penances compared with the torments reserved in the other life for those infidelities which we so easily permit ourselves in this world? What are they? What are they? Would that I could do a hundred times more!" (See Note 4.)
There is no question here, as we see, of the tortures to which great sinners converted before death are subjected, but of the chastisements which God inflicts upon a fervent Religious for the slightest faults.
CHAPTER XIV.
Pains of Purgatory — Apparition of Foligno — The Dominican Religious of Zamora.
The same rigour reveals itself in a more recent apparition, where a Religious who died after an exemplary life makes known her sufferings in a manner calculated to inspire all souls with terror. The event took place on November 16, 1859, at Foligno, near Assisi, in Italy. It made a great noise in the country, and besides the visible mark which was seen, an inquiry made in due form by competent authority establishes it as an incontestable fact.
There was at the convent of Franciscan Tertiaries in Foligno, a sister named Teresa Gesta, who had been for many years mistress of novices, and who at the same time had charge of the sacristy of the community. She was born at Bastia, in Corsica, in 1797, and entered the monastery in the year 1826.
Sister Teresa was a model of fervour and charity. We need not be astonished, said her director, if God glorifies her by some prodigy after her death.
She died suddenly, November 4, 1859, of a stroke of apoplexy.
Twelve days later, on November 16, a sister named
