Sister Caterina was praying with the eight nuns of her Benedictine order in the central Italian town of Norcia when the abbey and the ground beneath the nuns' feet shook and they were thrown around. The ceiling cracked and crumbled. A cupboard crashed to the ground.
Stepping to the door, Sister Caterina caught a glimpse of how the Sunday-morning earthquake was being experienced in the town below.
"Smoke, and people's cries of fear. If I close my eyes, I cannot help but relive it," she recalled.
But once the 72-year-old nun saw that her fellow sisters were unharmed and the abbey's prayer room was still standing, she led the nuns back to prayer, asking that God might "at least save some lives."
