Cora Louise Evans is in the process of becoming the first saint from California because of her commitment to Catholicism. Evans wrote about her encounters with religious figures and about Jesus Christ’s life to help spread the mystical humanity of Christ.
Born on July 9, 1904, in Midvale, Utah, she grew up as a Mormon. When she was three years old, she had a vision of the Blessed Mother, although she did not yet know it was her.
According to the San Francisco Archdiocese magazine, on the day of her wedding, she disagreed with the declarations of God and rituals, so she turned away from being a Mormon.
Months later, she was sick while listening to the radio when the program “The Catholic Hour” came on.
Because of what was said on the broadcast, she realized that the Virgin Mary was who she saw as a child. This inspired her to contact St. Joseph Catholic Church and to convert to Catholicism.
She went on to write more than 3,000 pages of her spiritual encounters and spent hours at a typewriter detailing the stories
she received during her ecstasies. She became further committed to her work in 1938 before residing in California a few years later.
She died of stomach cancer at the age of 52 on March 30, 1957.
Danielle Jow, the Religious Studies Department Chair, said, “Her witness demonstrates that we can do ‘small things with great love’ as St. Theresa of Calcutta said, and God blesses this love by drawing us even closer to Him and his Love, even if that Love bears great suffering through the miracle of the Stigmata, her cancer, and her ultimate death.”
For over a decade, her life continues to be analyzed to determine whether or not she is worthy of sainthood.
In 2012, she passed the local ecclesial examination by the Monterey Diocese, which is where she worshiped.
On Nov. 16, 2022, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops voted to begin the beatification and canonization process.
She completed the U.S. leg of her journey to sainthood with closing canonical rites at the diocesan level at San Carlos Cathedral in Monterey Bay.
On April 20, 2023, the American-approved documentation was approved in the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, which oversees canonization, in Rome to start the Vatican phase of investigation.
Jerard Loyola ’26, a member of the CORE team, a religious organization on campus in charge of organizing service drives, said, “The Church’s process to sainthood gives us a strong idea of what makes a person a saint and what distinguishes them from other people.”
