Colleen Pressprich meant to write a book about saints who were friends with other saints when she came across Maria Rosa — the mother of Venerable Lúcia dos Santos, one of the three children who witnessed the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima.
“In most accounts, she’s portrayed as kind of mean and unbelieving and incredibly harsh,” Pressprich, a homeschooling mother of five, told Our Sunday Visitor. “But in her daughter’s writing … she’s intelligent and kind and empathetic and she loves to read — and I just kept thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, I want to be friends with this woman.'”
She decided to write a different book: “Real Moms of Real Saints,” available Aug. 8 from Pauline Books and Media. In it, she introduces 11 mothers of holy men and women who are either saints or on the path to sainthood. She presents these mothers as “real”: imperfect, approachable human women who hope for heaven not only for themselves but also for their children. Through the 180-page book, Pressprich also weaves in her own story and invites readers into her personal life as well as the lives of the mothers she features.
Some of these women are saints themselves, such as St. Monica, mother of St. Augustine, and St. Zélie Martin, mother of Servant of God Léonie Martin and St. Thérèse of Lisieux. The book’s forward also comes from the soon-to-be mother of a saint: Antonia Acutis, mother of Blessed Carlo Acutis.
Every chapter focuses on a mother (or two), centers around a theme and concludes with personal reflection questions.
Pressprich hoped that learning about these 11 mothers would inspire today’s mothers.
“I hope that it’s encouragement on their unique journey of motherhood,” Pressprich said of her book. “I hope that the message that they take away is that they are exactly the mother that their children need — and that the Lord, who has equipped all of these women that they’re reading about to raise great saints of the Church, will not fail to do the same for them.”
Pressprich, who has written for Our Sunday Visitor, is the author of several books published by OSV including an upcoming book called “OSV Kids Discover: The Pope.” She called her new book about the mothers of saints “a love story to all these different moms who stand in the shadows behind their children and who are, in so many ways, the foundation (of) some of our greatest saints.”
Diving into the real
Pressprich explained the meaning behind her new book’s title: “Real Moms of Real Saints.” First, she said, she wanted readers to encounter these mothers as real women.
“For me, it’s really important that these biographies of these moms not be hagiographies,” she said, defining a hagiography as an idealized biography that focuses on the best parts of a saint’s life.
What hagiographies often leave out, she said, is the humanity of a person.
“What I wanted to be able to do with these stories is to show that, yes, these women are incredible and courageous and strong of faith, but they’re also broken,” she said. “They also didn’t always get along with their kids. They also made some questionable choices. They also struggled with their faith.”
“Still, they succeeded in doing this thing that so many of us are trying to do and raise saints,” Pressprich added. “I wanted women to be able to find hope in their humanity.”
She also wanted to include the humanity of the saints these mothers raised.
“Padre Pio was kind of a grouchy, difficult child,” she said of St. Pio of Pietrelcina. “That’s OK too for us to say. We can love him in his difficult-ness. We can love our greatest saints in their imperfections too.”
Meeting Maria Rosa
Pressprich opens her book with the person whose story helped inspire it: Maria Rosa. While Pressprich traveled to Fatima as a high school student and called Our Lady’s apparitions important to her faith, she only recently got to know Maria Rosa.
“The more I researched, the more solace I found as a mom,” she said. “At the time, my husband was a resident, a medical resident, and so he was about to embark on a three-month rotation across the state — and so it was going to be me alone with three kids and pregnant.”
“I was so overwhelmed by that prospect,” she added. “I feel like (God) really gave me Maria Rosa’s example in that moment, in such a beautiful way.”
Learning from models of motherhood
These mothers, Pressprich said, became models of motherhood for her.
She also pointed to Venerable Margaret Bosco, mother of St. John Bosco. Pressprich researched Margaret at a time when she struggled with balancing children with different temperaments. In the book, she shares that three of her children are neurodiverse and another child has a genetic disorder that affects the brain.
“Our household is what we call neuro-spicy, because we have a lot of neurodiversity,” Pressprich said.
During her struggle, the Holy Spirit handed her Margaret, she said.
“In reading her constant love for each of her children — and the ways that she was confident enough to parent them each differently in exactly the way that they needed — kind of let me let go of some of my fear of not doing it right or of having to make sure everything was exactly the same,” she said.
Sharing practical tips
After researching these mothers, Pressprich shared practical tips for today’s Catholic mothers as they live out their vocation. She first echoed Acutis’ message in the forward.
“Which is, making sure that you’re grounding yourself and your families in the Eucharist,” she said.
She stressed the importance of attending Mass, even when it’s challenging.
“I just kind of want to encourage all women, all moms, to make sure that they’re rooting themselves in faith,” she said. “As moms, we take care of everybody else and everybody else’s needs.”
She revealed her own challenges while preparing for the new school year.
“I’m going to think about every single piece of curriculum we’re going to do, and I’m going to tailor it to my kids exactly — and I’m going to make sure that we are signed up for the extracurriculars and that everybody has the clothes for the change of season,” she said. “It can be really easy to forget that there’s preparations that my own soul needs.”
“As moms, we can’t pour from an empty cup,” she added. “Even if it’s five minutes, even if it’s 10 minutes, just find that prayer time for yourself — and then start to bring your children into it.”
She said that prayer doesn’t require big or fancy gestures.
“My family, when we drive past a Catholic church, we make the sign of the cross and we say, ‘Hey, Jesus, we love you,'” she said. “When we hear sirens, we say a quick prayer.”
“There’s all those little teeny tiny moments that, as moms, we are able to be present for,” she said. “Let’s use them.”
