Catherine Of Siena (outstanding Christian Thinkers)

Mystic, champion of the poor, and Church reformer, Catherine was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1970. She was unable to write until she was thirty, but she corresponded with popes, cardinals, scholars, and civic authorities. She was a true daughter of the fourteenth century, famous in her own life time, and yet her thinking and her work seem entirely relevant in the political and ecclesial context of our own time. When Pope paul VI was asked whether she should be considered a politician, his answer was yes, but in a thoroughly spiritual way, this, he said, is why "the teaching of this singular woman poltitician is still meaningful and valuable."