St. Frances of Rome
Patron of motorists, drivers, widows, Benedictine oblates
Saint Frances of Rome (1384–1440), wife, mother and widow, gave the world an example of holiness in the heart of secular life. Married at thirteen to the nobleman Lorenzo Ponziani, she spent forty years caring for husband and children through war, plague and the loss of two of her own little ones, while turning the family palace into a hospital and the Ponziani country estate into a granary for the starving poor. After her husband's death she joined the community of oblates she had founded — laywomen offering their lives to God without enclosure — at the foot of the Capitoline Hill. From her childhood she was attended by a guardian angel visible to her eyes; she is therefore patroness of motorists who pray for safe passage on Rome's chaotic streets.