Saint Rita of Cascia

Rita was born in 1381 — or, according to other sources, in 1371 — in Roccaporena, a small village tucked away in the mountains of Umbria, near Cascia. She was baptized Margherita, a name that means “pearl,” and from early on everyone called her by the affectionate diminutive: Rita. Her parents, Antonio and Amata Lotti, were noble and charitable people, known throughout the region as the “Peacemakers of Christ” for how readily they settled quarrels — a gift their daughter would inherit in a heroic measure. Even as a little girl, Rita already dreamed of consecrating herself entirely to God.

But her path led elsewhere. Against her own wish to enter a convent, she was married very young to Paolo Mancini, a military officer of fiery and violent temper, nicknamed the “proud lion.” The marriage lasted eighteen years and was a true school of patience: amid tears and humiliations, Rita bore everything, uniting her own pain to that of Christ. And she did not bear it in vain. With constant prayer and gentleness, she gradually softened her husband’s heart until she had won him over to a truly Christian life. Two twin sons were born of the marriage, Giangiacomo and Paolo Maria.

That peace, however, came at a high price. Paolo was eventually murdered, the victim of a feud between families. Standing before her husband’s body, Rita did what few would have the courage to do: she publicly forgave the murderers. But hatred did not die with Paolo — relatives wanted to drag the two sons into revenge. Terrified not of their death, but of the loss of their souls, Rita begged God to take them before they could be stained with blood. The two boys died a short time later. Christian tradition sees in that loss God’s answer to the prayer of a mother who would rather have her sons in Heaven than have them become murderers.

A widow and now childless, Rita turned at last to the dream of her girlhood. She knocked at the door of the monastery of Saint Mary Magdalene, in Cascia — and was turned away. She knocked again, and again she heard no: the nuns, who admitted only unmarried young women, feared the scandal tied to Paolo’s violent death. In the end they set before her a condition that seemed impossible — to reconcile her own family with the enemies responsible for her husband’s death. Rita accepted. She begged the help of her three holy patrons — Saint John the Baptist, Saint Augustine, and Saint Nicholas of Tolentino — and set about weaving peace between the rival families of Cascia. It was in this effort that one of the most remembered signs of her intercession took place. The plague that was ravaging Italy struck Bernardo Mancini, the brother of the late Paolo: Rita’s own brother-in-law — and the very man who had fed the feud and tried to drag her sons into revenge. Rita prayed for him, and Christian tradition holds that it was this prayer, and nothing else, that delivered him from the plague. To save from sickness the very person who had done her the most harm — here is Rita’s forgiveness preached not with words, but with her life. It is also told that, one night, she heard a voice call her name three times and was led inside the monastery. The doors that men had closed, Heaven opened.

In the convent, Rita lived at last what she had always longed for: prayer, penance, and service to the sick. She became known for her austere mortification and, above all, for the power of her prayers. On her face a wound began to bleed on her brow, which the Church understands as a sign of the Passion of Christ — a stigma. Rita died in Cascia on May 22, 1457. The fame of her holiness never faded: she was beatified in 1627 and, on May 24, 1900, Pope Leo XIII canonized her, giving her the title by which the faithful invoke her to this day — Patron Saint of Impossible Causes. Her body rests in the Basilica of Saint Rita, in Cascia.