St. Rita (Margarita) after eighteen years of married life, lost, by death, her husband and her two sons. Called afterwards to the religious state, she professed the Rule of St. Augustine at Cascia her native town, near Spoleto, in Central Italy. In a life-long and terrible malady her patience, cheerfulness and union by prayer with almighty God, never failed her. Jesus imprinted on her brow the mark of a thorn from His crown. She died May 22, 1456, and both in life and after death she has worked many miracles. Devotion to St. Rita has increased very much in late years; she is invoked as the “patroness of desperate cases.”