St. Catherine of Genoa

Mid-fifteenth century Genoa gave the world its most famous explorer, Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) and one of the Church's most revered mystics, Catherine Fiesca (1447-1510).

Catherine married at 16 and was Mrs. Guiliano Adorno for the next 47 years. One day, a ray of Divine light pierced her soul and in that moment revealed with equal clarity her own wretchedness and the awesome love of God.

From that time until her death at age 63 Catherine combined an intense interior life with a marked competence for handling temporal affairs.

After her husband's death in 1497, she became director of the vast Pammatone Hospital in Genoa, and for the last 13 years of her life devoted herself to the sick and dying with an intensity that has only finally been matched in our day by Mother Teresa of Calcutta.