St. Catherine of Genoa (1447–1510) was the widow of the dissolute Giuliano Adorno, whom she converted shortly before his death. With him she devoted herself to the care of the sick at the Pammatone Hospital in Genoa, running its administration for years and tending the worst plague victims with her own hands. Her great spiritual works — the Dialogue Between the Soul and the Body and the Treatise on Purgatory — became foundational texts of post-Tridentine Catholic mystical theology.
She died on September 15, 1510. Eighteen months later, when her body was disinterred to be transferred to a more permanent tomb, it was found incorrupt. A second exhumation in 1551 confirmed it. The body remains visible — vested, slightly skeletonised over the centuries but the principal parts preserved — in the Sanctuary of Santissima Annunziata di Portoria, the chapel built on the site of the old Pammatone Hospital. Canonised 1737 by Clement XII.