Saint Camilla Battista da Varano

Saint Camilla Battista da Varano was a Poor Clare in Camerino, a mystic, and the author of writings on the inner sufferings of Christ in his Passion. She served many times as abbess of the monastery that her father founded for her. The Church commemorates her on May 31.

She was born on April 9, 1458, in Camerino, in the Papal States. She was the natural daughter of Giulio Cesare da Varano, lord of the city, and of Cecchina. She grew up in her father’s palace under the care of his wife, Giovanna Malatesta, and received a careful education. When she was about eight or ten years old, after hearing a sermon by the Franciscan Domenico da Leonessa, she promised God that every Friday she would shed at least one tear over the Passion of Christ.

On March 24, 1479, the vigil of the Annunciation, she made a vow of chastity, and soon afterward she resolved to give herself entirely to Christ. Her father tried for a long time to dissuade her with flattery, threats, and even imprisonment, and he gave his consent only after two years. On November 14, 1481, Camilla entered the monastery of the Poor Clares in Urbino and took the name Battista. At the beginning of 1484, after her profession, she returned with eight companions to Camerino, to a monastery acquired by her father.

Her prayer centered on the sufferings that Jesus bore in his heart in Gethsemane and on Golgotha. She described them in the work “I dolori mentali di Gesù nella sua Passione,” which was printed in Naples in 1490 without her knowledge and without the author’s name. Saint Philip Neri valued it. For several years she went through a painful spiritual darkness, a time of God’s silence, and during that time she wrote her autobiography, “La vita spirituale,” in the form of a letter. She was first elected abbess when she was thirty-five.

The years 1501 and 1502 brought her heavy trials. Pope Alexander VI excommunicated her father, and the pope’s son, Cesare Borgia, seized Camerino by force. Sister Battista took refuge in Atri, in the Kingdom of Naples. During that time Cesare Borgia had Giulio Cesare and three of her brothers killed. She returned to Camerino after the death of Alexander VI in 1503. She never complained of these wrongs or spoke ill of those who had done them.

In 1505 Pope Julius II sent her to Fermo to establish a new community of Poor Clares there, and she stayed in that city for about two years. Later she also formed the community at San Severino. She wrote letters in defense of people condemned to death and of townspeople threatened by the ravages of war. She also wrote a treatise on purity of heart. She died in Camerino on May 31, 1524, during an outbreak of plague, at the age of 66.

The faithful began to venerate her immediately after her death, and in 1843 Pope Gregory XVI confirmed this cult, which had existed from time immemorial; this amounted to her beatification. Benedict XVI canonized her on October 17, 2010. He said then that at a time when morals in the Church had grown lax, she resolutely followed the path of penance and prayer, longing for the renewal of the Mystical Body of Christ.