St. Catherine of Genoa: Transformed to Love

Like many Catholics, I have my own personal litany of saints of whom I ask particular intercession. Each saint has a special connection to me or inspires me. When I think about St. Catherine of Genoa, what stands out is how God called her forth from a place often described as depression and led her into a relationship with Him that so filled her with love, she then reached out to those around her. For Catherine, nothing except God Himself can fill the deepest desire of the heart, and this is something I resonate with in my own experience.

St. Catherine was born in 1447 in Genoa, a city-state in northern Italy. Genoa had become a powerful city of trade and commerce during the Middle Ages due to its port and by 1400 had an estimated 100,000 people living there. In St. Catherine’s time, the Renaissance was well underway. Humanisim, art, politics, and immorality all played a role. This period, and the surrounding focus of people on indulgences and purgatory, provide a backdrop for what St. Catherine would teach about purgatory, which we will cover a bit further on.

Catherine came from a noble family; some of her relatives included popes and her father held a position of political power. However, as a child, Catherine had a particularly spiritual and prayerful disposition. When she turned thirteen, she desired to enter the convent but was rejected due to her age. In the years following, her family arranged for her marriage with the head of another powerful noble family in Genoa and at age sixteen, she was married to Guiliano Adorni. The next ten years, Catherine spent in a state that scholars describe as a state of depression.

Guiliano was a bad husband. He had a violent temper, an extravagant and irresponsible attitude towards money, and he was not faithful. For the first five years, Catherine quietly lived in submission, only leaving their lavish home for Mass. The next five years, she attempted to find consolation in the pleasures of society. These pleasures were not particularly sinful, but they did lead Catherine into an attitude of lukewarmness and failed to lessen her depression.

Then, one day, her sister invited her to go to confession. As Catherine knelt in the Confessional, she experienced a profound and overwhelming sense of both her own sinfulness and God’s love for her. The experience was so powerful, that she lost consciousness in the confessional and the priest left for a meeting and came back before she regained awareness again.

17th Century painting depicting St. Catherine of Genoa

This revelation changed everything. Catherine began to receive daily Communion, which was very unusual for laypeople at the time. She also began to work at a local hospital and care for the sick and diseased. Hospitals in the Renaissance period were very different from our present-day hospitals; they more often resembled hospice care and housed some of the most destitute individuals. Since Genoa served as a port and trading center, the hospital also would have seen outbreaks of the Black Plague.

Catherine’s reformed life impacted Guiliano, who eventually ruined them financially. Guiliano would become a third-order Franciscan and serve alongside Catherine at the hospital until he died in 1497. After his death, Catherine continued to serve at the hospital and eventually became the administrator and treasurer. She not only impacted her husband but also shared her teachings with several other women as well, who then followed her example in life.

Throughout all of this, she continually experienced a deep union in prayer with God. This union and experience of God’s love for her is what makes her a mystic. From this same unitive prayer, we receive from her teachings about Purgatory. Most of these teachings are found in the book, Treatise on Purgatory, which was written by one of the women who closely accompanied Catherine.

At the time of Catherine’s life, Purgatory was often viewed as a place of great pain and punishment. Many people were busy taking on penances either to lessen their own individual time in Purgatory or to lessen a loved one’s time in Purgatory. People often sought out indulgences because of the idea of punishment in Purgatory.

The Catholic Church, and St. Catherine, teach that Purgatory, though, is actually a place of joy and great hope. “No happiness can be found worthy to be compared with that of a soul in Purgatory except that of the saints in Paradise” (Treatise on Purgatory, Ch. 2). Unlike hell, which is permanent once a soul is there, Purgatory is temporary. The word itself comes from the Latin purgare, which means to cleanse. Thus, Purgatory is a place that cleanses the soul from sin.

St. Catherine offers the following perspective: “It is in this way that rust, which is sin, covers souls, and in Purgatory is burnt away by fire; the more it is consumed, the more do the souls respond to God, the true sun.” (Treatise on Purgatory, Ch. 2).

With this understanding of Purgatory, St. Catherine proposed that one could little by little begin Purgatory on earth if you are open to God, because life with God in heaven is a perfection and continuation of life with God begun on earth. In many ways, Catherine embodied this teaching in herself with mortifications and penances and ultimately a feverish illness that lasted ten years until her death in 1510. Her feast day is September 15th.

I often find that when I reflect on the lives of the saints, there is always one solid truth that exists at the heart of their stories. St. Catherine of Genoa is no different. Her life and conversion are undeniably rooted in a sincere experience of God’s love for her. It is from this transformative experience that she then reached out and loved others. While her story remains unique to her time, personality, and position in life, I find that we can all learn to act more in union with God.