St. Rita of Cascia

St. Rita of Cascia was an Augustinian nun, widow and mystic, born Margherita Lotti around 1381 near Cascia in Umbria and dying in 1457. She is one of the Church’s most beloved patrons of impossible causes, difficult marriages, abuse, wounds, reconciliation and desperate situations. Her life moved through marriage, motherhood, grief, religious life and mystical union with the Passion of Christ.

Although she desired religious life, Rita was given in marriage to Paolo Mancini, a violent man involved in the feuds of the region. Through patience and prayer she helped soften him, but he was murdered by enemies. Her two sons were drawn toward vengeance. Rita prayed that they would not commit murder, and both died before carrying out revenge. This terrible purification left her alone, but it also freed her from the cycle of blood-feud that surrounded her family.

She sought entrance among the Augustinian nuns of Cascia, but her connection to a feuding family made this difficult. Tradition says that St. John the Baptist, St. Augustine and St. Nicholas of Tolentino miraculously brought her into the locked convent, after which she was accepted. In religious life she became known for humility, penance and prayer.

The most famous mystical sign in her life was a wound on her forehead, received after she prayed to share in the sufferings of Christ crowned with thorns. This partial stigmata caused pain and isolation but became the mark by which she is remembered. Near death, she asked for a rose from her family garden in winter; the rose was found blooming, along with figs in some accounts, signs of grace in impossible circumstances.

Rita died in 1457. Her body is venerated at Cascia and has been described in Catholic devotion as incorrupt or remarkably preserved. Pilgrims continue to seek her intercession when human solutions seem exhausted, because her whole life shows God bringing mercy out of violence, grief and wounds.