St. Bernardine of Siena

Plague Hospital and Franciscan Vows

St. Bernardine of Siena was born in 1380 at Massa Marittima in Tuscany, Italy, to a noble Sienese family, and was orphaned as a young child and raised by devout aunts. When plague struck Siena in 1400, the twenty-year-old Bernardine took charge of the city's great hospital of Santa Maria della Scala, leading a company of young men in caring for the dying at the risk of his own life. In 1402 he entered the Franciscans, joining the Observant reform that sought a stricter return to the poverty of St. Francis, and was ordained a priest in 1404.

Preaching Peace Across Italy

After years of quiet preparation, Bernardine began around 1417 the itinerant preaching that made him the most celebrated missionary of fifteenth-century Italy. Traveling on foot from city to city, he preached for hours at a time to enormous crowds in public squares, calling his hearers away from feuding, gambling, usury, and vanity, and toward peace and conversion. His preaching was vivid, practical, and often humorous, and contemporaries credited it with reconciling warring factions across the peninsula.

Devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus

At the heart of his message was devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus. He held aloft a tablet bearing the monogram IHS, the first letters of Jesus' name in Greek, surrounded by rays of the sun, and urged the faithful to replace partisan emblems with the Name of the Savior. The devotion spread throughout Italy and beyond, and the IHS emblem he popularized remains ubiquitous in Catholic art. Accused of heresy for the novelty of the devotion, he was fully vindicated before Pope Martin V.

Leadership, Death, and Canonization

Bernardine served as vicar general of the Observant Franciscans, whose numbers multiplied under his guidance, and he humbly declined the bishoprics of Siena, Ferrara, and Urbino to remain a preacher. He died on May 20, 1444, at L'Aquila in the Abruzzo while on a preaching journey, and was canonized just six years later, in 1450, by Pope Nicholas V. His body rests in the Basilica of San Bernardino in L'Aquila. Because of his skill in proclaiming a message, the Church honors him as patron of advertisers and communications professionals; his feast is May 20.

Significance

This Franciscan preacher held up the Name of Jesus before divided cities and called people away from feuds and greed toward peace. His vivid, practical way of speaking, together with his humility in refusing high office, made his message believable. As patron of those who work in advertising and communications, he challenges every communicator today to use words in the service of truth, reconciliation, and the Savior's Name.