Patroness of:
- abuse victims
- against infertility
- against loneliness
- against sickness
- against sterility
- against wounds
- bodily ills
- Cascia, Italy
- Dalayap, Philippines
- desperate causes
- difficult marriages
- forgotten causes
- Igbaras, Iloilo, Philippines
- impossible causes
- lost causes
- parenthood
- sick people
- sterile people
- victims of physical spouse abuse
- widows
- wounded people

Symbols

The Rose and Fig
The rose is the symbol most often associated with St. Rita. One version of the story about the importance of the rose (and fig) revolves around St. Rita's entry into the convent. Another version is set near the end of her life, when St. Rita was bedridden in the convent. A cousin visited her and asked her if she desired anything from her old home. St. Rita responded by asking for a rose (and a fig) from the garden. It was January and her cousin did not expect to find anything due to the snow. However, her relative went to the house, and single blooming rose was found in the garden, as well as a fully ripened and edible fig and her cousin brought the rose and fig back to St. Rita at the convent. The rose bush is still alive and often in bloom today. The rose is thought to represent God's love for Rita and Rita's ability to intercede on behalf of lost causes or impossible cases. Rita is often depicted holding roses or with roses nearby. On her feast day, churches and shrines of St. Rita provide roses to the congregation that are blessed by priests during mass.

The Bees
In the parish church of Laarne, near Ghent, there is a statue of Saint Rita in which several bees are featured. This depiction originates from the story of St. Rita's baptism as an infant. On the day after her baptism, her family noticed a swarm of white bees flying around her as she slept in her crib. However, the bees peacefully entered and exited her mouth without causing her any harm or injury. Instead of being alarmed for her safety, her family was mystified by this sight. Interpretations of the story believe the bees represented her subsequent beatification by Pope Urban VIII (whose coat of arms featured three bees).

After all these centuries, the swarm of bees still exists in the convent, within a small fissure in a wall midway between St. Rita's cell and the place of her sepulcher. Their color is not white, but that of the common bee, except they have no sting. They live retired during the year, only coming out in the last few days of Holy Week and then returning once again for the Feast of St. Rita. On one occasion, one of the bees was given to Pope Urban VIII but it would not remain and went back to the convent.

Biography
Rita Lotti was born in 1381 in the tiny hamlet of Roccaporena, near Cascia, in the Province of Umbria, Italy. Here pious parents were Antonio and Amata Lotti.

Rita expressed an interest in religious life at an early age. But when she was twelve, her parents betrothed her to Paolo Mancini, an ill-tempered, gambling, abusive man, who worked as town watchman. In obedience, Rita married him when she was 18, and they had twin sons. She endured Paolo’s abuses for eighteen years, but she repaid his abuses with prayer and kind attention to him. Her husband converted before he was ambushed, stabbed, and left bleeding by the roadside.

Her sons swore vengeance on the killers of their father, but through the prayers and interventions of Rita, they forgave the offenders. Rita prayed that they would die rather than to commit this mortal sin. Her sons died shortly after.

After their deaths, St. Rita devoted herself to prayer, penance, and works of charity. She applied for admittance to the Augustinian Convent in Cascia. She was refused at first, but after praying to her three special patron Saints (St. John the Baptist, St. Augustine, and St. Nicholas of Tolentino) she miraculously entered the convent about the year 1411.

In the convent, Rita's life was marked by great charity and severe penances. Her prayers for others obtained remarkable cures, deliverance from the devil and other special favors from God. It was here that she received the thorn wound in her forehead. She considered it a very great grace, and the would lasted the rest of her life.

She died on May 22, 1457 at the age of 76. Innumerable miracles took place through her intercession and devotion spread far and wide. Her body was preserved incorrupt for several centuries, at times giving off a sweet fragrance. Much of her body is still incorrupt, including her forehead where one can see the wound. Today it is in a sealed glass coffin in a church of St. Augustine in Cascia, Italy, where pilgrims come to pray and ask for a miracle. The body of St. Rita has been known to elevate itself, so that it touches the network of wires that covers the coffin. This is especially noticeable on the feast day.

She is known as the "Saint of the Impossible" because of her amazing answers to prayers, as well as the remarkable events of her own life.

Prayers

Saint Rita Novena for Hopeless/Impossible Cases

Pray for nine consecutive days, and then publish if your petition is granted

O holy patroness of those in need, St. Rita,
whose pleadings before thy Divine Lord
are almost irresistible,
who for thy lavishness in granting favours
hast been called the Advocate of the hopeless
and even of the impossible;
St. Rita, so humble, so pure,
so mortified, so patient
and of such compassionate love
for thy Crucified Jesus
that thou couldst obtain from Him
whatsoever thou askest,
on account of which all confidently
have recourse to thee expecting,
if not always relief,
at least comfort;
be propitious to our petition,
showing thy power with God
on behalf of thy suppliant;
be lavish to us,
as thou hast been in so many wonderful cases,
for the greater glory of God,
for the spreading of thine own devotion,
and for the consolation of those
who trust in thee.

We promise, if our petition is granted,
to glorify thee by making known thy favour,
to bless and sing thy praises forever.
Relying then upon thy merits and power
before the Sacred Heart of Jesus,
we pray thee grant that...

(mention your request)

as soon as God deems fit.
Amen.

Do you have a prayer petition that was answered? Want to publish the prayer and show your gratitude? Visit our "Petitions Granted" page!

Pope John Paul II: A Life of Heroic Humility and Obedience

I am pleased to offer you a cordial welcome and to express to you my joy at the special event which has brought us together here. You have come in large numbers to make your pilgrimage to Rome and to pass through the Holy Door of the Great Jubilee. I greet Cardinal Sodano, Secretary of State. I greet dear Archbishop Riccardo Fontana of Spoleto-Norcia and thank him for the words and good wishes he addressed to me on your behalf. I greet Cardinal Opilio Rossi, the Armenian Patriarch and all the Bishops present. I greet the Fathers General, the religious and nuns of the Order of Saint Augustine, as well as the authorities of every order and rank. Your presence reminds me of the visit I made 20 years ago to the town of Cascia to visit the people struck by the earthquake of 1979. Saint Rita knew the sufferings of the human heart Among us today is an illustrious pilgrim who joins us from heaven in our prayer. It is Saint Rita of Cascia, whose mortal remains, brought to Rome by the Italian Police, accompany the crowds of those who devotedly call upon her with affectionate familiarity and confidently bring to her the problems and anxieties that weigh upon their hearts. Today it is as if the shrine of Cascia had been moved to Saint Peter’s Square. And you have come to venerate her, dear pilgrims, from every part of the world. Together with her you intend to renew your deepest sentiments of fidelity and communion to the Pope, as she did in her lifetime. The mortal remains of Saint Rita, which we venerate here today, are a significant sign of what the Lord accomplishes in history when he finds humble hearts open to his love. Here we see the frail body of a woman who was small in stature but great in holiness, who lived in humility and is now known throughout the world for her heroic Christian life as a wife, mother, widow and nun. Deeply rooted in the love of Christ, Rita found in her faith unshakeable strength to be a woman of peace in every situation. In her example of total abandonment to God, in her transparent simplicity and in her unflinching fidelity to the Gospel, we too can find sound direction for being authentic Christian witnesses at the dawn of the third millennium.

But what is the message that this saint passes on to us? It is a message that flows from her life: humility and obedience were the path that Rita took to be ever more perfectly conformed to the Crucified One. The mark which shines on her forehead is the verification of her Christian maturity. On the Cross with Jesus, she is crowned in a certain way with the love that she knew and heroically expressed within her home and by her participation in the events of her town. Following the spirituality of Saint Augustine, she became a disciple of the Crucified One and an “expert in suffering”; she learned to understand the sorrows of the human heart. Rita thus became the advocate of the poor and the despairing, obtaining countless graces of consolation and comfort for those who called upon her in the most varied situations. Rita of Cascia was the first woman to be canonized in the Great Jubilee at the beginning of the 20th century, 24 May 1900. In decreeing her sainthood, my predecessor Leo XIII observed that she pleased Christ so much that he chose to imprint upon her the seal of his charity and his passion. This privilege was granted to her for her exceptional humility, her interior detachment from earthly desires and the admirable penitential spirit which accompanied her at every moment of her life.

Today, 100 years after her canonization, I am pleased to offer her again as a sign of hope, especially to families. Dear Christian families, by imitating her example, may you also know how to find in your fidelity to Christ the strength to fulfil your mission of service to the civilization of love! If we ask Saint Rita for the secret to this extraordinary work of social and spiritual renewal, she replies: fidelity to the Love that was crucified. Rita, with Christ and like Christ, goes to the Cross always and only through love. Like her, then, let us turn our eyes and hearts to Jesus, who died on the Cross and rose for our salvation. It is he, our Redeemer, who makes the family’s mission of unity and fidelity possible, as he did for this beloved saint, even in moments of crisis and difficulty. And it is he who gives concrete form to the Christian commitment to building peace by helping them to overcome the conflicts and tensions which unfortunately are so frequent in daily life. Live as witnesses to a hope that never disappoints

The saint of Cascia belongs to the great host of Christian women who “have had a signifiant impact on the life of the Church as well as of society”. Rita well interpreted the “feminine genius” by living it intensely in both physical and spiritual motherhood. On the sixth centenary of her birth I recalled that her lesson “is concentrated on these typical elements of spirituality: the offer of forgiveness and the acceptance of suffering, not through a form of passive resignation … but through the strength of that love for Christ who, precisely in the episode of his being crowned, suffered, along with other humiliations, an atrocious parody of his kingship”. Dear brothers and sisters, the worldwide devotion to St Rita is symbolized by the rose. It is to be hoped that the life of everyone devoted to her will be like the rose picked in the garden of Roccaporena the winter before the saint’s death. That is, let it be a life sustained by passionate love for the Lord Jesus; a life capable of responding to suffering and to thorns with forgiveness and the total gift of self, in order to spread everywhere the good odour of Christ (cf. 2 Cor 2:15) through a consistently lived proclamation of the Gospel. Dear devoted pilgrims, Rita offers her rose to each of you: in receiving it spiritually strive to live as witnesses to a hope that never disappoints and as missionaries of a life that conquers death.

I now extend my cordial greeting to the members of the Italian National Federation of the Knights of Labour, who have come to Rome to celebrate their Jubilee. I welcome you all. Dear friends, your activity seeks to improve the economic and social standing of workers. I hope that through your efforts you can always contribute to the common good, to the formation of young people who will have a place in the world of production, to the gradual elimination of unjust inequalities and to the solution of the worrying problem of unemployment. As you face the rapid changes affecting modern society, be ready to meet the current challenges of economics and globalization, without ever losing sight of the fundamental values of human dignity, solidarity with the weakest, the humanization of labour and the social nature of work.

Dear brothers and sisters, I invoke Mary’s protection on you in this month which is particularly dedicated to her. Through her intercession and through the intercession of Saint Rita and Saint Benedict, may you and your loved ones be granted all the graces you need. I assure you of my prayer for this, as I cordially bless you all.

- Address on the 100th anniversary of the canonization of Saint Rita of Cascia, by Pope John Paul II, 20 May 2000.