Saint Frances of Rome

Saint Frances of Rome was a Roman noblewoman, a wife and mother for forty years, who after her husband’s death went to live among the Oblates of Tor de’ Specchi, whom she herself had gathered. In times of war, famine, and plague she fed the poor and nursed the sick. The Church remembers her on March 9.

She was born in Rome in 1384, into the wealthy Bussa family. From childhood she longed for religious life, but at her father’s wish she was given in marriage, as a girl of about twelve, to Lorenzo Ponziani and went to live in his family’s house in Trastevere. She accepted the marriage reluctantly and went through a grave crisis at that time, yet in time she became a devoted wife and the prudent mistress of a large household. She bore three children: Battista, Evangelista, and Agnese. Evangelista and Agnese died in childhood.

Rome at the beginning of the fifteenth century was ravaged by wars, famine, and epidemics, and the Church was torn by the Great Western Schism. When the troops of King Ladislaus of Naples occupied the city, Lorenzo was gravely wounded and banished, their son Battista was taken hostage, and the family’s property was plundered. Frances bore these blows patiently and cared for her wounded husband until his death.

Supported by her sister-in-law Vannozza, she visited the hospitals of Rome, tended the sick, and gave out grain from the family granaries to the hungry. She sold her jewels and fine clothes, went about in a dress of coarse cloth, and begged alms herself on behalf of those who were ashamed to beg. She also reconciled feuding families. She devoted much time to prayer. Her confessor, Father Giovanni Mattiotti, wrote down the visions she experienced. According to tradition, she saw her guardian angel at her side.

Around Frances there gathered a circle of Roman women who wished to join prayer with service to those in need. On August 15, 1425, the Solemnity of the Assumption, she and nine companions made their oblation in the church of Santa Maria Nova by the Roman Forum, offering themselves to God under the spiritual care of the Olivetan Benedictines. In 1433 the oblates began to live together in a house at the foot of the Capitoline Hill, later called Tor de’ Specchi, and that same year Pope Eugene IV approved the community. They lived according to the Rule of Saint Benedict, but without enclosure, so that they could go on serving the sick and the poor.

Frances herself remained with her husband. After his death in 1436 she joined the oblates and became their superior. She died in Rome on March 9, 1440. For three days the people of the city came to bid her farewell. She was buried in the church of Santa Maria Nova, which today also bears her name.

The canonization process began in the very year of her death, but it was only on May 29, 1608, that Pope Paul V enrolled her among the saints. The Romans call her Advocata Urbis, the advocate of the city. In 1925 Pius XI declared her the patron saint of motorists. The liturgy presents her as a singular model of both married and monastic life.