Bl. Caterina Moriggi

Caterina Moriggi was born around 1437 in Pallanza, on Lake Maggiore. In about 1450 she joined a group of women living as hermits in caves on the Sacro Monte above Varese, a hill with an old shrine to Mary.

She gradually formed them into a stable community. In 1474 Pope Sixtus IV approved them as a monastery under the Rule of St Augustine. Caterina was elected its first abbess in 1476 and died two years later. She was beatified in 1769, and her body rests in the shrine on the Sacro Monte.

Caterina Moriggi was beatified in 1769.

Beatification allows public veneration, usually in a particular region or religious family. Canonization extends it to the whole Church.