Meet some of the real women of the Roman Catholic Church––saints, sinners, & sundry––from all eras. @RealRCMen's companion. By historian @bronwenmcshea.
New York, NY, USA
Joined December 2025
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Real Roman Catholic Women retweeted
Far more women ruled principalities, great & small, in their own right -- not just as regents for husbands, sons, & brothers -- in medieval & early modern Christendom than most modern Christians are remotely aware of. Anne of Brittany was among them.
Meet ANNE OF BRITTANY (1477-1514), sovereign Duchess of Brittany; twice Queen of France as Charles VIII's & Louis XII's consort; devoted mother (only 2 of her many children surviving), capable ruler of her duchy, patroness of artists & musicians, & proponent of girls' education.
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On the occasion All Saints today and All Souls tomorrow, I'm featuring an ordinary, never-famous woman of faith over at @RealRCWomen -- my great-great-grandmother, Lena. (That's my great-grandfather George in her lap.) Please feel free to share photos or stories below of ancestors or others from history who, though they will never be canonized, you find inspiring to your faith in some way.
Meet CAROLINE MÜLLER WEPPLER (1853-1934), who left Bavaria for NYC as an orphaned teenager, married a Lutheran man from Hesse, raised 8 children with him on his barber's salary in Manhattan's Lower East Side, & celebrated his Catholic conversion on their 50th wedding anniversary.
Real Roman Catholic Women retweeted
Yesterday an archbishop was in the news for saying the Catholic Church is not a church that seeks to convert. His remarks made me think of numerous missionaries through time -- such as St. Marie-Hermine of Jesus (top, center) & the 6 other Franciscan Missionaries of Mary martyred with her in China in 1900 -- who gave their lives to the sort of work that some of our senior churchmen today seem to believe is antithetical to the Church's mission.
Meet ST. MARIE-HERMINE OF JESUS (1866-1900). Growing up in France as Irma Grivot, she joined the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary against her parents' wishes & served as superior of a community in Taiyuan, China, where she & numerous others were killed during the Boxer Rebellion.
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Meet BL. MARIA RESTITUTA KAFKA (1894-1943). Born in the Czech city of Brno, she grew up in Vienna, worked in a tobacco shop, became a surgical nurse & Franciscan Sister of Christian Charity, & under the Nazi occupation stood up boldly to the regime, was imprisoned, & beheaded.
Real Roman Catholic Women retweeted
I started my X account @RealRCWomen 10 months ago out of concern that too many Catholics rarely learn about the great diversity of important women there are to know from the Church's past. Often, they hear about the same small handful of very famous female saints & biblical figures. While there is not a problem on the same scale where the Church's historically important men are concerned, there is a problem there, too -- stemming from a general lack of sustained, deep engagement with our own rich & complex history as a Church that spans across time, not just across borders & cultures. So, I started @RealRCMen this week, to do my small part on that side, too. Here e.g. is a lesser-known, remarkable American Catholic man most American Catholics have never heard of. His cause for canonization is open.
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Meet SIBYLLA OF JERUSALEM (c. 1159-1190), 2nd of 5 female rulers of the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem. She made her husband Guy of Lusignan co-ruler by her authority, raised a son & heir, King Baldwin V, & helped defend Jerusalem during Saladin's siege & launch the 3rd Crusade.
Real Roman Catholic Women retweeted
This 12th-century female ruler in her own right, who was among the Christian leaders of the 3rd Crusade, participated in the drawn-out Siege of Acre with her whole family. She & 2 daughters died during an epidemic that ravaged the Crusaders' camps at Acre, before England's King Richard the Lionheart & France's King Philip II arrived to lead the Christians to victory.
Meet SIBYLLA OF JERUSALEM (c. 1159-1190), 2nd of 5 female rulers of the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem. She made her husband Guy of Lusignan co-ruler by her authority, raised a son & heir, King Baldwin V, & helped defend Jerusalem during Saladin's siege & launch the 3rd Crusade.
Real Roman Catholic Women retweeted
Meet MÉLISENDE (c. 1109-1161), Queen of Jerusalem & first of 5 female Crusader-kingdom rulers. Fending off her consort-husband & son's usurpation efforts, she governed capably, helped launch the 2nd Crusade, founded convents, & rebuilt & expanded the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
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Meet MAISIE WARD (1889-1975) of London & later New York, a forceful public lecturer, writer of many books (including biographies of Newman & Chesterton), co-founder with her husband Frank Sheed of the Sheed & Ward publishing house, & mother of 3, including writer Wilfrid Sheed.
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Meet CAROLINE CHISHOLM (1808-1877) of Northamptonshire. Wife of an East India Company officer, Catholic convert, & mother of eight, she founded a girls' school in Madras &, in Australia & England, philanthropically & politically aided Australia's poor immigrant families & women.
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Meet ST. MARIA BERNARDA BÜTLER (1848-1924). From a farming family in Aargau, Switzerland, she joined the Capuchin Sisters but in 1888 was called to Ecuador and founded the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Mary Help of Sinners. She died serving the poor in Colombia.
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Meet VEN. SATOKO KITAHARA (1929-1958) of Tokyo. She helped build Japanese airplanes during WWII, became a Catholic afterwards with the name Elizabeth Maria, labored among the sick & poor for years in Tokyo's Ants Village with a Conventual Franciscan friar, & died of tuberculosis.
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Meet MATILDA OF SCOTLAND (1080-1118), Queen Consort of King Henry I of England, several times regent, & mother of 2, she was famous for her piety, charitable projects for the poor & the sick, her promotion of education, & her strengthening of ties between the Crown & the Church.
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Meet ST. URSULA LEDÓCHOWSKA (1865-1939), a noblewoman educated by Sisters of Loreto who was expelled from Russia for Catholic efforts there, who worked ecumenically with Swedish Lutherans, who founded the poverty-relief-focused Grey Ursulines, & who promoted Polish independence.
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Meet BL. JUTTA OF SANGERHAUSEN (c. 1200-1260), a wife & mother of central Germany who, as a widow, devoted herself to the sick, lived apostolic poverty, & accompanied a relative who led the Teutonic knights to Chelmsee, where she founded St. George's Church & lived as a hermit.
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Meet LUISE HENSEL (1798-1876), daughter of a Prussian Lutheran minister, sister of artist Wilhelm Hensel, & a gifted religious poet who influenced the famous Romantic poet & novelist Clemens Brentano with her verses. Brentano supported her conversion to Catholicism after his own.
