Catherine of Siena - Death

Death

St Catherine died in Rome, on 29 April 1380, at the age of thirty-three, having suffered a stroke eight days earlier. Jesus is also commonly thought to have died at the same age, and Catherine's heroine Mary Magdalene is said to have fasted for thirty-three years.

Over the years Catherine had eaten less and less, claiming that she found no nourishment in earthly food. Instead she received the Holy Communion virtually on a daily basis. This extreme fasting appeared unhealthy in the eyes of the clergy and her own sisterhood, and her confessor, Blessed Raymond, ordered her to eat properly. But Catherine claimed that she was unable to, describing her inability to eat as an infermita (illness). She would disgorge what she swallowed, and suffered severe stomach pains, which she bore with patience as another penance.

She was buried in the cemetery of Santa Maria sopra Minerva which lies near the Pantheon. After miracles were reported to take place at her grave, Raymond moved her inside the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, where she lies to this day. Her head however, was parted from her body and inserted in a gilt bust from bronze. This bust was later taken to Siena, and carried through that city in a procession to the Dominican church. Behind the bust walked Lapa, Catherine's mother, who lived until she was 89 years old. By then she had seen the end of the wealth and the happiness of her family, and followed most of her children and several of her grandchildren to the grave. She helped Raymond of Capua write his biography of her daughter, and said, "I think God has laid my soul athwart in my body, so it can't get out."

The people of Siena wished to have St. Catherine's body. A story is told of a miracle whereby they were partially successful: Knowing that they could not smuggle her whole body out of Rome, they decided to take only her head which they placed in a bag. When stopped by the Roman guards, they prayed to St Catherine to help them, confident that she would rather have her body (or at least part thereof) in Siena. When they opened the bag to show the guards, it appeared no longer to hold her head but to be full of rose petals. Once they got back to Siena they reopened the bag and her head was visible once more. Due to this story, St Catherine is often seen holding a rose. The incorruptible head and thumb were entombed in the Basilica of San Domenico, where they remain.

Pope Pius II canonized St Catherine in the year 1461. Her feast day, at the time, was not included in the Roman Calendar. When it was added in 1597, it was put on the day of her death, April 29, as now, but because of a conflict with the feast of Saint Peter of Verona, which was also on April 29, it was moved in 1628 to the new date of April 30. In the 1969 revision of the Roman Catholic calendar of saints, it was decided to leave the celebration of the feast of St Peter of Verona to local calendars, because he was not as well known worldwide, and Saint Catherine's feast was restored to its traditional date of April 29. Some continued to use one or other of the calendars in force in the 1628–1969 period.

On May 5, 1940 Pope Pius XII named her a joint Patron Saint of Italy along with Saint Francis of Assisi. Pope Paul VI gave her the title of Doctor of the Church in 1970 along with Saint Teresa of Ávila making them the first women to receive this honour. In 1999, Pope John Paul II made her one of Europe's patron saints. She is also the patroness of the historically Catholic American woman's fraternity, Theta Phi Alpha.

Catherine is alleged to have suffered from anorexia mirabilis, due to her extreme fasting and disgorging of the meals she ate. Nonetheless she remains a greatly respected figure for her spiritual writings, and political boldness to "speak truth to power"— it being exceptional for a woman, in her time period, to have had such influence in politics and on world history.