Saint Rita of Cascia

Religious

Feast Day

May 22

Life

1381–1457

Canonized

1900

Order

Order of Saint Augustine (Augustinian nuns)

Born

Roccaporena, near Cascia, Umbria

Saint Rita was born Margherita Lotti at Roccaporena, near Cascia in Umbria, in 1381. Married while still young to Paolo Mancini, she bore him two sons. After eighteen years of a difficult marriage, her husband was murdered, the result of a feud between rival families of the area. Her two sons died of illness shortly after, and Rita worked to forgive her husband's killers and to keep her sons from seeking revenge.

Widowed and childless, she sought entry into the Augustinian monastery of Saint Mary Magdalene at Cascia. After initial refusals, she was finally received about 1407. She lived the remaining forty years of her life in the monastery in austere prayer, penance, and works of charity. Beginning in 1442 she was marked with a wound on her forehead, traditionally received before a crucifix, that has been venerated as a partial stigmata.

Rita died at Cascia on May 22, 1457. Pope Urban VIII beatified her in 1628; Pope Leo XIII canonized her on May 24, 1900. She is widely venerated as the saint of impossible causes. The Optional Memorial of May 22 was inscribed in the General Roman Calendar by the post-Vatican II reform.