Saint Colette of Corbie

Nicolette Boellet was born in Corbie, in Picardy, France, on January 13, 1381, the long-awaited only child of a carpenter at the local abbey. Orphaned at seventeen, she tried life with the Beguines and other communities, then had herself enclosed as an anchoress beside the church of Corbie. There she came to believe that God was calling her to restore the original poverty of the Poor Clares.

In 1406 she was received as a Poor Clare and given authority to reform the order. Despite fierce opposition, she traveled across France, Savoy and Flanders, reforming existing convents and founding seventeen new ones; her nuns, the Colettines, lived barefoot, in strict poverty and joyful prayer. She also influenced the Franciscan friars and supported efforts to end the Western Schism. She died in her monastery at Ghent on March 6, 1447, and was canonized in 1807. Many women have asked her help in conceiving and carrying a child.

Colettine monasteries in France, Belgium, Spain and Latin America keep her feast with special prayers. Couples hoping for a child and expectant mothers often ask for her intercession, since she herself was born to an older mother after long prayer.