St. Frances of Rome would not leave her friend's coffin

ROME, 1431 AD — Saint Frances of Rome was twelve when she was married. While everyone else celebrated the wedding, she cried. She had wanted to be a nun. But her father ordered her to marry Lorenzo Ponziani, of a rich family in Trastevere. St. Frances told Vannozza Ponziani why she was crying. Vannozza was her new sister-in-law, the wife of Lorenzo’s elder brother, Paluzzo.

In the Ponziani house the two brothers, their wives and Lorenzo’s parents all lived together as one family. From the day St. Frances told her why she cried, Vannozza was her companion in everything she did there. Vannozza called her by a pet name, Ceccolella, because she was still so young.

Out of bed in the night

Soon after the wedding St. Frances fell gravely ill and spent most of a year in bed. One night in July 1398 AD, on his feast day, Saint Alexius appeared to her. He asked whether she wanted to be healed. St. Frances answered him: “I want only what pleases the Lord.” She got up from her bed healed. She went straight to Vannozza to take her to church to give thanks. Vannozza had been with her all through the illness.

Vannozza, barely awake, asked: “Who is that? Is it you, Ceccolella? What madness is this? Do you need something? Where did you get the strength to get out of bed?” St. Frances answered her: “It’s your Ceccolella. I don’t need anything.”

Not long after, Lorenzo’s mother died, and the family put St. Frances in charge of the house. Vannozza was married to the elder brother, so she had the right to run the house first. But she begged to be St. Frances’s companion instead.

When famine came, St. Frances gave the family’s grain to the hungry until her father-in-law took away the keys of the stores. Then she and Vannozza went begging through the city for the poor. St. Frances drank only water. For a time, as a penance, she drank it from half a human skull. Vannozza hated the thing, and she threw it away.

A hospital in the hall

Then King Ladislaus of Naples took control of Rome. The governor he put over the city went after the families most loyal to the Pope. He had Paluzzo arrested. Later Lorenzo was sent into exile, and the family’s property was taken. St. Frances and Vannozza lived in one corner of the damaged house. They turned a large hall on the ground floor into a hospital for the sick poor.

In those years St. Frances fell dangerously ill. Almost everyone, even her relatives, kept away for fear of catching it. Vannozza stayed at her bedside. A book about St. Frances’s life says the two women lived in such peace “that they seemed to share one soul and one heart.”

In 1431 AD, Don Giovanni Mattiotti, St. Frances’s confessor, told her that Vannozza would soon die. A few days later Vannozza fell ill and took to her bed. St. Frances nursed her to the end. Vannozza received the last sacraments. Several men of religious orders sat round her bed reading the Church’s prayers for the dying. Vannozza died in great peace.

St. Frances got the body ready and dressed it. Then she walked beside it to the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli. For three days before the burial, crowds of Romans tried to touch the body, even just with their rosaries. They also tried to take scraps of her burial clothes to keep as relics.

At the funeral, St. Frances knelt on one side of the coffin. As she prayed there in front of the whole crowd, she went into ecstasy. Her eyes stayed fixed on heaven. The people near her heard her say again and again, “Quando, quando” (When? When?). She stayed that way through the whole funeral service. When it was over, she still did not move.

At last Don Giovanni ordered her to get up and go back to the sick she was nursing at home. She rose at once and went.