Ursulina, a young girl of Parma, began receiving heavenly visions and other mystical experiences from an early age. By the time she was fifteen, she felt called to a daunting mission: to heal the Great Schism, which at the time divided the Church between rival popes. She attributed the beginning of this calling to a vision in which she beheld Christ wandering around a church, looking for a place to sit. When she offered him a place on her own knees, he willingly accepted. Afterward, he invited her into a house where together they drank wine, while he expounded on the great suffering of the Church and instructed her on what she must do.

Remarkably, she was able to persuade her mother to join her in this cause. Together, on foot, they crossed the Alps and made their way to Avignon. There, more remarkably still, they obtained an audience with Clement VII, though she utterly failed to persuade him to renounce the papacy. Undeterred, she set off for Rome to make the same case to Boniface IX. There, despite her eloquence, her efforts found no greater success. When she pressed her case a second time at Avignon, she was charged with sorcery and barely escaped with her life.

Though she survived these adventures, Ursulina did not live to see the end of the papal schism in 1417. She had died in 1410 at the age of thirty-five.

“God himself, the Lord Creator of all things, has decided to reveal things to the human race through me.”

—Blessed Ursulina of Parma