Angela of Foligno
Approx. 1248 AD — January 3, 1309 AD · Feast day: January 4
Born in 1248 to a wealthy family in Foligno, Umbria, Angela spent her first forty years, by her own account, absorbed entirely in worldly life. A vision of Francis of Assisi struck her around age forty; within three years her mother, husband, and all her children were dead — losses she recorded as a 'great consolation' that freed her for God. She joined the Franciscan Third Order in 1291, dictated visions of the Passion to her confessor Arnoldo, and gathered a community of women tertiaries who served the poor without enclosure until her death on January 3, 1309.