The constant presence of demons and angels in the life of St Frances of Rome

Francesca Ponziani was a devout wife and mother whose life was full of tragedies: the loss of the family fortune, the serious injury of her husband - whom she thought she would lose, but who instead was banished for five years - the handing over of her eldest son to the King of Naples as a hostage, the death of her two youngest children, Gian Evangelista and Agnese... In each ordeal, Francesca sought comfort in God: she prayed and forgot herself more and more to help others. God had mercy on her. A year after the death of her son Gian Evangelista, while praying all night in her bedroom, the thirty-year-old was dazzled by an extraordinary light that bathed the room. In this out-of-this-world brightness, she saw two young boys: one, without a doubt, was the son she had lost; the other, a radiant angel.

Antoniazzo Romano, Saint Françoise Romaine healing a dying man, 1468, Monastero di Tor de Specchi, Rome / © CC0, wikimedia.

Les raisons d'y croire :

Gian Evangelista Ponziani's appearance to his mother was neither an illusion nor a dream she had when she dozed off during prayers. Francesca was perfectly awake and had a coherent conversation with her son, every detail of which was fixed in her memory.

Gian Evangelista announced to his mother another misfortune that could yet befall her: "Mother, the Lord is calling my little sister Agnese away from you; her place is ready in the heavenly Jerusalem. Don't be distressed, but rejoice in knowing that your children are among the angels of heaven." If she was looking for consolation for her grief by inventing dialogues with her dead son, this is not certainly not what Francesca would have invented. A year after this announcement, Agnese died of a childhood illness at the age of eight, confirming the apparition Francesca had received.

Francesca was used to taking her son's words seriously, when he was still on earth. From his earliest childhood, Gian Evangelista had a prophetic charisma and was able to announce disasters. These prophecies came true, even the most improbable ones, such as the day when the very young boy warned a priest, a guest at their table, against immoderate ambition that would lead to his downfall in this world and the next. Having become a bishop, the priest indeed made very bad use of his position.

The archangel, who accompanied her as a child and never left her side, was not an "imaginary friend" or the projection of a woman frustrated in her maternal love. Although Francesca was the only one to see him and talk to him, several other people (including Don Giovanni Mattiotti, her confessor) witnessed spectacular phenomena proving the presence near her of a being, who was certainly invisible, but who intervened in her daily life and interacted with her. Witnesses also reported the interventions of other invisible beings, easy to identify as demons, who constantly persecuted Francesca, as well as her sister-in-law and friend Vanozza, even going so far as to attempt murder.

Don Mattiotti had her write down her ninety-three visions, and vouched for them when they were published before the ecclesiastical authorities. Wracked with anguish over the divisions in the Church and the misfortunes of the times, he testified that on several occasions he asked the Archangel, through Francesca, for advice and counsel, which she couldn't have invented, as she did not possess the necessary knowledge to give advice.

We cannot assume that Francesca was lying or inventing her interactions with the angel, such was her intense piety and respect for God. In fact, our primary source about her life is the biography written by her confessor, who defended its perfect authenticity and the countless miracles recounted in it, before the Pope.

It is impossible to believe that she was mentally deranged. No one was more balanced than Francesca, who, with her feet firmly on the ground, faced difficulties, problems and tragedies with unflagging courage and common sense. She was able to juggle all her responsibilities as wife, mother and head of the family - particularly during the difficult period of the absence of her husband, eldest son and brother-in-law - as well as the charitable work she was involved in, such as the religious community she had founded.

As she grew older, Francesca's charisms multiplied, proving the reality of her visions and her connections with the invisible world. She was stigmatised and transverberated - her heart was pierced, like Christ's - and she was able to distinguish between consecrated and non-consecrated hosts; she read souls and possessed the gifts of a miracle worker, so that when doctors saw her, they said that they "could do nothing where God is at work"; she obtained fruit out of season (pears in March and grapes in January) to prove her claims were true; she was credited with the resurrection of a stillborn baby and a little girl who had drowned in the River Tiber; she had constant visions and ecstasies; she visited hell and purgatory under the guidance of the archangel Raphael, and so on.

All these phenomena, recorded by her confessor and which made her so popular during her lifetime, were included in her bull of canonisation on 29 May 1606 by Pope Paul V, proof that no one questioned them.

Synthèse :

Francesca Bussa was born in Rome in 1384 into an aristocratic family. From an early age, she was drawn to the cloister and the contemplative life - a future that did not suit her parents, who wanted to ally themselves with the powerful Ponziani family. On the advice of her confessor, who insisted on obedience, the twelve-year-old resolved to accept a marriage that was repugnant to her.

Although Lorenzo was a charming and pious young man, with whom she lived happily for forty years and had three children, having to give up her desire to give herself to Christ was such a misfortune for Francesca that she fell ill. Just when she was thought to be dying, St Alexis appeared to her and asked her, on behalf of God, whether she really wanted to die or whether she was willing to live and suffer,in order to show what a true Christian committed to marriage could do for Jesus and the good of souls. Francesca agreed to sacrifice herself and was instantly healed.

This heroic choice brought into her daily life an invisible world that she had only glimpsed before. Angels and demons never left her side. The devil, fearful of the good she would do, unable to seduce her with the attraction of material goods, furious at her fasts of dry bread, water and unsalted boiled vegetables, and even more so at her penances (cilice, an iron chain around her body), her discipline (she whipped herself to mortify her flesh and atone for the sins of lust of others) and her humility, which led her to dress like a woman of lower classes and to do menial tasks, tried to divert her from this devout life by every means possible. He took the appearance of a religious who painted a disgusting picture of piety and the people of the Church, trying to make her abandon prayers and the sacraments. One night, while her husband was away, Francesca was woken by the weight of a body on top of hers; frightened, she discovered that she was sharing her bed with a rotting male corpse, the stench of which lingered with her for a long time... The devil took to physical abuse, pushing Francesca down staircases or into lit fireplaces, hanging her above the void, threatening to drop her, and trying to drown her in the Tiber with her sister-in-law. He also attacked her sister-in-law, causing her to fall and sustain serious injuries, in order to drive Francesca to despair by depriving her of her best friend and confidante.

By the early 1410s, Francesca Ponziani was a tried and tested wife and mother. Her husband, Lorenzo, had been banished from Rome because he had sided with Pope Gregory XII in the never-ending dispute over the Great Western Schism, which was tearing Catholicism apart and now saw three pontiffs vying for the tiara. Her eldest son, Gian Battista, has been taken hostage to free his uncle, a prisoner of the King of Naples. Taking advantage of their absence, their rivals, the Colonna family, ransacked the Ponziani palace and seized all its assets, leaving Francesca, her two youngest children, Gian Evangelista and Agnese, and her sister-in-law Vanozza destitute. Then the plague swept through the city, taking the nine-year-old Gian Evangelista with it; Agnese joined her brother a little later. This accumulation of misfortunes only helped Francesca to grow in holiness.

When her dead son appeared and the archangel appointed to watch over her arrived, her child told her: "God has sent him to comfort you and guide you on your pilgrimage from earth to heaven. He will always be with you."Francesca experienced this. Although he belonged to a lower angelic choir, the second, the archangel emitted such brightness that she couldn't sustain it and he had to veil it when, on certain occasions, he allowed her to see him. She found this convenient, because in the evening she could read without a lamp! The interventions of the heavenly spirit were always remarkable. During a supper, Francesca was distracted and let her guests say bad things about someone; to punish her, the angel gave her a loud slap on the cheek that everyone heard, and which left the mark of five fingers on her face...

A few years later, when her daughter-in-law continually humiliated and abused her, bringing her to tears, the angel, exasperated by the young woman's ways, gave her the beating she deserved in the middle of a family meal. On another occasion, when the devil tried to snatch Francesca's three-year-old grandson from her arms, the Archangel intervened to put him back to sleep in his cot. All those present were stunned, even though they did not see the angel, to see the baby fly across the room, land in his bed and be tucked in by an invisible hand.

In 1425, Francesca founded a congregation called the Oblates of Saint Benedict, which later became the Oblates of Saint Frances of Rome, to which she retired in 1436 on the death of her husband, but refused to become superior, preferring to go begging for the poor or do the hardest jobs. Shortly afterwards, the archangel left her and gave way to a Power, an angel from a higher choir who was better able to accompany her on the path to perfection, and whose presence kept the demons at bay for good. A vision of Saint Benedict convinced her to accept the superiorate, the last sacrifice for the great lady whom Rome called "la poverella del Trastevere" ("the little pauper of Trastevere").

Having fallen ill at the beginning of March 1440 while nursing her son back to health, Francesca predicted that she would not live beyond the following Thursday. She died four days later, on 9 March, as she had said, surrounded by such veneration that she became the saint of Rome par excellence. Her last words were: "I see heaven open. The angel is standing before me; he is calling me! My task is complete."

Anne Bernet is a Church History specialist, postulator of a cause for beatification and journalist for a number of Catholic media. She has written over forty books, most of them devoted to sanctity.

Aller plus loin :

St. Frances of Rome: The Life, Miracles, and Mystical Encounters of a True Roman Saint by Rev Tobias Hartwell, Independently published (November 23, 2024)

En savoir plus :

The Life Of Saint Frances Of Rome: Biography and visions of saint Frances of Rome by Cole M. Gabriel, Independently published (March 11, 2024)
Paul V, Bull of canonisation of Saint Frances of Rome, 1608.
The website of the Oblates of Saint Frances of Rome (in Italian).