St. Rita was born in 1386, the
daughter of Antonio and Amata Lotti,
known as Peacemakers of Jesus.
From her early youth, Rita visited the
Augustinian nuns at Cascia, and
showed interest in a religious life.
However, when she was twelve, her
parents betrothed her to Paolo
Mancini, an ill-tempered, abusive
individual who worked as the town
watchman, and was dragged into the
political disputes of the Guelphs and
Ghibellines.
Disappointed, but
obedient, Rita married him when she was 18, and was the
mother of twin sons. She put up with Paolo’s abuses for
eighteen years before he was ambushed and stabbed to
death. Her sons swore vengeance on their father’s killers,
but through Rita’s prayers and interventions, they forgave
the offenders.
Upon the death of her sons, Rita again felt the call to
religious life. However, some of the sisters at the
Augustinian monastery were relatives of her husband’s
assassins, and she was denied entry for fear of causing
dissension. Asking for the intervention of St. John the
Baptist, St. Augustine of Hippo, and St. Nicholas of
Tolentino, she managed to bring the warring factions
together, not completely, but sufficiently that there was
peace, and she was admitted to the monastery of St. Mary
Magdalen at age 36.
Rita lived 40 years in the convent, spending her time in
prayer and charity, and working for peace in the region.
She was devoted to the Passion, and in response to a
prayer to suffer as Christ; she received chronic head
wounds that appeared to have been caused by a crown of
thorns, which bled for 15 years.
Rita was confined to her bed the last four years of her life,
eating little more than the Eucharist, teaching and directing
the younger sisters. Near the end she had a visitor from
her hometown who asked if she’d like anything. Rita’s only
request was a rose from her family’s estate. The visitor
went to the home, but it being January, knew there was no
hope of finding a flower. But there, on an otherwise bare
bush, sprouted a single rose blossom.
Rita is well known as a patron of desperate, seemingly
impossible causes and situations. This is because she had
been involved in so many stages of life – wife, mother,
widow, and nun. She buried her family, helped bring peace
to her city, saw her dreams denied and fulfilled - and never
lost her faith in God, or her desire to be with Him.
Patronage: abuse victims, loneliness, bodily ills, desperate,
impossible, and forgotten causes, difficult marriages,
infertility, parenthood, widows.