"Saint Catherine of Genoa ...is an Italian Roman Catholic saint and mystic, admired for her work among the sick and the poor and remembered because of various writings describing both these actions and her mystical experiences. She was a member of the noble Fieschi family, and spent most of her life and her means serving the sick, especially during the plague which ravaged Genoa in 1497 and 1501. She died in that city in 1510. Her fame outside her native city is connected with the publication in 1551 of the book known in English as the Life and Doctrine of Saint Catherine of Genoa. She and her teaching were the subject of Baron Friedrich von Hügel's classic work The Mystical Element of Religion."--from Wikiped., July 2014.

"Catherine, who lived for 60 years and died early in the 16th century, leads the modern reader directly to the more significant issues of the day. In her life she reconciled aspects of spirituality often seen to be either mutually exclusive or in conflict. This married lay woman was both a mystic and a humanitarian, a constant contemplative, yet daily immersed in the physical care of the sick and the destitute. For the last five centuries she has been the inspiration of such spiritual greats as Francis de Sales, Robert Bellarmine, Fenelon, Newman and Hecker. Friedrich von Hügel's famous Mystical Element of Religion was a study of the spirituality of Catherine. Purgation and Purgatory is a collection of sayings on spiritual purification in this life and the next. The Spiritual Dialogue gives us a readable and coherent inner history of Catherine.--from amazon.com.