Exceptional woman in Church history

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​Please include in your prayer our parishioners who are struggling with illness, and need our support:
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     -    Lidia Makarski
     -    Mary Bruder
​     -    Ed Ecker

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Saint Catherine of Siena, Virgin, Doctor 
     -   on Thursday of the 4th week of Eastertide
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St. Catherine lived her entire life in prayer and was named a Doctor of the Church by Pope Paul VI on October 4, 1970. She along with St. Teresa of Avila and St. Therese of Lisieux are the three women to have been bestowed with such a title.   St. Catherine worked to return Pope Gregory XI to Rome, from Avignon France where the Papacy had been residing for 67 years. Her determination to see this mission through was a testament to her unwavering courage to do God’s will.

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..... She exhibited an unusually independent character as a child and an exceptionally intense prayer life. When she was seven years old she had the first of her mystical visions, in which she saw Jesus surrounded by saints and seated in glory. In the same year she vowed to consecrate her virginity to Christ. When, at the age of 16, her parents decided that she should marry, she cut off her hair to make herself less appealing, and her father, realizing that he couldn’t contend with her resolve, let her have her way.  (read more here)