Late Middle Ages (14th–15th century)
Feast: May 22
She endured an abusive husband for eighteen years, forgave his murderers, and then prayed for a wound from Christ's crown of thorns — and received one.
Rita wanted to be a nun. Her parents married her off at twelve to a man named Paolo Mancini, who was violent, unfaithful, and cruel. She endured the marriage for eighteen years. Neighbors in Cascia knew about the beatings. When Paolo was finally murdered in a vendetta — stabbed on a road outside town — Rita's two teenage sons swore to avenge their father. She prayed that they would die rather than become murderers. Both sons fell ill and died within the year. Whether her prayer caused their deaths is a question that haunts her story; she carried that weight for the rest of her life. Widowed and childless, she tried three times to enter the Augustinian convent in Cascia. They refused her — the rule excluded widows, and her family's involvement in the blood feud made her unwelcome. She brokered a formal peace between the families, ending the vendetta, and the convent finally admitted her. In the convent, she asked Christ for a share in his suffering. A wound appeared on her forehead, as if from a thorn, and it never healed. It was painful and foul-smelling, and it isolated her from the other nuns for years. She died in 1457 at about seventy-six. People call her the saint of impossible causes, and given her life, the title fits.