Stone & Incense Search
Start hereCurious, or no faithEvangelical, Pentecostal or ProtestantFrom another faithSomeone I love is CatholicBecoming CatholicI was Catholic once Today in the ChurchLibraryHard questionsVoices of the revivalTake the next stepAboutSources & methodSupport the site
The saints

St. Frances of Rome

A rich Roman wife and mother who turned her palace into a food bank in time of war.

Feast: 9 March · 1384 to 1440 · The Middle Ages · Rome

Read the story 1 min read
Painting of St. Frances of Rome in a white veil, an angel beside her.

Giovanni Antonio Galli detto Spadarino (1585 - 1652), 1600. Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.

Home / The saints / St. Frances of Rome

Rome, the early 1400s

Frances wanted to be a nun, but at twelve she was married to a nobleman.1

She threw herself into being a good wife, and the marriage was a happy one for forty years.1

Then came plague, war and famine in Rome, and she opened her house to the hungry.

Patron of widows1; motorists1

01St. Frances of Rome

The family’s storerooms

She gave away grain and wine from the family stores, and tended the sick with her sister-in-law.1

She lost two children to the plague, and her husband was wounded and exiled.1

02St. Frances of Rome

Oblates

She founded a community of women who served the poor without leaving the world, and joined them as a widow.1

Tradition says she saw her guardian angel, which is why drivers claim her.1

Live it this week

Pray for your angel’s help on the road

Frances knew her guardian angel was close. Every time you start the car this week, say a short prayer to your guardian angel, and drive like the people around you matter.

Notes

How we know · 1 source for this page
  1. Franciscan Media, Saint of the Day: “Saint Frances of Rome”. franciscanmedia.org. franciscanmedia.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.