St. Catherine of Genoa

St. Catherine of Genoa (1447 – 15 September 1510), born Caterina Fieschi into a noble Genoese family, was married at sixteen to Giuliano Adorno in an unhappy union with an unfaithful and spendthrift husband. After ten empty years, a sudden overwhelming experience of God's love during confession in 1473 converted her utterly, plunging her into a life of intense prayer, penance, and daily Communion — rare in that age.

She devoted herself to the care of the sick and dying at the great Pammatone hospital of Genoa, which she eventually administered, laboring heroically during outbreaks of plague; her once-wayward husband was himself converted and joined her in this service. Out of her mystical experience came the teaching preserved in the Treatise on Purgatory and the Spiritual Dialogue, profound reflections on the purifying fire of divine love that shaped Catholic understanding of Purgatory and were praised by later saints and theologians. She was canonized in 1737 and is a patron of hospitals and the sick.