Catholic Trends

Aw, I feel sorry for St. Gertrude now - she doesn't have an 'of' to call her own.

Kris is colour-blind, I've known this for a while. Or at least, he's colour-confused.

I'm pretty sure they were red flowers, possibly faded to a kind of pink. So it must have been Theresa of Liseux.

In Fran We Trust

Well, there's various people that might be - Our Lady, for one, is associated with the cedar and pomegranate trees... mind you, brown robes are most often associated with Clare of Assisi, and you can find depictions of her with a flower.

Was she carrying roses? If so, then I suggest that it was probably St Theresa of Lisieux, called "The Little Flower" who said that she would drop down from Heaven a shower of roses after her death, and did just that.

Mary isn't always depicted in Blue, but in my experience it's usually blue or, if not, then white. I've never heard of her wearing brown and she certainly was not a nun.

Claire of Assisi is not the only nun to wear brown robes, I'm afraid. There's also Elizabeth of Schonau, Marguerite-Marie Alacoque, Pelagia, Rose of Lima, Teresa of Avila and Theresa of Lisieux, as I have suggested, to name but a very few. Equally many wearing black robes. The flowers are the giveaway. It's almost always Theresa of Lisieux carrying roses.

As for no saint being depicted in drag - that's because no-one wearing drag has yet done anything that saintly. I'm sure if one did, their image would enter into the iconography of the Church.

I think they were daffodils. The paint was a little faded, but they seemed yellow and had that droopy daffodil shape.

As for the drag iconography - you're absolutely right. It occurs to me that there's already a saint who is often depicted in other-sex clothes: Joan of Arc.

Doesn't really count as drag, but score 1 for the progressiveness of the Church anyways...

Of course, if they'd been lilies, it could have been Catherine of Siena or maybe Elizabeth of Hungary or perhaps Saint Gertrude.

Mind you, St. Joseph is often depicted with the lily, so if the nun in question had a beard, Kris, that would make sense given the church's name.

No, but she is known as St. Gertrude THE GREAT, which should be enough for anyone. This to distinguish her from... wait for it... St. Getrude of Nivelles.

Btw, Our Lady of Mount Carmel has brown robes. Hence her, or Ste. Therese, who was ein Carmelite nun.

I think Clare of Assisi's still in there, though I don't give much credence to Kris' ability to correctly identify either a nun or a daffodil.

Very harsh Mr C! If identifying a nun were easy, we wouldn't need to call the big guns from the Casey family, would we?

I can tell a rose from a daffodil, and a Joseph from a nun, and you can tell a great from an 'of Nivelles', so bully for all of us.

I reckon it was one of the Thereses. We all know there were loads of them and they got around. Bound to be.

Roses vary a fair amount, actually - and there are of course yellow ones. Ste. Therese is usually associated with red roses, but then I'm not sure I give much credence to Kris' ability to distinguish yellow from red.

And I, Mr Casey, am lacking confidence in your ability to tell a polite comment from a one-way ticket to WhoopassVille.

I'm sure I've seen Theresa of Lisieux with yellow roses. Claire of Assisi is usually not depicted with flowers, more often the blessed sacrament, a rosary or (in one picture) a cat(!). Theresa of Lisieux is ALWAYS depicted with roses, so it's a fairly safe bet it was her. She's also a fairly popular saint.

Wait, if it was daffodils, which are a Welsh symbol, maybe it was Saint David's mum?

Fran, with all the love in the world, you're wrong. You're so wrong. You're wearing-a-salmon-jacket-on-labor-day wrong.

Kris, my dear, does the church in question have a website?

It does. There are even photos of the place. Sadly none of them seem to contain our mystery nun.