March 8 is International Woman's Day = a day to celebrate the achievements of women and to call for accelerating the equal dignity of women everywhere. The Church has had a lot to say about women and the gifts they bring to the world. Here are 5 inspiring quotes from saints about women and their "feminine genius."
Women think with their whole bodies and they see things as a whole more than men do. -- Dorothy Day
"Thank you, every woman, for the simple fact of being a woman! Through the insight which is so much a part of your womanhood you enrich the world’s understanding and help to make human relations more honest and authentic." – St. John Paul II
The world doesn't need what women have, it needs what women are. -- St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)
"When a man loves a woman, he has to become worthy of her. The higher her virtue, the more noble her character, the more devoted she is to truth, justice, goodness, the more a man has to aspire to be worthy of her. The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women.” – Ven. Fulton Sheen
Among the fundamental values linked to women's actual lives is what has been called a 'capacity for the other' ... Women preserve the deep intuition of the goodness in their lives of those actions which elicit life, and contribute to the growth and protection of the other. -- Pope Benedict XVI (not a canonized saint, but perhaps one day will be!)