Our Holy Role-Model this month is St. Rita of Cascia.  Her story is not all rainbows and butterflies.  In fact, it involves nasty family feuding, infidelity, abuse, loss and even murder.  But she took some of the brokenness around her and made it beautiful by her faith in God.

Rita was born Margherita Lotti near Cascia, Italy, in 1381.  Her parents, Antonio and Amata, were known to be peacemakers between feuding families in the area.  From an early age, Rita wanted to be a nun, but when she was 12, her parents arranged for her to marry Paolo Mancini.

Paolo was a quick-tempered man and a difficult husband.  Most accounts agree that he was unfaithful and verbally abusive to her, and he may have also been physically abusive.  Paolo was also deeply involved in a longstanding family feud.  After years of marriage, though, he was converted by his holy wife’s example, and committed himself to peace.  Unfortunately, other parties in the feud did not, and Paolo was later stabbed to death.

Rita and Paolo had two sons, Giovanni and Paulo, who may have been twins.  After their father’s death, Giovanni and Paulo were convinced by an uncle to avenge him, continuing the bloody conflict.  Rita, who had publicly forgiven her husband’s murderers at his funeral, begged her sons to keep the peace.  They would not listen to her, so Rita prayed that her sons would die rather than commit a mortal sin.  Any other mama reading this can imagine how painful it must have been for Rita to pray that her beloved children would die, but it shows how strong her faith in eternal life truly was.  God heard Rita’s plea.  Less than a year later, and before they could carry out their plot of vengeance, Giovanni and Paulo both died of dysentery.

After her husband and sons had died, Rita attempted to enter the convent of St. Mary Magdalene, but the nuns there were afraid of being associated with the scandal surrounding her husband’s death.  Rita would have to restore peace in her husband’s family to gain admittance to the convent.  In the face of this seemingly impossible cause, she sought the intercession of her three patron saints: John the Baptist, Augustine of Hippo, and Nicholas of Tolentino. Aided by these three saints and another unlikely ally– the Plague, which infected her angry brother-in-law– Rita was finally successful.  Pious legend holds that she was then transported via levitation into the convent’s courtyard by her three patron saints.  

Rita became an Augustinian nun at age 36.  She was known for her powerful prayer and a strange wound on her forehead.  While Rita was meditating on an image of Christ crucified and asking God to allow her to suffer as Jesus had, a wound suddenly appeared on her forehead and began to bleed.  It was as if she had been given one of the thorns from Jesus’ crown.  This partial stigmata wound remained from age 60 to her death at 76, never healing but instead constantly dripping blood.

At the end of her life, Rita asked for just one simple gift: a rose from her garden back at home.  As it was January, her relative assumed that it was an impossible request, but he was surprised to find one single rose blooming there.  Today, Rita is often pictured with a rose, and churches often pass them out on her feast day, which is her “birthday into heaven” (day of earthly death), May 22. 

Rita was canonized by Pope Leo XIII in 1900.  Her incorrupt (miraculously non-decaying) body is displayed in the Basilica of Santa Rita de Cascia in Umbria, Italy.  Rita’s prayers were powerful on earth, and countless Christians have sought her powerful intercession from heaven, too.  Abused wives and heartbroken women especially turn to her, as she is their patron saint, and they all become her spiritual children.  On the 100th anniversary of her canonization, Pope John Paul II had this to say: “Rita interpreted well the ‘feminine genius’ by living it intensely in both physical and spiritual motherhood.”

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_of_Cascia

https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=205 
https://santaritadacascia.org/la-santa/vita/