Saint Catherine was born in Genoa, Italy, on April 5, 1447, the youngest of five children. His father was Giacomo Fieschi, a member of an illustrious family that gave the Church two Popes, Innocent IV and Adrian V. Catherine’s deep inner life blossomed at the age of thirteen. She felt attracted to the convent, but obeying her parents, she married in 1463 at sixteen. Her husband was Giuliano Adorno, from a Genoese family as wealthy and prominent as hers.
Catherine’s husband, however, proved to be an unruly man. He squandered the family assets on gambling and mistreated her, making her unhappy. For many years, Catherine abandoned her vocation and led the life of a woman who sought refuge from her bitterness in the world’s entertainments.
The Catholic philosopher and essayist Ernest Hello makes an observation worthy of reflection that applies to the lives of many souls called to holiness. These unfortunate people must not be discouraged when they seem to be on the edge of the abyss. “There is in the life of contemplative saints a series of false starts that are absolutely unintelligible to us. They hesitated, groped, made mistakes, advanced, retreated, changed paths. They seem to have wasted time. The unfathomable streets that attract them seem to be of infinite length. One wonders why the Spirit who guides them does not immediately show them the way, short and straight, to the goal. Why? That question is unanswered.”
After years of error, a sudden ray of sunshine descended on Catherine’s confused soul. On March 20, 1473, she went to the Church of St. Benedict to confess. Kneeling before the priest, “she received,” as she wrote in the third person, “a wound in her heart, of an immense love of God.” At the exact moment, she saw her miseries and defects clearly. Yet, simultaneously, she perceived the immensity of divine goodness. She almost fainted. It was the first of numerous ecstasies or mystical raptures that would be repeated later. Catherine made a decision that guided her for the rest of her life. She expressed it in the words: “No more world, no more sins.” She felt the horror of sin and understood the beauty of divine grace. She was only twenty-six years old. Nonetheless, she abandoned herself so totally into the hands of the Lord that she lived for the next twenty-five years—as she writes— “without the means of any creature, instructed and governed by God alone” (Book of the Wonderful Life and Holy Doctrine, pp. 117-118).
The first effect of this spiritual turning point was the conversion of her husband, Giuliano, who entered the Franciscan Tertiaries. They had no children. By mutual agreement, they left their large home and retired to a much more modest house near the hospital of Pammatone, the largest hospital complex in Genoa. There, Caterina began to serve as a scullery maid. She later became the director, a rare office for a woman then. Her existence was, therefore, totally active despite the mystical graces she received and the depth of her interior life.
A group of faithful disciples formed around her, among whom the Genoese notary Ettore Vernazza stood out. He was married with three daughters but, like Catherine, chose to follow the Lord exclusively by serving the sick. Together, they founded the Company of Divine Love in Genoa in 1497. This organization was the first of a spiritual network of confraternities, which would soon cover Italy. The association was composed primarily of lay people, who secretly dedicated themselves to a fervent apostolate for the poor and the sick, but above all, to draw life from the union of hearts. They aimed to promote “divine love, that is, charity.”
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Among the trials through which God put Catherine through was that she often could find no one who could understand and advise her. In the last years of her life, she suffered an extraordinary illness for which doctors could not find a remedy. Her suffering was a continuous martyrdom. On each saint’s feast, she felt all the pains that the saint had suffered. As time passed, she could not take any food other than Holy Communion. She received the Sacrament daily, an uncommon practice at the time.
Her “sweet and sweet and beautiful” death came on September 15, 1510, when she was 63 years old. She was buried in the Church of the Santissima Annunziata in Genoa, now known as the Church of Santa Caterina da Genova. Pope Clement X beatified her in 1675 and Pope Clement XII canonized her in 1737. In 1943, Pius XII declared her secondary patroness of Italian hospitals.
Her biography, Life, the Spiritual Dialogue and the Treatise on Purgatory summarize her profound beliefs and practices. Speaking to her spiritual children, she said, “If I speak of love, I seem to insult it; so far are my words from reality. Just know that if a drop of what my heart contains fell into Hell, Hell would be changed into Heaven.”
The spiritual influence of Saint Catherine of Genoa and the Companies of Divine Love was more profound than she could ever have imagined. The Company of Divine Love of Rome belonged to and was nourished by Saint Cajetan of Thiene. He founded the Theatines, the first religious institute of priests who, while professing religious vows, did not live a conventual life. Its members carried out their apostolate in the world. By the sixteenth century, the Barnabites of Saint Anthony Zachariah, the Somaschans of Saint Jerome Emiliani and the Ministers of the Sick of Saint Camillus de’ Lellis were inspired by the Theatines model of religious life. Inspired, these apostolates inaugurated within the Church the practices of “regular clerics.” Their common lives were characterized by the search for evangelical perfection, which they found in the balance between contemplative and active lives.
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The rules of the regular clerics provided that they could not be “beggars.” That meant they could not ask for financial support but could only live on what they received without asking. Within their congregations and in others, this practice developed into abandonment to Divine Providence, a distinguishing feature of Italian spirituality. Living at the dawn of the sixteenth century, Catherine of Genoa, the saint of Divine Love, can be considered the spiritual mother of an invisible current of holiness that saved Italy from the poisons of humanism and Lutheranism. It has continued to reverberate through the following centuries and up to the present day.
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Author: Roberto de Mattei
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