Saint Catherine of Genoa

Saint Catherine of Genoa, born Caterina Fieschi, was a laywoman of Genoa, a wife and later a widow, and a mystic who spent most of her life serving the sick in the Pammatone hospital. She is known above all for her teaching on purgatory. The Church commemorates her on September 15, the day of her death.

She was born in Genoa in 1447, the youngest of the five children of Giacomo Fieschi and Francesca di Negro, of a distinguished Genoese family. At thirteen she wished to enter a convent, but the nuns would not accept her because she was too young. At sixteen she was given in marriage to Giuliano Adorno. The marriage proved difficult: her husband was hot-tempered, extravagant, unfaithful, and given to gambling. She sought consolation in society, but found no peace there.

The turning point came on March 20, 1473. As she knelt for confession in the church of Saint Benedict at the monastery of Our Lady of Grace, she felt, as she herself wrote, that God’s love had wounded her heart, and at the same time she saw her own wretchedness clearly. She broke off her confession and went home, and a few days later she made a confession of her whole life. She expressed her resolution in the words “No more world, no more sins.” From then on she lived in penance and prayer and received Holy Communion every day, which was rare in her time. For about twenty-five years she had no spiritual director.

Catherine devoted herself to the sick, first in their homes and then in the Pammatone hospital, the largest in Genoa. There she performed the humblest services, and in time she was entrusted with running the hospital. She served at her own expense. According to the bull of canonization, during an epidemic she kissed a dying woman who, at her urging, was trying to pronounce the name of Jesus. She caught the disease and came close to death, and after recovering she returned to the sick.

Her example also transformed her husband. The spouses resolved to live in chastity, and Giuliano left his former life, took the habit of a Franciscan tertiary, and moved into the hospital to help his wife. He died in 1497. The bull relates that in his last illness his wife’s prayer restored his peace.

A circle of disciples and collaborators gathered around Catherine. She was reluctant to speak about her experiences; her words were written down by those close to her, and her later confessor, Father Cattaneo Marabotto, prepared the final version. The work was published in Genoa in 1551 in three parts: the Life, the Treatise on Purgatory, and the Dialogue between the Soul and the Body. She presented purgatory not as a place but as an inner fire in which God’s love purifies the soul grieving over sin.

She died in Genoa on September 15, 1510. Her body rests in the Genoese church of the Santissima Annunziata di Portoria. Clement X approved her cult in 1675, and Clement XII canonized her on June 16, 1737, and set her memorial on September 15. In 1943 Pius XII proclaimed her a co-patroness of hospitals in Italy.