You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints.

This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.

Welcome to Forum Now. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Klein, and I'm here with Dr. Jessica Murdoch.

We're both professors here and teach at the Augustine Institute.

We're here doing our series on holy women you've never heard of.

So we've gathered some of our favorite female saints from throughout tradition who you might not know about.

And so we're hoping you can meet some new holy friends in the course of this series.

This episode is on St. Bridget of Sweden, who unsurprisingly is from Sweden.

She lived from 1303, the 1373, so in the late Middle Ages.

So unsurprisingly, given our specialties, Dr. Murdoch studies more

medieval theology. I do more Britishismic theology. So this medieval saint was picked by Dr. Murdoch,

so I'll let her kick it off with, tell us a little bit about Bridget. Well, Bridget was born to a royal

family, and as you might suspect, they were landowners. Her father was governor and provincial

judge of Upland. So she comes from a very pious family that already included a saint, St. Ingrid,

as a relative. So she was raised firmly in Christian piety. She was shown to be a religious prodigy

in her childhood. At the age of 10, she is said to have had a vision

of our Lord Jesus Christ, where he comes to her in a crucified form and says, look at me, my daughter.

And she looks at him and she says, who's treated you like this? And our Lord goes on to tell her

that it's those who refuse his love. So this is really like a formative episode in her childhood.

She was married at the young age of 13 to her 18-year-old husband, Prince Ulfo of Sweden,

who was also a pious Christian, and their happy marriage produced eight children,

including another saint, St. Catherine of Sweden.

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