Vadstena Abbey (Relics of St. Birgitta – Bridget of Sweden)

The Story

Vadstena Abbey, on the shore of Lake Vättern in Sweden, is the major shrine of St. Birgitta (Bridget) of Sweden, patroness of the country and co-patroness of Europe. The abbey was founded in 1346, when King Magnus Eriksson and Queen Blanche endowed the community that Birgitta had been inspired to establish. Birgitta (c. 1303–1373) was a noblewoman, wife, and mother of eight children — among them St. Catherine of Sweden — who after her husband's death gave herself wholly to prayer and works of mercy. According to the traditional account, she received extensive mystical revelations, later gathered and widely read across medieval Europe, and founded the Order of the Most Holy Savior, known as the Bridgettines. She spent her final decades in Rome, working for the renewal of the Church, and died there in 1373. In 1374 her daughter Catherine brought her relics home to Vadstena, where they were enshrined in the abbey she had founded. The great abbey church, consecrated in 1430 and often called the Blue Church, became the motherhouse of the Bridgettine Order and the spiritual heart of medieval Sweden. The Reformation brought monastic life at Vadstena to an end by the close of the sixteenth century, but the church and the shrine containing relics honored as St. Birgitta's remain. Today Vadstena is once again a place of pilgrimage. Bridgettine sisters returned to the town in the twentieth century, and pilgrims of many traditions come to pray at the shrine, making Vadstena a notable place of ecumenical encounter as well as Catholic devotion to one of the great mystics of the Middle Ages.

Church Recognition

St. Birgitta was canonized by Pope Boniface IX in 1391, and in 1999 St. John Paul II named her a co-patroness of Europe; her relics at Vadstena have been venerated since their solemn return from Rome in 1374.

Catholic Teaching

Birgitta's shrine speaks of the communion of saints (CCC 946–962) and the Church's approval of venerating the relics of the saints (CCC 1674); her life also shows that holiness flourishes in every vocation — marriage, motherhood, and consecrated life alike.

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Practical

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Pilgrims visit the medieval abbey church to pray at the shrine containing relics honored as St. Birgitta's, and the town is home to a Bridgettine convent and an active pilgrim center. Devotion peaks around her feast on July 23, a popular season for pilgrimage to Vadstena.

Go Deeper

Read the Revelations of St. Birgitta, the collection of her reported visions that shaped late-medieval piety, and St. John Paul II's apostolic letter Spes Aedificandi (1999) naming her co-patroness of Europe; on the communion of saints, see Catechism of the Catholic Church 946–962.