Born in Thagaste (now Algeria, then in the Roman province of Africa) of a Christian family, Monica as a young girl was married to an older man Patricius. She converted her pagan husband, to whom she bore four children. She prayed and suffered for her oldest son Augustine’s conversion and was overjoyed by his baptism in 387. She died at age 55 in Ostia, just as Augustine was returning to Africa and to his monumental work for the Church. In the fifteenth century her relics were brought to Rome. – CTS New Daily Roman Missal 2012, p 2951; Vatican II Weekday Missal 1975, p 1747
