Birgitta Birgersdotter died in Rome in 1373, having gone there in 1349 and never returned. Her daughter Katarina brought her bones north the following year, to the small town on the eastern shore of Lake Vättern where Birgitta had planned a monastery she did not see built.
The plan was her own, set down in her Revelations: a double house of sisters and brothers under an abbess, sixty nuns and twenty-five men. The monastery was founded on the royal estate she had been given, the church was built for it, and the order she wrote into being took her name. Vadstena is the mother house of the Bridgettines and the reason a Swedish town on a lake is a place of Catholic pilgrimage.
What a pilgrim finds now is divided. The abbey church holding the relics belongs to the Church of Sweden and has since the Reformation. The Catholic community is the Bridgettine convent of Pax Mariae a few hundred metres away on the shore, where sisters keep the office and take in guests. Both are part of the visit.
📜 History & Spiritual Significance
Birgitta Birgersdotter was born to a noble family of Uppland around 1303, married Ulf Gudmarsson, bore eight children, and served at the Swedish court. After her husband's death she began to receive the visions she dictated as the Revelations, and in them she was given the rule of a new order. She left Sweden in 1349 for Rome, partly to seek papal approval for it, and stayed. She made her last pilgrimage across the Mediterranean to the Holy Land between 1371 and 1372. She died in Rome on 23 July 1373.
Her bones were carried back to Vadstena in 1374 and placed in a relic casket. Her daughter Katarina, who had gone to Rome to be with her and who pressed her mother's cause afterwards, became the first abbess in all but name. The formal translation of the relics into the monastery church took place in 1394.
Boniface IX canonised Birgitta on 7 October 1391. The Western Schism had delayed the process, and the canonisation was confirmed again by later popes for the same reason. Katarina's own canonisation process held hearings between 1475 and 1477, and her remains were placed in the relic shrine in 1489.
The monastery church was built through the second half of the fourteenth century and consecrated in 1430. It is a hall church of pale limestone, wide and low and deliberately plain: Birgitta's rule prescribed a church "of plain construction, humble and strong", and what stands answers that description rather than the soaring fashion of the age.
The Reformation reached Sweden in earnest at the Västerås riksdag of 1527, and the dissolution of Vadstena was slow rather than sudden. The brothers' house went first. The sisters were allowed to remain and dwindle; the last nun of the medieval community in Sweden, Karin Johansdotter, died after 1605. The church passed to the Lutheran parish, and the relic shrine remained in it.
The reliquary in the church is not a simple thing. It holds two skulls and twenty-three other human bones, and scholarship accepts that they come from more than one person and that some are not from Birgitta or Katarina at all. What can be said is that the shrine has been venerated as theirs since the fourteenth century, and that examination has not ruled out that some of the bones are.
Bridgettine life returned to Vadstena in the twentieth century. The convent of Pax Mariae was founded on the lake shore and is the Catholic house at Vadstena, in the Diocese of Stockholm.
On 1 October 1999 John Paul II proclaimed Birgitta of Sweden, Catherine of Siena and Teresa Benedicta of the Cross co-patronesses of Europe, joining Benedict of Nursia and Saints Cyril and Methodius, who already held the title.
☩ Pilgrimage Sites in Vadstena
Vadstena Abbey Church
Vadstena klosterkyrka
The church Birgitta specified and did not live to see, consecrated in 1430: a wide Gothic hall of pale grey limestone under a steep roof, its interior light and unusually bare, holding medieval sculpture along its walls. The reliquary of Birgitta and Katarina stands in the church, and beside it a fifteenth-century wooden figure of Birgitta at her writing desk. The building belongs to the Church of Sweden, and Catholic pilgrims are received in it as visitors rather than as the congregation.
Saint Bridget's Convent Pax Mariae
Sankta Birgittas kloster Pax Mariae
The Bridgettine convent on the shore of Lake Vättern, a few minutes' walk from the abbey church, and the Catholic community at Vadstena. The sisters keep the daily office in their own chapel, which is open to those who come to pray it with them, and they run a guesthouse for pilgrims alongside it. This is where a Catholic pilgrim finds Mass and the order Birgitta wrote into being.
Vadstena Pilgrim Centre
Pilgrimscentrum Vadstena
The house that receives pilgrims arriving on foot and organises the routes that end here. Vadstena is the goal of several waymarked Swedish pilgrim paths, and the centre is where walkers are met, stamped and given a bed or directions to one. It is run by the Church of Sweden and works ecumenically.
Sancta Birgitta Monastery Museum
Sancta Birgitta Klostermuseum
The museum in the monastery precinct, in the oldest surviving secular building in Sweden, holding material on Birgitta, on the Revelations and on the medieval double monastery. It gives the ground plan of what the abbey was before the Reformation took it apart.
🕯️ Annual Feast Days & Celebrations
Feast of Saint Birgitta — 23 July
Birgitta's death day, and her feast in the general Roman calendar since the reform of 1969. It is the principal day at Vadstena, kept by the Bridgettine sisters with a solemn liturgy and by the abbey church with its own service, and the town fills for it.
Feast of Saint Birgitta in Sweden — 7 October
The Catholic Church in Sweden keeps Birgitta on 7 October, the anniversary of her canonisation in 1391. A pilgrim planning a visit around her feast should check which calendar the community they are visiting follows: the two dates are both hers, and both are kept at Vadstena by different communities.
Feast of Saint Katarina of Vadstena — 24 March
Birgitta's daughter, who brought her mother's bones home and whose own relics share the shrine.
🛏️ Where to Stay
Birgittasystrarnas Gästhem (pilgrim accommodation) (0.1 km) — The Bridgettine sisters' own guesthouse, a few steps from the convent and the abbey church on the lake shore. Plain rooms, quiet by design, for pilgrims who want the silence rather than hotel comfort. Bookings are handled for the sisters by the Klosterhotel next door. Website
Vadstena Klosterhotel (hotel) (0.2 km) — Inside the medieval monastery precinct, in the buildings of the old abbey itself, with a garden running down toward the lake. The closest ordinary hotel to the church, and the one that handles the sisters' guesthouse bookings. Website
Hotell Dahlströmska gården (B&B) (0.4 km) — A small guesthouse in an old town house a short walk east of the abbey church, in the lanes of the old town. Website
27ans Nattlogi (B&B) (0.3 km) — A few rooms on the main street of the town centre, between the abbey precinct and the castle. Website
🚗 Getting There
By Air: Stockholm Arlanda (ARN) and Göteborg Landvetter (GOT) are the nearest international airports, each around 250 km away. Linköping (LPI) is closer at about 60 km with domestic connections.
By Train: There is no railway station at Vadstena. The nearest stations are Motala, about 15 km north, and Mjölby, about 30 km east, both on the Swedish national network, with bus connections onward.
By Bus: Regional buses run to Vadstena from Motala, Mjölby and Linköping.
By Car: Vadstena lies off the E4 between Jönköping and Linköping, on the eastern shore of Lake Vättern.
On Foot: Several waymarked Swedish pilgrim routes end at Vadstena, and the Pilgrim Centre receives walkers arriving on them.
📚 Further Reading
Birgitta of Sweden. Life and Selected Writings (Paulist Press, Classics of Western Spirituality) — Birgitta's own writings in English alongside the medieval life, including the material in which she set out the rule of her order.
🎥 Recommended Videos
Vadstena kloster och Pilgrimscentrum — The monastery precinct and the pilgrim centre, in Swedish.
Impressions from a pilgrimage to Vadstena — A pilgrim's own account of walking to Vadstena, in English.
🔗 Useful Links
Saint Bridget's Convent Pax Mariae — The Bridgettine sisters' own site, with the office and the guesthouse.
Vadstena Abbey Church — The Church of Sweden parish that holds the abbey church and the relic shrine.
Pilgrimscentrum Vadstena — The pilgrim centre, the walking routes and how to arrive on foot.
Sancta Birgitta Klostermuseum — The monastery museum in the abbey precinct.
🧭 Nearby Pilgrimage Destinations
Vadstena is far from the other guides on this site: the nearest, across the Baltic, is 468 km away. A pilgrim continuing from here is crossing a sea rather than a county.
Lębork (468 km) — The Polish town on the Camino to Santiago's northern reach, across the Baltic.
Žemaičių Kalvarija (501 km) — The Lithuanian calvary and its Way of the Cross through the hills of Samogitia.
Kirkkokari (512 km) — Saint Henry's Island in Finland, where the bishop who brought Christianity to the Finns was killed.
🪶 Closing Reflection
"Her move to Italy was a decisive step in expanding her mind and heart not simply geographically and culturally, but above all spiritually."