Pope Benedict continued his recent theme of reflecting on women saints during his weekly audience, highlighting St. Catherine of Genoa and her insights on Purgatory. The Pope said that St. Catherine – a 15th century Italian mystic – didn't focus on the “torments” of purgatory but rather called it an “interior fire” that purifies and inflames our hearts with God's love.

The Pope reflected on the saint's writings, saying that “in her mystical experiences, Catherine never received specific revelations on Purgatory or on the souls being purified there.”

St. Catherine, he underscored, did not see Purgatory “as a place of transit in the depths of the earth” or as “an exterior fire.” Rather, she saw it as “an interior fire.”

For St. Catherine, the soul in Purgatory “is aware of God's immense love and perfect justice; as a consequence, it suffers for not having responded to that love perfectly, and it is precisely the love of God Himself which purifies the soul from the ravages of sin,” he said.

Pope Benedict recalled that St. Catherine used the image of a thread of gold linking the human heart to God as a depiction of the relationship between a soul in Purgatory and God.  “This situation of elevation towards God and abandonment to His will, as expressed in the image of the thread, is used by Catherine to express the action of divine light on the souls in Purgatory, a light which purifies and raises them towards the splendor of the dazzling rays of God,” he said.

“By writing about Purgatory, the saint reminds us of a fundamental truth of the faith which becomes an invitation for us to pray for the dead, that they may achieve the blessed vision of God in the communion of the saints,” he said.