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The saints

St. Angela Merici

An orphan who saw that girls needed teaching, and founded the Ursulines.

Feast: 27 January · 1474 to 1540 · Reformation and missions · Desenzano and Brescia, Italy

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Painting of St. Angela Merici in a black habit, teaching a young girl.

Pietro Calzavacca (1855-1890). Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.

Home / The saints / St. Angela Merici

Brescia, Italy, 1535

Angela lost both parents young and was raised by an uncle.1

She became a Franciscan tertiary and saw how many girls around her had no religious education at all.1

So she started teaching them herself, in her own home.

Patron of teachers1

01St. Angela Merici

The first Ursulines

In 1535 she gathered twelve young women to teach girls, under the patronage of St. Ursula.2

They lived at home, without vows or a cloister, which was new and daring then.1

Live it this week

Teach one child something

Angela started by teaching the girls in her neighborhood. This week, teach a child something real: how to cook an egg, change a tire, pray the Hail Mary, read a map.

Notes

How we know · 2 sources for this page
  1. Franciscan Media, Saint of the Day: “Saint Angela Merici”. franciscanmedia.org. franciscanmedia.org
  2. Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), “St. Angela Merici”. New Advent edition. newadvent.org

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: World English Bible, Catholic edition (public domain); Verse numbers are modern, with Douay-Rheims numbers in brackets where they differ. Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an errorCorrections.