Blessed Maria Maddalena dell’Incarnazione

Caterina Sordini (16 April 1770 – 29 November 1824) was an Italian Roman Catholic professed religious that established the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, in latin Adoratrices Perpetuae Sanctissimi Sacramenti, devoted to the Eucharist. She assumed the religious name of "Maria Maddalena of the Incarnation" when she became a member of the Third Order of Saint Francis during her adolescence. She was forced out of Rome as a result of Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of the Italian peninsula but returned following his defeat and the return of Pope Pius VII to Rome. The pope proved to be a benefactor for Sordini's order and something that Pope Leo XII continued; however his involvement was to a lesser extent than that of his immediate predecessor. Sordini died in 1824 and was beatified at the Basilica of Saint John Lateran in 2008 after Pope Benedict XVI approved her beatification. Caterina Sordini was born in Porto Santo Stefano on 16 April 1770 as the fourth of nine children to Lorenzo Sordini and Teresa Moizzo. She was baptized on 18 April 1770 with the names of Caterina Francesca Maria Antonia and her godparents were Bartolomeo and Maria Anna Giovine Schiano. She was a curious and self-conscious child who also could be rude at times. At the age of seventeen her father arranged her to wed a maritime merchant named Alfonso Capece. Sordini was against this idea but later relented to the wishes of her father. The merchant she was to meet was soon to depart for Constantinople but met with Sordini before his departure. He gave her a casket of jewels and she adorned herself in them prior to admiring her reflection in the mirror. But she did not see herself for she saw the crucified Jesus Christ who asked her: "You would give Me up for a carnal creature?" Sordini considered the words of the Crucified Christ and - in February 1788 - visited a convent of the Third Order of Saint Francis in Ischia di Castro and entered it almost as soon as she arrived.