Saint Catherine of Genoa

Catholic Saint

st.Catherine of Genoa-Extraordinary mystic

Feast Day : September 14

Catherine of Genoa was born in 1447 in Genoa, Italy, to Jacopo Fieschi and Francesca di Negro, both members of illustrious families. The Fieschi family boasted two popes, Innocent IV (r. 1243–54) and Adrian V (r. 1276). Jacopo became the viceroy of Naples. A delicate child with a rich inner life, Catherine began to do penance at age eight by replacing her soft bed with straw and a wooden block for a pillow. She felt intense physical pain whenever she gazed upon her favorite image of Jesus, “La Pietà.” At age 12 she began to pray earnestly, and at age 13 announced her desire to become a nun at the convent of Our Lady of Grace, along with her sister Limbania. The convent turned her away because of her age, however. When Catherine was 16, her parents married her against her wishes to a young nobleman, Giuliano Adorno, who proved to be unfaithful, mean-tempered and a spendthrift. Catherine spent five years in depressed misery and another five years trying to amuse herself in various activities. Around 1473 she had a life-changing mystical experience.

Urged by her sister nun to go to confession on the day following the feast of St. Benedict, Catherine complied but without enthusiasm. When she knelt in the confessional, she felt herself pierced by a burning ray of divine love that swept her into an ecstasy. She felt united with God and purged of her miseries. The confessor was not witness to this, having been called out of the booth. When he returned, she could only murmur that she would leave her confession for another time. She went home, on fire and wounded with the love of God, and closed herself in her room to weep and sigh. Thereafter, she often beheld a vision of Jesus nailed to the cross. Catherine made her general confession and felt cleansed of her sins. For nearly 14 months, she remained in an exalted state of consciousness. She experienced intense contrition, self-hatred and total absorption in Christ, who showed her his flaming Sacred Heart. In her contrition, she would lick the earth with her tongue, not knowing what she was doing. So complete was her mystical union that she felt her own heart die within her and proclaimed, “I live no longer, but Christ lives in me.” Catherine’s interior state remained profoundly changed for the rest of her life; she was sustained by a burning inner fire.

She had many encounters with Christ and was taken into heaven to see the realms of the angels. For four years, she quit the world as much as possible. She imposed upon herself strict mortification and penance. She wore hair cloth and ate no meat or fruit. She slept on “sharply pointed things” and kept her eyes cast downward. She spoke to others as little possible and in as low a voice as possible. She spent six hours a day in prayer in such states of intensity that she seemed like one dead to others. She yearned for death. For 23 Lents and Advents, she was unable to eat, and could consume only a glassful of water, vinegar and pounded salt. Because of these and other measures, Catherine was often seriously ill. She received the conventional medical treatments, which included bloodletting. This especially was believed to relieve her inner fire. In spite of her self-inflicted sufferings, Catherine managed to do volunteer work in hospitals and among the poor. Reduced to poverty herself thanks to Giuliano, she was given funds to aid others by the Ladies of Mercy. In her volunteer work, Catherine sought suffering for herself as well. She cleaned houses of “the most disgusting filth,” often putting it into her own mouth in order to overcome the disgust it produced. She took home clothing covered with filth and vermin and cleaned them, returning them to their owners. Remarkably, she was never affected by what she touched.

Catherine became manager and treasurer of the largest hospital in Genoa. Somehow she managed to convert her wayward husband, who became a Third Order Franciscan and agreed to live with her in continence. Giuliano died in 1497. Beginning around 1491, Catherine began to suffer from a mysterious malady that doctors did not know how to treat. It did not seem to be either physical or spiritual; it left her greatly debilitated. In 1493, Catherine nearly died of the plague. She recovered, but remained permanently weakened. Catherine followed her own inner guidance and would not submit to the spiritual direction of anyone else. She often told others that she could not put into words what she experienced. In 1495 a Father Marabotti became her spiritual adviser, and helped her to compile her memoirs in her Life and Doctrine. In 1509 her food intake, which had never been good, declined drastically; she ate in a week what most people would eat in a day. That soon dropped to nothing more than small quantities of broth. Nonetheless, Catherine attracted many visitors, who saw perfection in her. She touched others with her “burning words of divine love.” But as her strength ebbed, she was able to utter only phrases and words, such as “Love of God” and “charity, union and peace,” and finally just “God.” She suffered violent attacks in which she would seem to writhe as if in flames of fire, and would cease breathing. She felt her heart wounded with a new ray of divine love, which caused more severe bodily pain. On January 10, 1510, she lost sight and speech, and made signs to be given last rites.

She recovered her senses but continued to suffer in agony. By May doctors said they could do nothing for her and that her affliction was “supernatural.” Her last months were spent in excruciating pain. She could not tolerate taking any food or liquid. On September 12, black blood flowed from her mouth and her body was covered with black stripes. She bled violently again on September 14. That evening, she indicated she would take her Communion in heaven. She died uttering, “Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.” She was seen by several persons ascending to heaven clothed in white and on a white cloud. Catherine’s body was interred in the hospital of the Pammatone, the largest hospital in Genoa, where she had done much of her work. It was disinterred nearly a year later when it was discovered that a conduit of water ran behind the tomb. Though the wood coffin was decayed and filled with worms, the body was untouched and incorrupt, and appeared to have been dried out. Her body was put on public display for eight days, and pilgrims claimed to be cured. Prior to her death, Catherine had instructed that her heart be examined after death to see if it had been consumed by divine love, but this was not done. The body was placed into a marble sepulcher in the hospital.

It was moved to various locations in 1551, 1593 and 1642. In 1694 it was moved to a glass-sided reliquary placed high on an altar in a church built in her honor in the quarter of Portoria, Genoa. Catherine’s body was examined by physicians in 1834 and on May 10, 1960. Though brown, dry and rigid, her relic was determined to be free of embalming or any treatment for preservation. Catherine wrote Spiritual Dialogue between the Soul, the Body, Self-Love, the Spirit, Humanity and the Lord God and Treatise on Purgatory, two mystical works that proved her sanctity for canonization and remain respected today. In her writings, Catherine exhorts people to seek nothing less than complete union with God. Without the grace of God, she said, man is nothing more than the devil. She said the human intellect could not comprehend the true nature of pure love, which is incapable of suffering.