Patroness of FranceOn January 6, 1412, Joan was born to pious parent of the peasant class, at the obscure village of Domremy, near the province of Lorraine. At a very age she heard voices: those of St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret.
At first the messages were personal and general. Then at last came the crowning order. In May 1428. Her voices told Joan to go to the King of France and help him reconquering his kingdom. For at that time the English King was after the throne of France, and the Duke of Burgundy (the chief rival of the French King) was siding with him and gobbling up ever more French territory.
After overcoming opposition from churchmen and courtiers, the seventeen-year-old girl was given a small army with which she raised the siege of Orleans on May 8, 1429. She then enjoyed a series of spectacular military successes, during which the King was able to enter Rheims and be crowned with her at his side.
In May 1430, as Joan was attempting to relieve Compiegne, she was captured by Burgundians and sold to the English when Charles and the French did nothing to save her. After months of imprisonment, she was tried at Rouen by a tribunal presided over by infamous Peter Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, who hoped that the English would help him to become Archbishop.
Through her unfamiliarity with the technicalities of Theology, Joan was trapped into making a few damaging statements. When she refused to retract the assertion that it was the Saints of God who had commanded her to so what she had done, she was condemned to death as a heretic, sorceress, and adulteress, and burned at the stake on May 30, 1431. She was nineteen years old. Some thirty years later she was exonerated of all guilt, and she was ultimately canonized in 1920 by Pope Benedict XV, making official what the people had known for centuries.
PRAYER: God, You chose St. Joan, Your virgin, to defend her country against its invader. Through her intercession enable us to work for justice and to live in peace. Amen.