Cora Evans

A Convert’s Mystical Journey

Cora Louise Evans was born on July 9, 1904, in Clearfield, Utah, and raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Yet from the age of three, she experienced mystical apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, visions that did not fit within her Mormon upbringing. She married Mack Evans at age twelve, as was customary in rural Utah at the time, and the couple eventually had two children.

On December 9, 1934, while ill in bed, Cora heard Monsignor Duane Hunt speaking about the Blessed Mother on the Catholic Hour radio program. His words contradicted the negative stories she had been told about Catholics, and as soon as she recovered, she sought out a Catholic parish. She was baptized into the Catholic Church on March 30, 1935, at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Ogden, Utah, and received her First Holy Communion the following day. Her husband Mack also converted, though this decision cost him his job in the predominantly Mormon community.

After the family moved to Southern California in 1941, Cora’s mystical experiences intensified dramatically. She began receiving visions of Jesus and the saints, experienced the stigmata beginning in 1947, and reported phenomena including bilocation and the odor of sanctity. In 1946, Christ entrusted her with a specific mission: to promulgate the “Mystical Humanity of Christ,” a way of prayer encouraging the faithful to live with a heightened awareness of the living, indwelling presence of Jesus within their souls.

In 1956, the family moved to Boulder Creek in Northern California. Cora died there on March 30, 1957, of stomach cancer, on the twenty-second anniversary of her baptism into the Catholic Church. Her cause for canonization was opened in the Diocese of Monterey in 2012, and she was declared Servant of God on November 16, 2022. The diocesan inquiry phase was closed in January 2023, and her documents were sent to Rome.

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