Saint Bernardino of Siena

Bernardino was born on September 8, 1380, in Massa Marittima, in Tuscany, into the noble Albizzeschi family. But his childhood was marked early by the cross: he lost his mother at the age of three and his father at six, and was raised by devout aunts who gave him what would stay with him for the rest of his life — a serious faith, with no pretense. He studied civil and canon law and, in 1397, joined the Confraternity of Our Lady, attached to the great hospital of Santa Maria della Scala in Siena.

The turning point came in 1400, when the Black Death swept through Siena once again. Young Bernardino left behind his quiet life of prayer and, along with ten companions, took over the entire administration of the hospital for four months, personally caring for the sick. He came out alive, but with his health shaken for the rest of his life. It was this heroic self-giving that sealed his vocation: on September 8, 1402, the very day he was celebrating the Nativity of Our Lady, he received the habit of the Friars Minor and withdrew to the observant friary of Colombaio. He made his religious profession in 1403 and was ordained a priest in 1404 — always on that same Marian day.

Around 1406, while still almost unknown, he heard from afar a prophecy that would change his life: the great Saint Vincent Ferrer, preaching at Alessandria in Piedmont, announced that his missionary mantle would fall upon someone who was listening to him at that very moment, and that he himself would return to France and Spain, leaving to a young friar the task of evangelizing the rest of Italy. That young friar was Bernardino. And he took up the mission for over thirty years, traveling from squares to churches, preaching against usury, gambling, witchcraft, and the corruption of morals — but, above all, spreading like no one else the devotion to the Most Holy Name of Jesus, symbolized in the tablet bearing the IHS monogram that he would raise before the crowds.

His zeal so unsettled the moneylenders that he was denounced for heresy, precisely because of those tablets of the Holy Name. But the Church recognized him: defended by pontifical authority, he kept preaching until the end. He was also a rigorous thinker on economics, the author of De contractibus et usuris, in which he addressed just ownership, the ethics of commerce, and the condemnation of usury — anticipating themes that the social doctrine of the Church would develop centuries later. He died on May 20, 1444, in Aquila, worn out by the roads. Just six years later, in 1450, Pope Nicholas V enrolled him in the catalog of the saints.