July 23 - Brigitte of Sweden, daughter of Birger Persson, Swedish prince and descendant of the Brahe family, was born in 1303 in Sweden on the Finsta farm in the historic province of Uppland. Mother of eight children including Catherine of Sweden.
She is the great-niece of Blessed Ingrid Elofsdotter, founder of a Dominican convent in Skänninge (Ostrogothic). In 1318 she married Ulf Gudmarson, prince and seneschal of Nericia, of whom she had eight children. In 1335, she was appointed steward by King Magnus IV of Sweden.
After the death of her husband, on their return from the pilgrimage to Compostela in 1344, she founded around 1346 the Wadstena Abbey (Vadstena Monastery) in the diocese of Linköping, founded as a double monastery. There she instituted a new order: the Order of the Most Holy Saviour (order of the nuns of the Holy Saviour, known as "the Brigittines") which followed the rule of St. Augustine. She lived in Rome for twenty years. She then left for Jerusalem, based on a vision she had had at the ripe old age of 69, and managed to visit the holy places.
Saint Brigitte, who worked for unity within the Catholic Church during her lifetime, became an example for Christian unity. In 1991, the three orders founded by the saint had written to John Paul II asking him to proclaim St. Brigitta the patron saint of Europe. A request to this effect had also been addressed to him by the Scandinavian Catholic Bishops' Conference and the Lutheran Church. She was declared Co-Patroness of Europe by Pope John Paul II on October 1, 1999, at the opening of the Synod of Bishops on Europe, together with Catherine of Siena and Edith Stein (Therese Benedict of the Cross): "It is not by chance that one of her daughters, Catherine, is venerated as a saint," the Pope said in this regard. St. Brigitte of Sweden is the patron saint of Sweden and of pilgrims.
We have of this saint Revelations, which were written by the monk Peter, prior of Alvastra Abbey; they were printed in Rome in 1455, and translated into French under the title Prophéties merveilleuses de sainte Brigitte, Lyon, 1536. The apparitions, ecstasies and locutions were approved by three popes and by the Council of Basel in 1436, and their absolute authenticity and veracity was confirmed by Pope John Paul II. The Fifteen Oraisons are a collection of prayers attributed to Saint Brigitte, without any certainty. On 27 October 2010, Benedict XVI dedicated his catechesis to Saint Brigitte of Sweden.
