St. Catherine de Ricci is a famous mystical saint who was known for many miraculous and mysterious phenomena that are associated with her holiness, such as bilocation and the stigmata.

She was born in Florence in 1522 to a well-known family, and baptized with the name Alexandrina. She adopted the name Catherine when she joined a Dominican convent at the age of 13.

For several years, she suffered from a mysterious illness—efforts to care for her only made things worse. She bore the agonizing pain by meditating on the suffering of Jesus, and turned her discomfort into prayer.

Catherine was quickly promoted to leadership in her community, and when she was 30, she was appointed prioress of the convent until she died. She became well-known for her holiness and wisdom, and many people sought her out for advice, including princes, bishops, and three cardinals (all of whom became pope eventually).

Catherine was a mystic, and people described mysterious qualities about her. St. Philip Neri, for example, who was very cautious about validating visions, had in-person conversations with Catherine even though he was in Rome and she had never left Florence; witnesses confirmed her appearance.

She also frequently fell into ecstatic prayer—getting utterly lost in what she was experiencing in her meditation. In fact, once a week for 12 years, she fell into a trance during which she beheld and experienced Christ’s passion. She would lose consciousness every Thursday at noon and would only come to herself at 4 p.m. on Friday. During that time, she would move about, assuming the positions that Christ held during his passion (she held her hands out to be bound, just as he did when he was arrested in the garden, for example). During these raptures, she would take on the wounds of Christ according to the sequence in which he received them.

Crowds began to gather to witness her prayer and ecstasies, and it began to distract from the life of the convent. Catherine herself was embarrassed by all the attention. The community prayed that her wounds and experience would lessen in intensity so that they could go about the work of their common life together, and in 1554 the visions ceased.

Catherine was known to bear the stigmata—the wounds of Christ—in her hands, feet, side, and around her head. She is also known to have had a mystical ring appear around her finger: on Easter Sunday, 1542, she was visited by the Lord, and he gave her a gold ring with a diamond in it as a sign that she belonged to him. To the world, her finger appeared to have a hard ring just below the surface of her skin; at other times it looked like it had a red rash around it with peculiar markings. Catherine unequivocally saw and experienced it as a physical gold ring.

Apart from these fantastic mystical experiences, Catherine was holy in ordinary ways as well—she was a very healthy and whole person, virtuous, and a faithful administrator. She was an efficient worker and caring for the sick made her very happy.

Catherine died of natural causes, after a long illness, when she was 68 years old. She is patron saint of those who are sick, and her relics rest in the reliquary chapel in the Basilica. Her image comes from the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art on campus—it is an illustration by Luigi Gregori, the artist in residence who painted the murals in the Basilica.

St. Catherine of Ricci, you are the bi-locating mystic who is patron of sick people, pray for us!

Image credit: Luigi Gregori (Italian, 1819-1896), Saint Catherine of Ricci, mid-19th century, chalk on paper. Raclin Murphy Museum of Art: Gift of the Artist, AA2009.056.365.