Meet some of the real women of the Roman Catholic Church––saints, sinners, & sundry––from all eras. @RealRCMen's companion. By historian @bronwenmcshea.
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Joined December 2025
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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.
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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.
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Meet ST. ADELA OF NORMANDY (c. 1067-1137), daughter of William the Conqueror, wife of Stephen II of Blois, mother of King Stephen of England & at least 7 more, & Regent of Blois. Effective at governance, she also built & reformed monasteries & churches & was a nun her last years.
If you like the content here at @RealRCWomen, you may appreciate this new companion account, @RealRCMen (which I will *not* be reposting often here, just FYI!).
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One of the first women to chair a political party in Europe was a devout Roman Catholic whom the Nazis didn't like & who believed the postwar political order should be informed by Christian social teachings.
Meet HELENE WESSEL (1898-1969) of Hörde, a Catholic social worker & parliamentarian deemed "politically unreliable" by the Nazis. Chairing the Catholic Centre Party by 1949, she was the 1st woman to lead a German political party & was a pacifist opposed to Germany's rearmament.
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If you like my account @RealRCWomen, you may be interested in its new companion account, @RealRCMen. Here is my second post there:
Real Roman Catholic Women retweeted
We know as much as we do about this remarkable medieval Englishwoman -- who lived through some of the violence of the Crusades -- because her brother, Thomas of Froidmont, a Cistercian monk who had been in the service of St. Thomas à Becket, took the time to write her story: "Hodoeporicon et percale Margarite Iherosolimitane" ("The Itinerary and Perils of Margaret of Jerusalem").
Meet MARGARET OF BEVERLEY (d. c. 1215), an Englishwoman who, during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, got caught up in Saladin's Siege of Jerusalem in 1187 & helped defend the city until it fell. Enslaved by Muslims but freed, she explored Europe & became a Cistercian nun in France.
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I started @RealRCWomen 10 months ago, & it just reached 6,000 followers this evening. It's heartening to see so many men & women on this app showing interest in the history of diverse, real women of the Catholic Church through the ages. I'll try to keep providing good content!
