Saint Catherine of Sweden

Catholic Saint

st.Catherine of Sweden-Daughter of St. Bridget of Sweden and cofounder of the Brigittines

Feast Day : March 24

Also known as: Catherine of Vadstena

Catherine of Sweden was born in 1330 or 1331 in Ulfasa, Sweden, one of eight children of St. Bridget. Like her mother, she married young; her husband, Eggared von Kurnen (Lyderrson), was a lifelong invalid. They took a vow of continence. When Bridget went to live in Rome in 1348, Catherine received her husband’s permission to follow her. He died while she was away. Catherine accompanied accompanied her mother to the Holy Land and elsewhere. She declined offers to remarry and stayed with her mother for 25 years. When her mother died, she returned to Sweden with her body to bury it at Vadstena, a monastery Bridget had founded. Catherine took on the task of directing her mother’s Order of the Holy Savior, or Brigittines. After several years, she returned to Rome for five years to work for her mother’s canonization.

In 1380 Pope Urban VI ratified the Brigittine rule. While in Italy, Catherine became friends with St. Catherine of Siena and almost accompanied her on a trip to the court of Joanna of Naples, a notoriously immoral queen. Joanna had brought about the moral disgrace of Bridget’s son, Charles, and St. Catherine of Vadstena could not bring herself to face the woman who had endangered her brother’s soul. She returned to Sweden at the outbreak of the Great Western Schism. Catherine returned to Vadstena before her mother was canonized. Her health failed, and after a painful illness she died peacefully at Vadstena. She was never formally canonized, but Pope Innocent VIII (r. 1484–92) confirmed her cult. Her feast is observed in Sweden and in the Brigittine Order. A chapel in the Piazza Farnese in Rome is dedicated to her. Catherine is credited with raising the dead on at least two occasions. One case concerned a man who fell from a coach and was run over; another was a man who fell from a roof and was badly mangled. Both were declared dead, and Catherine touched them and restored them to life and health.