Saint Rita of Cascia

Rita was born around 1381 at Roccaporena, near Cascia in Umbria, Italy. Though she wished to be a nun, she was married young to Paolo Mancini, a man of violent temper. Through years of patience and prayer she helped him change, and they had two sons. Paolo was eventually murdered in a feud, and Rita forgave his killers; she prayed that her sons would not avenge him, and both died of illness not long after.

Alone, she asked to join the Augustinian nuns of Saint Mary Magdalene in Cascia. Turned away at first, she was admitted around 1407 after helping make peace between her family and her husband's murderers. She lived there for forty years in prayer and penance. Around 1442, while meditating on Christ's Passion, she received a wound on her forehead as if from a thorn of his crown, which she bore until her death. She died on May 22, 1457, and was canonized by Pope Leo XIII in 1900.

On her feast roses are blessed in churches everywhere, recalling the story that a rose bloomed in her family garden in winter at her request just before her death. Pilgrims visit her incorrupt body in the Basilica of Saint Rita in Cascia. Devotion to Santa Rita is enormous in Italy, Spain, the Philippines and Latin America, where she is invoked for desperate cases, difficult marriages and family peace.