Franciscan footprints - St. Catherine of Genoa, Franciscan Third Order Secular

Catarinetta Fieschi born in Genoa in 1447. At thirteen years of age she asked to enter a convent but was refused admission due to her youth. When she was sixteen she was married to a nobleman named Julian Adorno and for this reason is sometimes called Saint Catherine Fieschi-Adorno.

Catarinetta's husband was pleasure-loving, quick-tempered and unfaithful. This was a great trial for her, and for a period of time she tried to drown her disappointment in a whirl of worldly pleasure.

In 1473 she visited the convent where her sister was a nun and there went to confession. That confession served as a turning point in her life. In her sadness and desperation she returned to God; and He now filled her soul with grace, making her realize her own sins and inflamed her heart with seraphic love.

Catarinetta began to receive holy Communion daily and continued to do so for the rest of her life. She entered into a intense spiritual life, and after reforming herself, she converted her husband and then lost herself in service to the poor and the sick.

She fell asleep in the Lord on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in the year 1510. The body of Catarinetta was exhumed eighteen months after her death. Her body was found to be perfectly intact even though her burial shroud was damp and decayed.

Pope Clement XII canonized Saint Catherine of Genoa in 1737.