Women Saints and Martyrs

St Angela Merici | ICN : Founder of the Ursuline nuns. St Angela was born in 1474, at Desenzano on the shores of Lake Garda near Verona in Italy. Her parents died when she was very young. She became a Franciscan tertiary with several friends, and they devoted themselves to teaching poor children. In 1535 they d...

St Paula | ICN : Widow. This early Christian saint came from the noblest of Roman families, the Scipios and Gracchis. She was happily married and had five children: four daughters, Blaesilla, Paulina, Eustochium, and Rufina and a son, Toxotius. Tragedy struck when she was only 32, when her husband and h...

St Agnes | ICN : Virgin, martyr of Rome. St Agnes is one of the most famous of early Christian saints. Her death in 305 was recorded in the Deposito Martyrum just forty years later. Around that time a basilica was built over her grave in the Via Nomentana. Many early writers, including Ambrose, Jerome, ...

St Prisca | ICN : Martyr. Not a great deal is known about this early Roman saint, but that she came from a noble Roman family and was very young when she died for her faith. Legends sometimes identify her as the same Priscilla named in the Acts of the Apostles as the wife of Aquila.She is so...

St Elizabeth Seton, St Rigobert | ICN : Wife and foundress. She was the first native-born American woman to be canonised. Born in New York in 1774 to a prominent Episcopalian family, at 20 she married a professor of anatomy, Richard Seton. Their marriage was a happy one and they had five children, but in 1803, Richard died.

St Elizabeth Seton, St Rigobert | ICN : Wife and foundress. She was the first native-born American woman to be canonised. Born in New York in 1774 to a prominent Episcopalian family, at 20 she married a professor of anatomy, Richard Seton. Their marriage was a happy one and they had five children, but in 1803, Richard died.

St Genevieve | ICN : Virgin and patron of Paris. Born at Nanterre in around 420, St Genevieve is said to have met St Germanus of Auxerre on his way to England, when she was about seven years old. She told him then that she wanted to live only for God. He encouraged her to pray, and when she was 15, she took...