Angela was born at Foligno in Umbria on 4 January 1248 into a prosperous family. Early orphaned of her father, she received from her mother a superficial education and spent her youth far from the faith. Beautiful, intelligent, and passionate, she married a notable citizen of Foligno and bore several children. For years she loved the world's pleasures and even scorned the penitents who sold their goods to follow Christ in prayer, fasting, and charity.
Within a few years the violent earthquake of 1279, a fierce hurricane, and the long war against Perugia shook her carefree life. She began to feel the precariousness of existence and the fear of hell. She desired the sacrament of penance, yet shame kept her from a complete confession and left her in torment. In prayer she obtained from Saint Francis of Assisi the assurance that she would soon know the mercy of God. She returned to the confessional, this time fully reconciled with the Lord. Around the age of thirty-seven, despite the hostility of her relatives, her conversion began in earnest under the sign of penance and renunciation of things, affections, and self.
After the close and premature deaths of her mother, husband, and children, Angela sold all her goods and distributed the proceeds to the poor. With her companion Masazuola she went on pilgrimage to Assisi in the footsteps of the Poverello and in 1291 entered the Third Order of Saint Francis. She entrusted herself to the spiritual direction of Friar Arnaldo, a fellow citizen and kinsman, who became her biographer and the author of the famous Memoriale. In that work the stages of her vocation and her constant ecstasies and mystical experiences—culminating in the indwelling of the Most Holy Trinity in her soul—are divided into thirty "steps."
Of a vision of the Triune God she told her confessor: "I saw a fullness, an immense majesty that I cannot describe, yet it seemed to me that it was every good. … After His departure I began to cry out loudly … Love unknown, why do You leave me?" The youthful fear of damnation soon gave way to the knowledge that she could not be saved by her own merits but, with a repentant heart, only through the infinite merciful love of God.
To a constant life of prayer, especially Eucharistic adoration, she always joined charitable service to the least, tenderly assisting lepers and the sick in whom she saw Christ Crucified. Already known in her lifetime as Magistra Theologorum, she promoted a theology grounded in the Word of God, obedience to the Church, and direct experience of the divine in its most intimate manifestations. Passionately involved in the controversies that tore the Franciscan Order, she drew around herself a circle of spiritual sons and daughters who saw in her a guide and true mistress of faith; thus her figure embodies one of the models of feminine genius in the Church. She founded a community of women tertiaries who lived a common life without enclosure so that they might continue works of charity.
At Christmas 1308 she told her companions she would die soon. A few days later she had a vision of Christ promising to come personally to take her to heaven. She died in her sleep on 4 January 1309 (some accounts say the night of 3 January), already popularly called a saint before her death. Her remains rest in the Church of Saint Francis at Foligno. Pope Clement XI confirmed her cult in 1701; on 9 October 2013 Pope Francis completed what his predecessors had begun by canonizing her by equipollence.
May Saint Angela of Foligno intercede for us, that we may turn from empty pleasures to the merciful love of the Crucified and practice generous charity toward the poor and the sick today.
