St. Rita Prayer Card (PC-48)

PC-48 St. Rita of Cascia Prayer Card

The Saint of the Impossible — who endured everything and gave everything to God

Her life reads like a catalogue of suffering that would break most people three times over. Born in 1381 in the tiny village of Roccaporena near Cascia in Umbria, Italy, Margherita Lotti — called Rita — wanted from childhood to be a nun. Her parents refused and arranged her marriage instead to Paolo Mancini, a man known for his violent temper and abusive nature. She obeyed without bitterness, became a faithful wife and mother of twin sons, and spent eighteen years praying quietly for her husband's conversion — which came, slowly and at last, before he was ambushed and stabbed to death in a vendetta.

Then, widowed and grieving, Rita faced the next impossible cross: her twin sons, inflamed by their uncle, burned for revenge. Rita prayed with terrible love and heroic courage that God would take them before they could commit murder. Both boys fell ill and died — reconciled to God and to their mother — before they could carry out the vendetta. Now alone in the world, Rita turned to the Augustinian monastery she had always longed for. She was refused three times. Finally, through prayer, perseverance, and the miraculous intervention of her patron saints, she was accepted — legend says she was transported through the locked doors of the convent overnight by St. John the Baptist, St. Augustine, and St. Nicholas of Tolentino.

She lived as an Augustinian nun for forty years, a life of radical prayer and penance. At sixty years old, while meditating before a crucifix, she asked Jesus to let her share one thorn of His crown. A wound appeared on her forehead and never healed — remaining with her until her death on May 22, 1457. Her body is incorrupt and enshrined in the Basilica of Santa Rita in Cascia to this day. Pope Leo XIII canonized her in 1900, and at her canonization she was bestowed the title Patroness of Impossible Causes. Her feast day is May 22nd.

Perfect for: Anyone facing an impossible situation, abused women, widows, difficult marriages, infertility struggles, May 22nd feast day, and anyone who needs a saint who has been through the worst and still believed.