The Catholic Church teaches the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, that is to say, out of nothing. God has no beginning or end. God exists for all eternity. When God created the world, there was nothing else in existence, other than God. Unlike in the creation stories of other religions, God did not use any pre-existent material out of which he would have made the world.
Having said the above, we also need to bear in mind that the ancient Hebrews did not yet have the concept of creation ex nihilo. The divine revelation of creation out of nothing came towards the end of the Old Testament period and is first found in the Second Book of Maccabees. The ancient Hebrew understanding before then was that God created the world by subduing the forces of chaos, which were symbolized by water. Throughout the Old Testament, God demonstrates his divine power in part by showing that he has power over water. God turns the Nile into blood. He separates the Red Sea and then closes it up again. He makes water flow out of the rock. He stops the flow of the Jordan River and then starts it up again. He withholds rain from the sky when the Israelites turn to evil.
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Photo Credit: The Sea of Galilee (c) 2016 by Zoltan Abraham.