At Somasca near Bergamo in Italy, Blessed Caterina Cittadini, virgin, who, orphaned of her parents from her earliest childhood, became a humble and wise teacher and devoted herself wholeheartedly to the education of poor girls and to Christian doctrine, whereby she founded the Institute of the Ursuline Sisters of Somasca.
Lifespan: 1801–1857
Beatified: 29 April 2001 by Pope John Paul II
Memoria liturgica: 5 May
“To be of Christ, so as to bring others to Christ”
Caterina Cittadini was born in Bergamo on 28 September 1801 to Giovanni Battista and Margherita Lanzani, and was baptized on 30 September in the parish church of Sant’Alessandro in Colonna. In 1808, having lost her mother and been abandoned by her father, Caterina and her younger sister Giuditta, born in 1803, were received into the orphanage of the Conventino in Bergamo. There, under the guidance of the prior Don Giuseppe Brena, she lived an intense Christian life that formed in her a robust faith, a deep trust in the Lord, an active charity, a tender devotion to Our Lady, and a strong sense of responsibility and diligence in the fulfillment of her duty. After obtaining her elementary teaching certificate, in 1823 she left the Conventino to move with her sister to the home of their priest-cousins Giovanni and Antonio Cittadini at Calolzio, a parish of the Diocese of Bergamo.
The sisters remained there for about two years, finding in their priest-cousins a reliable spiritual guide and a pastorally active environment. Caterina was appointed, first as a provisional teacher and in 1824 as a permanent teacher, at the municipal girls’ school of Somasca, a hamlet of the municipality of Vercurago near Calolzio. Together with her sister Giuditta, she grew in the desire to enter a religious congregation.
They accordingly sought counsel from Don Giuseppe Brena, their spiritual director at the Conventino in Bergamo, who indicated to them that God’s will was for them to remain at Somasca: they themselves would be the founding stones of a new religious family in that small village, already hallowed by the holiness of Saint Jerome Emiliani.
In 1826, together with her sister Giuditta, she moved permanently to Somasca, renting a house there. In October of that year she purchased a building which, fitted out and enlarged through further acquisitions, would become the seat of a boarding school and subsequently of the religious institute of the Ursuline Sisters.
At Somasca, Caterina found a reliable guide for her spiritual life in the Somascan Clerics Regular, founded by Saint Jerome Emiliani, whom she had venerated as a “father” since her orphaned childhood and whose example of charity and poverty she admired and sought to follow.
Her role as teacher drew her into the life of the small village of Somasca, where Caterina participated actively in parish life: she taught Christian doctrine, enrolled in various confraternities, attended the sacred functions with her companions and pupils, and opened her home to young women to form and recreate them in the spirit of the oratory.
Caterina carried out her work with such fervor and commitment that she consistently won the highest commendation from the authorities and the unanimous approval of the local population.
Her concern for the most needy and the poorest led her to extend her charitable work, at great personal sacrifice, to orphaned girls and those unable to attend the municipal school or coming from distant villages. From this came the private “Cittadini” school, founded in 1832, and in 1836 the boarding school (educandato), the direction of which Caterina entrusted to her sister Giuditta.
Positive assessments of both the private school and the boarding house multiplied: the formation of the pupils, inspired by the values of Christian life, prepared the young women to make wise choices, lived with Christian consistency. An outstanding contemporary witness records: “The most convincing proof, and the one that alone suffices to demonstrate the excellent instruction those girls received from the pious teachers, is the enduring flourishing of that boarding establishment to this day — the result of the excellent success of their pupils, who not only enriched themselves at Somasca with every religious, moral, and civic virtue and with those arts befitting women, but also brought these same benefits to their own villages, where many either established new schools or revived those that had fallen into decline, to such profit of morality that those parish priests still regard the Ursuline teachers of Somasca as the principal benefactresses of the peoples entrusted to their care.”
Caterina’s entire life was accompanied by great trials. In 1840 her sister Giuditta died suddenly at only thirty-seven years of age — the one with whom she had shared everything: family sorrows, formation, ideals, plans, and work. In 1841, with the deaths of Don Giuseppe Brena and her cousin Don Antonio Cittadini, she was deprived of two further invaluable supports.
In 1842 Caterina herself was struck by a grave illness, from which she recovered miraculously through the intercession of Our Lady of Caravaggio and Saint Jerome Emiliani.
In 1845 she had to leave her teaching post at the municipal school in order to devote herself entirely to the boarding school, to the care of the orphans, and to the guidance of the companions who had joined her — resolved to share not only her educational work but also her desire to consecrate themselves wholly to the Lord in the religious life.
In 1844, in order to give at least a civil legal foundation to her work, Caterina drew up with three companions a “Deed of Partnership, Common Lot, Mutual Donation, and Life Annuity,” which already bore many characteristics of a religious institute. In 1850 she obtained from Pius IX the Decree of erection of a private oratory for the reservation of the Most Blessed Sacrament. In 1850–51 she addressed to the Bishop of Bergamo, Monsignor Carlo Gritti Morlacchi, various petitions seeking the approval of her “small religious family” and a rule, but the time was not yet ripe. In 1854 Caterina met with the new Bishop, Monsignor Pietro Luigi Speranza, who encouraged her to draft the rules herself and promised her his assistance. She drew them up on the model of the constitutions of the Ursulines of Milan, but when she presented them to the Bishop, they were not accepted.
Without surrendering, she prepared a new text, which she forwarded to the Bishop on 17 September 1855, accompanied by a petition requesting the approval of the institute under the title of the Hieronymite Ursulines. Monsignor Speranza approved the rules ad experimentum, promising definitive approval of the new institute. Caterina awaited the longed-for day with great confidence, but the labors, anxieties, and sufferings had taken a serious toll on her health, and a general organic decline reduced her little by little to the point of death.
Always clear-minded, trusting, and in unceasing prayer, she exhorted her companions to accept with serenity the will of the Lord, assuring them that all would continue. She died on 5 May 1857, after a day of agony, peacefully and holily, surrounded by a reputation for holiness and deeply mourned by her daughters, her pupils, and the local people, leaving to all the shining example of her profound spiritual maturity.