Frances of Rome

Frances of Rome, known in Italian as Francesca Romana and born Francesca Bussa de' Leoni, came into the world in 1384 in Rome, then the capital of the Papal States. She was the daughter of Paolo Bussa de' Leoni and Jacobella dei Roffredeschi, members of the Roman nobility. From an early age she was drawn to prayer, fasting, and the idea of consecrated life, and she is said to have wished to enter a convent. Her family, however, arranged a politically and socially advantageous marriage. At about the age of twelve or thirteen she was wed to Lorenzo de' Ponziani, whose family was established in Trastevere and who served as a commander of troops in the service of the papacy. Despite her earlier hopes of the cloister, the marriage endured for four decades and is described in the early lives as one of mutual respect and genuine affection. Frances took up the responsibilities of a Roman noblewoman while, together with her sister-in-law Vannozza, she began an apostolate of visiting the city's poor and the hospitals, often against the initial resistance of her household.

The years of her married life coincided with the Western Schism and with repeated military crises in central Italy. When King Ladislaus of Naples and later other factions contended for control of Rome, the Ponziani palace was sacked, family property was confiscated, and Lorenzo was seriously wounded in fighting, remaining partly disabled for a long period. Their son Battista was seized as a hostage. Frances and Lorenzo had several children; two of them, commonly identified as Evangelista and Agnes, died in childhood during waves of plague that struck the city. Frances herself suffered grave illness yet persisted in organizing relief during famine and epidemic, converting part of the family palazzo into a hospital. Contemporary accounts, later used in her canonization process, attribute to her numerous visions, the gift of prophecy, and the constant visible companionship of her guardian angel, who was said to illuminate her path with a lantern when she went out after dark to care for the sick, an image that later underpinned her patronage of travelers by night and of motorists.

In 1425, with the approval of her husband and of the Olivetan Benedictines, she founded a society of oblates attached to the monastery of Santa Maria Nova in the Roman Forum. The community, which came to be known as the Oblates of Tor de' Specchi after the house they occupied on the Capitoline Hill from the 1430s, followed a Benedictine-inspired rule but did not require solemn vows or the abandonment of family life, so that widows and other women could combine prayer with works of charity in the city. After Lorenzo died in 1436, Frances, having fulfilled her marital obligations, took up residence with the oblates and was chosen as their superior. She continued to receive the poor at the Tor de' Specchi and to exercise spiritual influence in Rome until her death there on 9 March 1440. She was buried at Santa Maria Nova, which in time was rededicated as the church of Santa Francesca Romana, where her relics remain.

Devotion to Frances grew quickly among Romans who remembered her charity and her reported miracles. She was canonized by Pope Paul V on 29 May 1608. The Catholic Church keeps her feast on 9 March. She is honored as a patron of the city of Rome, of widows, and, from the twentieth century, of motorists, automobile drivers, and taxi drivers, a modern patronage linked to the old stories of her angel-lit journeys through the streets. The congregation of oblates she founded still exists at the Tor de' Specchi in Rome.