Saint Rose of Viterbo

Virgin, Third Order Franciscan
(1233–1251)

Saint Rose of Viterbo was born around 1233 in the Italian city of Viterbo, which at that time was a focal point of the struggle between the papacy and the Emperor Frederick II. She came from a humble artisan family and from her earliest years showed an intensity of devotion and a desire for the religious life that was remarkable in a child. She is said to have raised a dead aunt to life by prayer when she was only eight years old, and to have received from the age of three locutions from the Blessed Virgin Mary who guided her.

Around the age of ten she joined the Third Order of Saint Francis, and at about the same time she began a public apostolate in the streets of Viterbo that was extraordinary for a child of her age and sex. The city was under the domination of the Ghibellines, the imperial faction opposed to the Pope, and Rose preached openly in the streets and piazzas, urging the people to remain faithful to the Church and to resist the emperor's claims. She carried a crucifix through the streets, prophesied, and performed miracles that drew crowds wherever she went.

Her activity was so conspicuous that the imperial authorities eventually had her family expelled from the city as troublemakers. She went with her parents to Soriano and continued her public mission there, and when Frederick II died in 1250, as she had predicted, the family returned to Viterbo in triumph. She twice applied to enter the convent of Saint Mary of the Roses in Viterbo and was twice refused, apparently because she could bring no dowry. She accepted the refusal with peace and died in her parents' home on March 6, 1251, at the age of about eighteen. She was canonised in 1457, and her feast is observed on September 4th.