St. Rita of Cascia
Patron of impossible causes, abused wives, difficult marriages, parents, loneliness
Saint Rita (1381–1457) is the 'saint of the impossible.' Married against her will to a violent man, she bore patiently with him for eighteen years until his murder in a vendetta and the death of her two sons soon after — losses she had begged God to permit rather than let them avenge their father. Widowed and childless, she asked admission to the Augustinian convent of Cascia and was three times refused; the door was at last opened, by legend, when the founders of the monastery transported her there miraculously through locked gates. After meditating on the crown of thorns she received a wound on her forehead that bled for fifteen years until her death. Her tomb in Cascia is one of the most visited in Italy.