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Rita of Cascia Saint of the Impossible

by Glynn MacNiven-Johnston

All booklets are published thanks to the generous support of the members of the Catholic Truth Society

CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY PUBLISHERS TO THE HOLY SEE

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Contents

Love of God and neighbour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Life of Saint Rita . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Miracles and canonisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Devotions to St Rita . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

All rights reserved. First published 2009 by The Incorporated Catholic Truth Society, 40-46 Harleyford Road London SE11 5AY Tel: 020 7640 0042 Fax: 020 7640 0046. Copyright Š 2008 Glynn MacNiven-Johnston.

ISBN 978 1 86082 531 6 Acknowledgements With thanks to Dr Raymond Edwards for his translation of the Latin Sancta Rita from the Acta Sanctorum.

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Love of God and neighbour Why should we read the lives of the saints? What help can they be to us? They can seem almost inhuman in their reactions to suffering and evil, so impossibly pious that we really do not even want to imitate them. And yet it is because they are human and because their experiences are exactly like ours that we can find inspiration, help and comfort in the accounts of their lives. We can see how it is possible to be Christ-like, to love as he loves. We can see that with Christ it is possible to forgive, to accept suffering for the sake of other people, to seek the good of others and to know and love God. Perhaps the saints’ lives are extreme and perhaps the penances they imposed on themselves are not so easy to understand at this distance but their lives reflect something of Christ’s. St Rita’s life was one of love of God and love of neighbour – perseverance, forgiveness and wisdom.

St Rita is called the Saint of the Impossible and like St Jude she is a saint people go to when their situations are desperate. She is especially invoked by women who have difficult marriages or problems with their children. Of course many men also have a devotion to her. St Rita has proved especially helpful to anyone trying to make peace

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in their families or with their neighbours since these are all things she had to face in her earthly life. She is also invoked by those who are ill because she too suffered illness, by those who are rejected, frustrated in their hopes or who cannot see a way forward, because she suffered all that too.

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Life of St Rita Background and early life Margherita Lotti, who was to become St Rita, was born in Roccaporena, a village near the Umbrian town of Cascia, probably in 1381 although some sources give slightly different dates. She was an only child. Her parents had been married for many years and had given up hope of having children when Rita was born to them in their old age. Tradition gives their names as Amata and Antonio Lotti and these were the names that were accepted when St Rita was canonised. One legend says that an angel appeared to Amata after many years of fervent prayer and told her she would soon have a daughter. Apparently Amata replied that frankly she’d really rather have a son who could look after her husband and herself in their old age but if a daughter was what they were to be given they would accept it. I don’t know how seriously we can take this story though. The oldest still existing life of St Rita,

by Agostino Cavallucci 1 , printed in 1610, a Latin translation of which can be found in the Acta Sanctorum, says that her parents had a great devotion to the Passion of Christ. They were also ‘so diligent at making peace

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they were widely called the peacemakers of Jesus Christ’.

Other sources say that this was an actual elected office where people acted as arbitrators in disputes. This was not a paid employment. The peacemakers acted for the love of God but peace treaties negotiated between warring factions were authenticated by a notary and were binding on both parties and their descendants. This was a way of avoiding vendettas (blood feuds). Either way there seems no doubt that this was a very devout couple who brought up their only child to love God and to seek peace.

Tradition has it that one day when Rita was a baby asleep in her cradle bees appeared and swarmed around her face. They landed on her lips and walked in and out of her mouth but without harming her or even waking her.

This seems very odd but it is a very old story. Cavallucci mentions a tapestry showing the child and the bees which existed at the time he was writing. When Rita was beatified by Pope Urban VIII, whose coat of arms featured bees, Rita’s supporters believed this childhood incident had been a sign of her later sanctity.

Marriage Rita was a devout girl and wanted to become a nun but her parents chose a husband for her when she was 12 years old.

Perhaps they felt she was too young to make a decision to be a nun. She was still too young to enter the convent and if they were to die and she no longer wanted to be a nun

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she would be alone without any protection. As Cavallucci put it ‘Meanwhile her parents, weighed down with years, were at pains about nothing so much as to see their daughter settled in a proper marriage before they died.’2 Rita was very unhappy at this but she wanted to obey her parents.

The man they chose was called Paolo Ferdinando Mancini. Perhaps Rita’s parents didn’t know about his character or perhaps they saw him as someone who could protect their daughter or there may have been a family obligation involved; or perhaps they just thought she would be able to manage him. Paolo was a man of comfortable means – perhaps a watchman, perhaps politically involved. There are various versions.

Generally he is held to have been a difficult husband although recently there has been a move to rehabilitate his reputation. One source says he has been much maligned and his reputation for violence grew out of a misunderstanding. This source claims people misread what was painted on St Rita’s original casket. The wording on the coffin became hard to read over the years because of the smoke from the votive candles and some thought it said on it ‘violent husband’ when in fact it says ‘so violently’ – tanto feroce misread as marito feroce – not referring to her husband at all. But this is no more than a theory, and is a lone voice among other sources which refer to Paolo at best as someone

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impetuous and quick tempered and at worst a violent monster. Most people who have examined St Rita’s life agree that there must be something more to all these traditions of her husband’s character than a simple misreading of an inscription.

Cavallucci says ‘she gave herself into the power of a man who was notably fierce and feared by everyone. Rita however knew how to soften him so that, to the astonishment of everyone he became gentle’. He does not say how long this took.

Butler’s Lives of the Saints says Rita’s husband was violent, unfaithful, harsh and cruel. He had bursts of anger and squandered most of their money; yet she lived with him for eighteen years not trying to escape the situation but accepting him for the man he was and loving him as Christ did. Like Abigail in the Old Testament (1 S 25) she would ‘wait till his anger had subsided and speak wisely to him’. She offered up many things for her husband. She would fast and give alms as well as praying for him, not insisting that he change for her sake but hoping he would discover how much God loved him so that he could be happy. She was prepared to offer her whole life for him, wanting the best for him. We do not know however how many painful years it took her to reach this state. Even saints have to learn through suffering and failure and Rita’s marriage was, for many years, the source of suffering through which her heart was purified.

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Eventually Paolo did begin to change and became ‘dutiful in matters of religion’. It seemed as if Rita had achieved the perfect family. They were happy together.

They had twin sons whom Rita ‘brought up as Christians’.

Cavallucci also says Rita was very ‘focussed on her prayers with a particular devotion to the Blessed Virgin, St John the Baptist, our holy father Augustine and St Nicholas of Tolentino3.’ She fasted a good deal even then and ‘busied herself with almsgiving and looking after the poor who were ill. Her husband approved of all that his wife did.’ But then Paolo was murdered. Perhaps he was the victim of a vendetta. Perhaps his murder was political or perhaps he was just in wrong place at the wrong time.

Rita was grief-stricken. She prayed for the murderer and asked God’s forgiveness for him. She did not want revenge, but her sons influenced by the world and by Rita’s in-laws, did. They were still just boys, maybe 17 years old, and she was just one voice in a society that taught it was shameful, dishonourable and cowardly not to avenge their father’s death. She suffered tremendously because her sons would not listen to her. They felt they were justified and nothing could move them.

Of course Rita must have worried that they would be killed but more than that she worried that they would kill.

‘She was not more stricken by his (Paolo’s) death than by the sight of her sons planning to take vengeance, in their turn for his death.’ She suffered the agony of every parent

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who has faith and sees that their children do not. Her sons were so rooted in the world’s values that everything else was eclipsed. She prayed desperately that they would change their minds but when she realised this was not going to happen she began to pray they would die rather than commit murder. By faith she knew that the true purpose of Christian life is eternal life with God. She feared that her sons would lose this possibility if they committed murder, taking revenge on their father’s killer or his family. Then the cycle of killings would continue as someone would have to kill the boys in revenge too. As Cavallucci says, ‘After she had seen that they would not be turned from their purpose by her entreaties, she began to pray, with the same fervour as she had prayed to God for the murderer, that He would take her sons from this life before they could stain their hands by shedding blood in contravention of His commandments. She soon obtained what she had prayed for and she saw both of them struck down by illness and moving on to a better life.’ She was prepared to lose her sons rather than have them lose eternal life even though she experienced the same grief at their deaths that any other mother would.

Life in the Convent Now that she was alone in the world, it seemed that Rita could achieve her initial dream of entering the convent.

She had put her whole life in God’s hands and followed

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all his commandments in her marriage, her husband’s death and even preferring to give up her sons than have them still with her and be murderers. Surely God would now give her her heart’s desire. She asked to be admitted to the local convent, the Augustinian convent of St Mary Magdalen, but she was refused. Why this happened we do not really know but various reasons have been suggested. The first is that since the foundation of the convent they had only admitted young girls and not widows. Rita had the means to live in the world so they could not have thought she was just trying to find security in her old age besides she was only in her early thirties and could have married again. Perhaps this was the problem; that the superior of the convent, like her parents did earlier, thought this desire to enter the convent would pass if she met someone she wanted to marry. Another theory is that the nuns feared that the vendetta which had killed her husband would spread to the convent itself. It has been suggested that some of the nuns were members of the family which had killed Paolo. In such a small place, this is more than possible.

Rita applied three times to the convent and was refused each time. After the third time she decided to give it over to God and accept His time and His way. In the meantime she brokered a peace between her husband’s family and the family of the murderer. This was quite extraordinary and took great courage and perseverance.