Today, March 8, we think of the women we know, those we do not know but who have touched our lives, the women who are part of our everyday lives, and the women who have completed their earthly pilgrimage and whom we carry in our hearts as a precious treasure.
These women are mothers, sisters, friends, colleagues, grandmothers, aunts… strong and fragile, determined and delicate, loving and assertive, affectionate and loyal, uncompromising and incredibly sweet, precise and unmotivated, ill and healthy, energetic and distressed, emancipated and traditional.
Each of us can rediscover these qualities in the women who are part of our lives, because every woman is a simply complex world, capable of bringing wonderful multiplicity to everyday life.

Woman looks at the world through the window of her heart

Woman, a creature endowed with the highest sensitivity and profound intuition, knows that she belongs to an “other” world and turns to it when the needs of the soul find no answer.
Thus prayers, petitions, praises, and thanksgivings arise for those who already live at the heart of Love: the saints.

The patron saints of women

The first and undisputed patron saint of all women is Mary, a model of motherhood, womanhood, protection, care, intercession, and courage. Women turn to her because she can understand them, help them, comfort them, and accompany them through every step they must take.

Saint Anne, Mary's mother, protects women expecting a child; she who experienced the joy of motherhood later in life.
Saint Maria Francesca of the Five Wounds intercedes for infertile women and those experiencing a difficult pregnancy: in Naples, her chair is still known today as “the fertility chair.”
Saint Paschal Baylon, who advised all the women who turned to him, is invoked to find one's soulmate.
Saint Gerard Majella, who saved a woman who was dying in childbirth, intercedes for the safe birth of children and the health of mothers. 
Saint Monica, who tenaciously achieved the conversion of her son Augustine, intercedes for women who carry great sorrows in their hearts.
Saint Dominic Savio, who, while still very young, prayed for his mother and little sister Catherine, intercedes for all women experiencing a high-risk pregnancy.

A new entry

And, even though tradition does not tell us about her, today we would like to venture to name another patron saint of women: Saint Joan of Arc. She who, in fifteenth-century France, was a symbol of strength and courage would surely not refuse to intercede for determination, self-esteem, authenticity, tenacity, and self-love for all women who may have lost their way along the paths of humiliation and violence.

Best wishes to all women, heavenly beings who walk the earth!