St. Bridget of Sweden

Who they were

Bridget Birgersdotter was a Swedish noblewoman who lived the whole arc: happily married at thirteen, mother of eight, one of them St. Catherine of Sweden, mistress of a great household, lady of the royal court. Then, on pilgrimage to Compostela with her husband Ulf, the turn. He died shortly after their return, and Bridget, grieving at his tomb, heard the call that filled her remaining thirty years.

The visions she had known since childhood intensified, and her Revelations became one of the most read spiritual books of the late Middle Ages. Her mission grew audacious. She founded the Bridgettine order, moved to Rome in 1349, and spent a quarter century as the era's most persistent holy nuisance, writing to kings to stop their wars and to the Avignon popes, year after year, to return to Rome: the labour St. Catherine of Siena would finish. She died in Rome in 1373 after a final pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and in 1999 John Paul II named her a co patroness of Europe.

She is a different person from St. Brigid of Ireland, whose name is often confused with hers.

Why people turn to St. Bridget of Sweden

Widows, since her call arrived inside her grief; ask her alongside St. Elizabeth of Hungary. Mothers of many. And anyone whose second vocation began at a graveside.

How to ask their intercession

At the tomb where your own next chapter started, or might. That was her exact geography, and she did not hurry it.