St. Catherine of Sienna, Patron of Nurses

No.: S-025        

Dimensions: 6x2.5x1 (inches)

Price: $40.00

Comes boxed and with a card giving the following history

Catherine (1347-80), the twenty-fourth child of a dyer and his wife, decided as a young girl not to marry. She spent several years in prayer and virtual solitude in a back room of her parents’ home. At the end of this period she experienced a mystical marriage to Christ. She emerged from the room and went into the world: nursing the sick in local hospitals and unceasingly offering care during the plague of 1347. She also aggressively worked to reform the church, cajoling bishops and popes to give their riches to the needy. Catherine is often shown, as in this plaque, wearing a ring, which symbolizes her mystical marriage to Christ, and carrying a cross. The two symbols suggest that her work in the world to relieve suffering had a basis in a powerful spirituality.