CATHERINE OF RACCONIGI, BL.

Mystic; b. Racconigi, province of Cuneo, Piedmont, Italy, June 24?, 1486; d. Caramagna, Piedmont, Sept. 4,1547. Catherine was the youngest of seven children of a blacksmith. She worked as a weaver and distributed her wages to the poor. She loved solitude and contemplation and was vowed to virginity; she is known to have been favored with many mystical graces and prophecies as well as being privileged with the stigmata. From her Dominican confessor she received the habit of a tertiary on Dec. 22, 1513. Although she was esteemed and consulted by illustrious personages, she was also persecuted by the envious. When forced to take refuge in Caramagna, Catherine offered herself as a victim for sinners and for the maintenance of peace. Pius VII authorized her Mass and Office on April 9, 1808. She is commemorated in the Order of Preachers and in the dioceses of Turin and Mondovì, and is particularly venerated in Racconigi, where her house was made into an oratory and chapel in the Dominican church, in Caramagna, and in Garessio (Cuneo), where there is a chapel in her honor.

Feast: Sept. 4.

Bibliography: g. f. pico della mirandola and p. m. morelli, Compendio delle cose mirabili della beata Caterina da Racconigi (Chieri-Turin 1858). g. bonetti, Vita…. (Turin 1876). a. ferraris, Beata Caterina Mattei da Racconigi (Alba 1947). a. guarienti, La Beata Caterina da Racconigi (Alba 1964).

[i. venchi]