1447-1510
- The youngest of five children, born into aristocracy.
- When her father died, she was told by her brother to marry. She was 16.
- Her husband, Julian, wasted money, was violent, and was an adulterer which reduced them to poverty.
- She lived more like a hermit for the first part of their marriage (5 years) but relaxed her self-inflicted rules so much so that she became involved in her husband’s party life. After three years of living like this, she felt so empty that she ended up back in Church, praying and confessing. She had a strong sense of God’s will for her that changed her life. However, instead of becoming like either extreme, she found the happy middle-ground in spirituality, and started becoming known for her acts of generosity and kindness. She then prayed mightily that her husband join her.
- Soon, he had a conversion which greatly moved him to be nicer to not only Catherine but also to the poor and ill. He became a Third Order Franciscan and became her partner especially in the hospital work she did.
- Catherine became the director of a hospital when she was 43 years old. The plague at that time killed three quarters of the population of Genoa.
- When she was almost fifty, she was asked to write about her spiritual experiences and wrote Dialogue Between the Soul and the Body and Treatise on Purgatory.
- Info cited under “Authentic Femininity, Lived” tab
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