CV NEWSFEED // Historian Bronwen McShea has released a new book, Women of the Church: What Every Catholic Should Know, which takes a deep dive into the stories of historically significant Catholic women.
“Most baptized Catholics today know little about the fuller historical legacies of saints such as Mother Cabrini,” McShea wrote in an article published in First Things Magazine. “They tend to be taught even less about the broader, rich, and complicated history of the Catholic Church that is also part of their patrimony.”
McShea pointed out that the recent Angel Studios film, which portrays the life and works of Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the rich history of Cabrini’s life, and the life of women in the Church:
In my new book, Women of the Church, I attempt to do my part as both a professional historian and committed Catholic to help remedy this problem, retelling the story of famous female saints from the Apostolic era through the twentieth century as part of larger historical narrative about historically significant Catholic women, canonized and otherwise, whom I believe every Catholic should know.
In addition to the stories of well-known saints such as Cabrini, McShea highlights the legacies of “women who have not traditionally been acknowledged in our history books.”
Among the accounts of ordinary women, McShea includes the story of a middle-class Frenchwoman named Élisabeth Arrighi Leseur who lived during the early 1900s. Leseur was married to a physician called Felix, who promoted atheism throughout their marriage. After Leseur died of cancer, her husband discovered a letter she left behind for him, predicting that he would convert to Catholicism and become a priest. Although Felix had been “annoyed” at his wife’s message, McShea recounted, a visit to the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes eventually led to his conversion and entrance into the priesthood.
Felix went on to have his wife’s journal published, and became a well known retreat leader, who McShea noted, later influenced “a young American priest named Fulton Sheen.”
McShea also mentions the story of a group of nuns who worked grueling hours at the Vatican Observatory to provide information about the locations and brightness of 481,215 stars for an international astronomical project that resulted in a 254-volume Astronomical Catalogue of every known star in the universe. The sisters, Regina Colombo, Concetta Finardi, Luigia Panceri, and Emilia Ponzoni, belonged to the Sisters of the Holy Child Mary order.
McShea’s book is available via Ignatius Press and the Augustine Institute.
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