Catherine Benincasa is born on March 25^th 1347 –feast of the Annunciation– in the town of Siena (Italy), a marvellous jewel of architecture in the mild Tuscany landscape.

The year 1300 certainly represents one of the darker periods in the Church’s history; it is characterised by :

ü a great corruption within and outside the same Church, a lessening of the discipline; the Popes leave Rome and move the papal siege in the quieter town of Avignon, in the south-western part of France.
ü the authority of a great number of princes gets fragmented as they spend most of the time in being at war one against the other, almost all Italian towns are being involved in the battles in which more or less 1/3 of the European population looses its life.

Catherine’s father is a well known dyer and her mother is working much at home looking after her 25 children; Catherine, being the second-youngest daughter, as always happens in these cases, enjoyed special attentions from her family. But, however enjoyable, this caring will certainly not be able to hold up to the kind of attention that the Lord will later have towards her.

When she is six years old, she goes through a very particular spiritual experience that will mark her life definitely and forever: up in the sky, just above the church belonging to the Dominican friars, she has a vision of Jesus. This encounter, absolutely unexpected and free, introduces her in the world and in the boundless Mystery of God’s Love. Keeping in mind this extraordinary encounter, this superb vision, and totally quenched by this joy that she had received as a gift, Catherine will live her entire life in constant research and preaching of the Love she so much yearns and loves.

As a child and all through her teens Catherine spends much time by herself, praying and doing penance. Feeling more and more seized by the mystery of God’s Love, she endlessly contemplates Him in Jesus’ passion on the cross. Her mother’s strong opposition, as she did not understand what was going on with her daughter, gradually desists from being an obstacle and starts becoming the condition through which  she can clearly prove the authenticity of all the desires that the Lord had laid in her heart.

Strongly attracted by the Dominican spirituality, she obtains, at 16 years old and not without difficulties from her parent’s part and from the responsible of the “Mantellate”, to join this movement formed by lay women: finally, she here she is as a Dominican woman of the Third Order. Here she meets other women, most of them widows, who, while continuing to live in their private houses, dedicate themselves to prayer and to the care of the needy.

In this period Catherine notices that her the passion for penance and contemplation, to be lived in solitude, is getting stronger and stronger

Everyday more, our young “Mantellata” realizes that one of the best ways that a person has to tell God his Love consists in approaching and taking care of all those people who had fallen victims of a “greedy and frenzy affection” towards themselves. Catherine understands clearly that selfish love is one of the worst sins that a person can commit: it pervades man’s heart –hers, too- producing sour fruits called poverty, division, violence, wars and death.

So Catherine sets off journeying all around her town, she goes visiting prisoners, she reaches the most dangerous quarters, looking for anyone who may be suffering, anyone who may lay forgotten, or alone in hospital: she tenderly cures a prostitute whom no one wanted to approach for the smell oozing from her wounds; in spite of the crowd’s menacing cries she accompanies –remaining at his side with her presence and words- a man condemned to death; she fearlessly faces an epidemic of plague, providing for medicines and giving comfort to the dying.

Moreover, we cannot avoid mentioning the great number of letters that she sent to people belonging to all kinds of social levels in which she advised, gave comfort, scolded and urged them all: it is with reason that Catherine is called “Mum”.

Trained, permeated and urged by God’s Love that dwelt in her “interior cell”, Catherine’s passion for her neighbour grows and directs her gaze afar.
She lets herself be questioned by the entire political, economic and social situation of her time, and she realizes that:

ü the church, torn apart by wars and mixed up in conspiracies with temporal power, has drifted away from Rome and its only concern regards its own particular interests,
ü civil authorities are involved in fratricidal conflicts and their only desire consists in gaining power and earning money.

Catherine realizes that in this society of hers “people do not  know each other do not love the Truth”. So, without hesitating, she sets off from Siena to become “ambassador of Peace and Truth” in front of ecclesiastical and political authorities. Catherine, a willing and fragile woman all in once, manages to travel to the biggest towns of northern Italy and France; after so many efforts and troubles, she succeeds in convincing the Pope to come back to Rome even if for a brief period.

Finally, we can easily understand why this young woman, so distant from all ordinary traits that characterise the women of her time, has always been an object of marvel, often of scandal, but also of much pride and admiration. At the beginning, the very same Dominican friars remained rather doubtful about her; it would only be at the cost of a difficult relation that Catherine would finally enjoy the support and help that she needed from them, in order of being able to fulfil her extraordinary Dominican vocation.

Catherine’s passion for God and for this wounded and confused world, born from the experience that “God is Love and He just wants all men to be saved”, finds an echo in many other peoples’ hearts as they start gathering together to form the “Merry Brigade”. This community is made of men and women belonging to all kinds of social levels who, thanks to Catherine, know, live and preach the Good News.

After having entrusted to the “Dialogue” here profound knowledge of the divine Mystery as it is revealed in Jesus, consumed by an unending offer of herself to that same Mercy whom she contemplated and lived, Catherine ends her life in Rome on April 29^th 1380, without seeing the reconciliation of the church, still divided by the great western schism, but laying down her life for that very same Church for which she had always so much battled and loved..