Catherine of Palma

The life of Catalina Tomàs at the monastery of Santa María Magdalena was characterized by radical humility, obedience, and the renunciation of her own will. As a simple canoness, she reportedly declined all positions of responsibility, including that of superior, which had been offered to her. Her reputation rests primarily on the mystical phenomena that marked her existence: prolonged ecstasies, sometimes described as lasting for long hours and accompanied by an apparent suspension of vital functions, as well as a gift of prophecy and discernment of souls that struck her contemporaries, including the island's ecclesiastical authorities. Tradition also reports violent spiritual battles: she was said to have been physically assaulted by the demon, suffering blows and torments from which she emerged strengthened in faith. These accounts, transmitted by Majorcan biographers and preserved in local memory, made her a recognized figure of holiness during her lifetime. She is also credited with spiritual writings, particularly letters, which bear witness to her interior life.

The spiritual journey of Catalina Tomàs is part of the contemplative current of the 16th-century Spanish Catholic Reformation. Her holiness is primarily that of a humble servant who became a nun, marked by poverty, penance, and a total abandonment to the divine will. Sources emphasize her obedience and self-effacement, which she practiced even to the point of refusing honors. Her life of prayer led her to elevated contemplative states, described as raptures and ecstasies during which she remained absorbed in God. The battles against temptations and assaults attributed to the devil were understood by tradition as the purifying trial of a soul advancing toward mystical union. During her lifetime, her reputation for holiness was already great in Mallorca, where people came to consult her for her spiritual discernment. This renown, carefully recorded by her biographers after her death, was the starting point for a lasting popular cult and the process that would lead, centuries later, to her beatification and then her canonization.

The cult of Catalina Tomàs developed rapidly after her death, supported by the discovery of her body remaining incorrupt during the successive openings of her tomb, notably in 1617. After a long process, she was beatified in 1792 under the pontificate of Pius VI. The celebration of her feasts then began in several localities of Mallorca. Her canonization was pronounced in Rome on June 22, 1930, by Pope Pius XI, making her the first saint born in the Balearic Islands. Her liturgical memorial is set for April 5, the day of her death; in Valldemossa, her hometown, the great patronal feast is held on July 28. The incorrupt body of the saint is preserved in a glass reliquary, exposed to the veneration of the faithful in the church of Santa María Magdalena, in Palma de Mallorca, where it remains a high place of island devotion.

Saint Catalina Tomàs occupies a central place in the religious and popular culture of Majorca. As the patron saint of Valldemossa, she is honored throughout the island by the "Festes de la Beata," celebrated on varying dates depending on the municipality. In Valldemossa, the peak of the festivities takes place on July 28, with the procession of the relic and the parade of the triumphal float ("carro triomfal"), established in 1903: a young girl from the village embodies "la Beateta," surrounded by angels and figures in traditional costume. Her image, reproduced on countless ceramic tiles ("rajoles") affixed to the facades of Majorcan houses, is part of the island's daily landscape. As the first saint native to the Balearic Islands, she remains a spiritual reference for local faithful, who see in her a model of humility, poverty, and abandonment to God. Her sanctuary of Santa María Magdalena in Palma, where her incorrupt body rests, remains a place of pilgrimage and memory.