After Charles' death Katharina entered the convent of Sant'Ambrogio della Massima in Rome as a novice.

Convinced she was being poisoned, she managed to get word to her cousin, Gustav Adolf, Cardinal Prince of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, who immediately removed her from the convent and brought her to his estate, the Villa d'Este in Tivoli, to recover.

[1] In 1860 Von Hohenzollern asked the Maurus and his brother Ernst, also a Benedictine, to accompany her on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

The princess became sympathetic to their views for the restoration of monastic life in Germany, and had the political and financial resources to assist.

The following year, they received permission from their abbot at the Abbey of St. Paul Outside the Walls to found a daughter house in Germany.