Why did St. Athanasius the Apostolic consider St. Syncletica to be an angel?

The fragrance of her life began to spread throughout Alexandria, to the extent that many young women came to visit her. Some wanted to just see her and take her blessing, while others came seeking solutions to their problems. It was normal for some of them to be influenced by her example and end up staying with her and sharing her life of meditation and asceticism.

Syncletica lived her life of fasting, asceticism, and prayer while still living in her parents’ house until they departed to heaven. Then, she distributed her money on the poor, and took her blind sister and went to the family’s cemetery where she lived for a few years, during which she increased her fasts, prayers, and meditations.

She left the family’s cemetery, taking her peers with her to go and live together in a building outside the city. She devoted her life to serving them as a role model and as a bright image of the teachings she preached, so much so that her peers loved her and gave her their loyalty and devotion.

St. Athanasius the Apostolic wanted to make known the greatness of the holiness of this devoted nun, so he personally wrote her biography. Thus, he wrote the biography of St. Anthony as the father of the monks and the biography of St. Syncletica as the mother of nuns.