![]() It has a big screen where the video can be viewed in several languages. We transferred to a viewing room just across the reception office. I attended the mass at noon and afterwards I told the lady in the information center that I wanted to watch the monastery tour video in English. When I asked her if that church is the sanctuary she told me to follow her as she was going there too.Ī group of tourists, mostly Italians, were there checking out the church. There were signs showing the way but I found it more easily because I met a nun who was coming out of the Santa Maria della Plebe church. You reach it through narrow roads that seemed like a maze. The basilica, with its impressive architecture, is situated on top of a hill. The bus ride to Cascia was scenic, passing through high mountains and along a pristine stream that is still very clear, seemingly untouched by man and modern civilization. The response was in Italian and contained the schedule of masses and the tour of the monastery. It was a weekday so the bus left Rome at 7:30 AM, stopped in Terni at 9:05 AM and arrived in Cascia at 10:30 AM.Ī few weeks before I left for Italy, I e-mailed the sanctuary in English asking for information. The bus station is a couple of blocks away from the Roma Tiburtina Railway station. I decided to go by bus, which was a 3-hour trip from Rome. Rita, the patron saint of the impossible. Serve a confection of figs on her day, and be sure to have some roses on your dining table.As a Catholic, one reason for stopping in Italy on the way to visit my folks in the Philippines was to go to Cascia and visit the shrine of St. Perhaps for this reason, Rita is known as the saint of the impossible and a comfort and help to those who have heavy burdens to bear. Once more, the friend hastened to the garden, and there she found two ripe figs on a leafless tree. "Bring me two figs from my garden," Rita replied. She carried a rose to Rita and asked what else she might do. To her surprise, she found a bush in full bloom. No roses bloomed at this season, but the friend went off anyway, to gratify Rita's whim. ![]() As she lay dying, she asked a friend to bring her a rose from her garden at home. Tradition associates both roses and figs with St. There she spent her remaining years, caring for the ill and aged nuns. Widowed, childless, and alone, Rita sought peace at last in a convent. Both sons repented their ways on their deathbed. Then they fell ill, and Rita devoted herself to their care. Now Rita had to pray harder than ever that they would not turn murderers. But not long after this he was killed, and his sons vowed to avenge him. At long last her husband came to regret his sinful life and begged her forgiveness. ![]() Her two sons grew up to be just like their father, although Rita prayed constantly for all three. Her husband was cruel and dissolute, and for eighteen years she bore his abuse and unfaithfulness. From her earliest years she yearned to enter a convent, but her parents overruled her wishes and forced her into an unhappy marriage. Her feast is May 22.īorn into a humble Italian peasant family in 1381, Rita was the child of her parents' old age. Her story is one to match any TV melodrama. For homemakers who go about their daily chores with an eye on the television set, St.
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