Her angel vanished whenever St. Frances of Rome did wrong

ROME, October 2, 2026 AD — At night, in complete darkness, Saint Frances of Rome could read and write. The light she read by came from an angel who stood beside her, and no one else could see him.

St. Frances was a wife and mother who lived in Rome in the early 1400s AD. The Church holds that an angel stands beside each believer as a protector. St. Frances told the priests who heard her confession that she could see her angel.

A boy of nine and his companion

Before St. Frances ever saw the angel, the King of Naples took Rome and let his soldiers loot it. Famine followed, and after the famine came plague.

The plague reached the palace of her husband’s family, where St. Frances lived. Her son Evangelista, who was nine, caught it. As he died, Evangelista said to his mother: “Here are the angels come to take me away. Give me your blessing, my mother. Do not be afraid. I shall never forget you.”

About a year later St. Frances was praying one morning in her oratory when the little room filled with light. Evangelista stood in front of her. Beside him stood a companion of the same size and height, more beautiful still. St. Frances opened her arms to her son, but she could not hold him.

Evangelista told his mother that God had sent the companion to be her guardian for the rest of her life. The guardian would be at her side night and day, Evangelista said. Then Evangelista vanished and the angel stayed. St. Frances thanked God. Then she asked the angel to be her guide and to fight beside her against the devil. When she left the oratory, the angel followed her.

Too bright to look at

Her confessor, the priest who heard her confession, was Don Antonio Savello. St. Frances did exactly what Don Antonio told her, and he ordered her to say what the angel looked like. She answered that he was as tall as a child of about nine. St. Frances told Don Antonio: “When he walks by my side, his feet are never soiled by the mud of the streets or the dust of the road.” She called him the archangel.

The light around the angel was so bright that St. Frances could seldom look straight at him. She saw him plainly only when she prayed, when she talked with her confessor and when the devil attacked her.

Gone until she confessed

Whenever St. Frances did the smallest thing wrong, the angel vanished. He came back only after she had thought over what she had done, found what was wrong and confessed it. When St. Frances was troubled only by a doubt, the angel gave her a kind look and the worry ended.

The cloth he was weaving

In 1425 AD St. Frances founded a community of women in Rome. After her husband died, she went to the women’s house. She asked to live there as the lowest of their servants. The women wanted her as their leader instead, and they elected her. That day the angel who had been at her side for twenty-four years smiled and left her. Another angel, brighter still, took his place.

The new angel carried a palm branch. Day and night he wove a cloth from threads that seemed to grow out of the branch. Saint Benedict appeared to St. Frances that day. St. Benedict told her the palm was the victory she was to win over human weakness. The weaving that never stopped was the work she was to do for the women in her care, he said.

On March 3, 1440 AD, St. Frances came down with a violent fever. All through her illness the new angel stayed beside her. He wove the last threads of the cloth as if in a hurry to finish it.

March 9, 1440 AD, was the seventh day of her illness. The priest who was then her confessor asked St. Frances one last time what she saw. St. Frances whispered her last words: “The heavens open! The angels descend! The archangel has finished his task. He stands before me. He beckons to me to follow him.”