Feast day: February 13

St. Catherine de' Ricci

Virgin, Mystic · 1522–1590

Patron of The sick

A Florentine Dominican prioress and mystic, famous in her own day for visions of Christ's Passion and for wise counsel sought by popes, cardinals, and ordinary folk alike.

Catherine de' Ricci was born in Florence in 1522 and entered a Dominican convent at Prato as a young girl — a community shaped by the memory of the reformer Savonarola, whom she venerated all her life. After a sickly and difficult start, she rose to govern the convent for many years as prioress, admired for her practical wisdom and warmth as much as for her holiness.

She is best known, however, as one of the most remarkable mystics of her age. For twelve years, beginning in 1542, she experienced every week a prolonged ecstasy of the Passion of Christ, from Thursday noon until Friday afternoon, during which she relived the sufferings of Jesus; she was also said to bear the marks of the stigmata.

Despite these extraordinary phenomena, Catherine remained a capable and grounded superior, keeping up a wide correspondence and counselling bishops, future popes, and ordinary people who sought her out. Her letters reveal a balanced, affectionate spirit beneath the mystical drama.

She died at Prato in 1590 and was canonized in 1746. Her incorrupt body still rests in the convent church she once governed.

For twelve years she experienced a weekly ecstasy of the Passion every Thursday into Friday — and yet ran her convent with brisk practical sense.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/03444a.htm