Raised by her godmother after her mother’s death, St. Catharine was placed in a convent of Monticelli near the gates of Florence where her aunt, Louisa de Ricci was a nun. After some years her father took her home but the interruptions and dissipation gave her so much uneasiness that at age 14, with the consent of her father which she obtained with great difficulty, she received the religious veil in the convent of Dominicanesses at Prat, in Tuscany where her uncle, F. Timothy de Ricci was director. What she chiefly labored to obtain by meditating on His life and sufferings and what she most earnestly asked of Our Lord was that He would be pleased in His mercy to purge her affections of all poison of the inordinate love of creatures, and engrave in her His most holy and divine image, both exterior and interior, that is to say, both in her conversation and affections that so she might be animated and might think, speak, and act by His most holy Spirit. The saint was chosen first mistress of the novices, then sub-prioress, and at twenty-five years of age, was appointed perpetual prioress. With St. Philip Neri, having some time maintained a friendship through letters, St. Catharine satisfied their mutual desire of seeing each other: while he was detained at Rome she appeared to him in a vision and they conversed together a considerable time.