Rita was born around 1381 at Roccaporena, in the Diocese of Spoleto, to parents advanced in years and known for their charity. ¹² Her own desire was to enter religious life. In obedience to her parents she was married instead, at the age of twelve, to a man the Catholic Encyclopedia describes without softening as "extremely cruel and ill-tempered." ¹

She remained his wife for eighteen years. ¹ There is no version of this story in which that was easy, and the sources do not pretend otherwise. What they record is that she stayed, and that she kept praying.

Her husband was murdered. Her twin sons resolved to avenge him. Rita, seeing what revenge would cost their souls, "appealed to Heaven to prevent such a crime on their part, and they were taken away by death." ¹

That sentence is one of the harder things in the lives of the saints, and it should not be smoothed over. A mother asked God to stop her sons from becoming murderers, and both of them died. She was left with nothing she had wanted and nothing she had built.

Now a widow, Rita went to the Augustinian convent at Cascia and asked to enter. She was refused. ¹ She asked again. The Catholic Encyclopedia records that "by continued entreaties, and, as is related, by Divine intervention, she gained admission." ¹ The vocation she had wanted at twelve, she received in middle age, after everything else was gone.

She lived the rest of her life there, and died at the convent in 1457. ² She is often depicted with a wound in her forehead. ¹ Pope Urban VIII permitted her Mass and Office in 1637, and she was solemnly canonized on 24 May 1900 by Pope Leo XIII. ¹

Saint Rita is the patron saint of impossible causes, difficult marriages, infertility, and parenthood. ² She is widely invoked as well by those who have been widowed and by people trapped in situations they cannot leave.

The patronages are not arbitrary. Each one names something she actually lived through, which is why people in those situations find her easier to talk to than a saint whose difficulties were spiritual only.

The feast of Saint Rita of Cascia is celebrated on May 22. ¹²

When you are living a life you did not choose. Rita wanted the convent at twelve and got a violent husband instead. ¹ She did not spend eighteen years waiting for her real life to start. If your circumstances were decided by somebody else, she is the saint who knows what that costs and what can still be done inside it.

When holiness feels like it needs better conditions. Franciscan Media makes the point squarely: "Rita became holy because she made choices that reflected her baptism and her growth as a disciple of Jesus." ² Not because her situation improved. The choices were available to her in the bad years, and they are available to you now.

When you are praying for someone who is going wrong. Rita prayed that her sons would not become murderers. ¹ Anyone praying for a child, a sibling, or a friend who is heading somewhere bad is praying her prayer - and her story is honest about the fact that God sometimes answers in a way that breaks your heart.

When the door keeps closing. She was refused by the convent and kept asking until she was let in. ¹ Persistence in prayer is not nagging God. In Rita it looks like refusing to accept that a good desire God planted is finished, even after decades of evidence.

When you think it is too late. Rita received her vocation as a widow who had buried her whole family. Nothing in her life happened on schedule, and all of it happened.