She was one of the most heroically beautiful Christian women in all the history of the Church. She was married by arrangement to a pagan official in North Africa who was much older than she was. She bore him three children. Her oldest child was named Augustine. She did everything possible to bring this brilliant boy into the Catholic Church. She finally was able to do so after she followed him from Africa to Milan, where Augustine was baptized by Saint Ambrose, in the year 387, when he was thirty-three years old. This was the great Saint Augustine, the Doctor of the Universal Church, without whose name and reputation and teaching there would be a great void in Catholic tradition. Shortly after the Baptism of Saint Augustine, Saint Monica died, in the town of Ostia, in central Italy, on her way back to Africa. One thousand years after the death of Saint Augustine, in the year 1430, Saint Monica’s precious body was translated from Ostia to Rome, and placed in the Church of Saint Augustine there. This day has a special feast for itself, on April 9. Saint Monica was twenty-two years old when Saint Augustine was born. She was only fifty-five years old when she died.
Saint Monica
