. You will see that God will show him his fault and protect us.” And, Lapa told Raymond, that’s what happened. (2/7/10)

Did You Knowfrom the example of Catherine’s father Giacomo and mother Lapa, the entire family used only the mildest, gentlest speech? Raymond of Capua illustrates the family’s abhorrence of profanity with an anecdote about Catherine’s sister Bonaventura, whose husband’s friends were “sometimes absolutely foul-mouthed.” Hearing their language, Bonaventura lost weight and weakened, telling her husband that if he and his friends “did not stop using these words,” he would “soon see me dead.” He immediately forbade the use of profanity in the house, his friends obeyed him, and Bonaventura recovered. “Thus,” concludes Raymond, “the modesty and decency that were to be found in Giacomo’s house drove license and indecency from the house of his son-in-law Niccolo.” (2/14/10)

Did You Know as a child, Catherine of Siena was so beloved that friends and neighbors would invite the little girl into their homes as a guest, and they even gave her a nickname? Raymond of Capua writes that they invited her “so they could enjoy her wise little sayings and the comfort of her delightful childish gaiety.” So vivacious was the young Catherine that she was dubbed “Euphrosyne,” one of the three Graces, whose name means “mirth.” (2/21/10)

Did You Know Catherine of Siena's first prayer was the Hail Mary? Her biographer Raymond of Capua writes that Catherine learned it when she was five, and whenever she went up and down stairs she was "inspired by heaven" to kneel and recite it at each step. (2/28/10)

Did You Knowin the year after Catherine of Siena’s birth, the first wave of the Black Death (bubonic plague) swept over Italy? According to the Sienese chronicler Agnolo di Tura, “The mortality began in Siena in May (1348)... The victims died almost immediately. They would swell beneath their armpits and in their groins, and fall over dead while talking. Father abandoned child, wife husband, one brother another; for this illness seemed to strike through the breath and sight. And so they died. And none could be found to bury the dead for money or friendship. Members of a household brought their dead to a ditch as best they could, without priest, without divine offices. Nor did the death bell sound. They died by the hundreds both day and night, and all were thrown in those ditches and covered over with earth. As soon as those ditches were filled, more were dug. And I, Agnolo di Tura, called the Fat, buried my five children with my own hands. This situation continued until September. Siena and its suburbs had more than 30,000 people, and there remained in Siena (alone) less than 10,000.” According to modern estimates, the 1348-52 plague reduced the population of Italy, southern France, and Spain by 50% to 75%. And yet, in relating the events of her childhood, Catherine’s biographer Raymond of Capua makes no mention of the plague. (3/7/10)

Did You Know after the bubonic plague, Catherine of Siena’s family became involved in politics? Being wool-dyers, they belonged to a coalition of tradesmen and nobility who supported a ruling faction known as “the Twelve.” In 1355, the Twelve seized power by gaining the self-interested goodwill of the visiting German emperor, Charles IV, who was passing through Siena on his way to be crowned king of Rome by Pope Innocent VI. Catherine’s two eldest brothers joined the revolt, in which churches were stripped of their furniture to make barricades in the streets. According to nineteenth-century biographer Josephine Butler, “All that [Catherine] saw and heard contributed to encourage in the young girl the strong republican love of liberty, and to confirm in her the conviction that human life is no holiday pastime, but a prolonged struggle between opposing elements, for nations as well as for the individual.” (3/14/10)

Did You Know that St. Catherine's first vision of God occurred when she was about six? Raymond of Capua relates that with her brother Stefano, she had visited her older, married sister Bonaventura. When walking home, she happened to look up, and in the air she saw a bridal chamber in which were the apostles Peter and Paul, John the evangelist, and, seated on a throne, Christ Himself, dressed in papal attire and wearing the papal mitre. As Catherine stared in adoration, Christ "raised his right hand over her, made the sign of the cross... and graciously gave her His eternal benediction." Stefano had walked ahead, but noticing that Catherine was no longer with him, he turned back, and when he saw Catherine staring up into the air, he shouted to her. Getting no response, he walked up to her pulled at her hand, and asked "What are you doing? Why don't you come along?" Catherine looked down and replied, "If you could see what I can, you would not be so cruel and disturb me out of this lovely vision." Buy when she raised her eyes again, the vision had vanished, and Catherine burst into tears. (3/21/10)

Did You Know that after her first vision of God at age six, St. Catherine suddenly seemed like an adult to everyone who knew her? Without reading the lives of the saints, Catherine seemed to know the ways of the early Church's 'desert fathers' -- saints who lived in solitude and practiced mortification of the flesh. And she become interested in the life of St. Dominic (1170-1221), founder of the Dominican order of friars. Perhaps her interest in Dominic came from her foster-brother Tommaso della Fonte, who aspired to enter the Dominican house just up the hill from the Benincasa home. Whatever the reason for her special interest in St. Dominic, the little child dubbed "Euphrosyne" had been forever changed. Catherine's first biographer, Raymond of Capua, wrote that "From that moment it became clear from Catherine's virtues, the gravity of her behavior, and her extraordinary wisdom, that under her girlish appearance there was hidden a fully formed woman. (3/28/10)

Did You Know that at age six, after her first vision of God, St. Catherine stopped playing games with other children and spent her time in prayer and meditation? Inspired by the lives of the 'desert Fathers', she adopted an ascetic lifestyle, eating little and seeking solitude in the vacant upper rooms of her parents' house, where she practiced mortification of the flesh by whipping herself with a rope. Raymond of Capua says that Catherine did all this in secret, and yet her playmates joined Catherine in a sisterhood of penitence, praying and scourging themselves together. But one day, when she decided to take the further step of living as a hermit in a cave outside of town, Catherine was divinely inspired with the realization that she was too young for such hardship. As she told Raymond of Capua years later, God carried her aloft and deposited her back at the Siena city gate. (4/4/10)

Did You Know that at the age of seven, St. Catherine made a vow of perpetual virginity? She did this is a prayer to the Virgin Mary, asking, "give me as husband Him whom I desire with all the power of my soul ... and I promise Him and you that I will never choose myself another husband."(4/18/10)