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She is born on April 22nd 1811 in a poor village of
central France, during a time characterized by:
- deep social and political changes
ü
violent opposition between revolutionary and monarchical
currents;
ü
extraordinary industrial transformation
ü
atrocious exploitation of child work
ü
complete abandon of education and health matters
ü
frenzy migration from rural areas to towns.
-
a radical change of mentality: the attention is now drawn to
personal profit and to acquiring a wider autonomy at a
religious level.
 She
comes from humble origins. In order of finding some work, her
father keeps moving from one place to another and Catherine
Gérine is soon forced to abandon school for helping her mother
taking care of her younger brothers; in fact she is the second
of seven children.
As a young girl she gets to know the Dominican lay movement
and so starts to be regularly present in it together with her
sisters. Shortly afterwards she joins the fraternity of
Chaudes-Aigues, a little site renowned for its thermal baths;
here, she accompanies, visits and takes care of sick people.
Now, whenever someone joined these lay fraternities it was
custom for this person to change his name of baptism and to
pick another one: so is for Catherine-Gérine who chooses to be
simply called Gérine.
During her long walks on the road to and from Chaudes-Aigues
she uses to stop inside a small sanctuary dedicated to Our
Lady where she likes to contemplate the “Piety”. Just in front
of this representation of Mary holding in her arms Jesus’
tortured and lifeless body, surrounded by silence and prayer,
Gérine’s heart is struck open by deep furrows of compassion
and she feels
 emerging
from her soul the desire of letting poor people become the
mean by whom she could lay down her life to her Lord.
In 1842 she moves to Toulouse where she founds the first
Dominican community of the Third Order, formed by several
women living together at the service of sick people, praying
and sharing St. Dominic’s spirituality. Notwithstanding all
obstacles that may be typical of every new reality’s erection
and beginnings, the communities begin to spread rapidly.
Assured and encouraged in her Dominican vocation by Fr.
Lacordaire, sensible to the revival of the Dominican Order in
France, Gérine will make of St. Dominic’s fundamental
experience the core of the inspiration that would stand at the
base of her communities and their apostolic mission.
 Since
1852 and once settled in Albi, she gradually applies herself
to giving form and organization to the Congregation of the
Dominican Sisters of Saint Catherine of Siena that will
finally receive its official acknowledgment in 1865; so Gérine
takes up the role of “guide and mother” for all the sisters
who join her family.
In just a few years’ time various new communities of sisters
are founded in Italy and Latin America.
Gérine wants her Congregation to look upon St. Catherine, a
XIVth century’s woman from Siena, belonging she too
to the Dominicans of the Third Order, as its “Companion and
Teacher”, because in this way all her daughters would be able
to draw, from the depths of Catherine’s life and writings, the
lymph capable of nourishing their essence of Dominican women
amidst the world.
On September 3rd 1879, due to historical and
ecclesiastical reasons, M. Gérine formally renounces to her
responsibility for the control and organisation of the
Congregation, presenting her resignation to the bishop of
Albi.
So, every day, all through eight long years, she experiments
on her very own flesh the mystery of the Cross. She takes it
upon her as an unconditioned act of faith. She ends her
earthly life in an almost utter solitude in Carcassonne on
December 31st 1887; nonetheless, this very
sufferance and seclusion will become the “wide open space”
through which God the Merciful will “provide” and “sow” his
Life in abundance.
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