The Saint Rita Novena

The Saint Rita Novena is a nine-day Catholic prayer through the intercession of Saint Rita of Cascia, the fifteenth-century Italian Augustinian nun who is honored throughout the Catholic Church as the patroness of impossible causes. Saint Rita is invoked alongside Saint Jude Thaddeus, the apostolic patron of impossible causes, and is particularly associated with difficult marriages, reconciliations within families, and situations that seem to have no human solution.

Origin and historical development

Rita was born Margherita Lotti at Roccaporena, near Cascia in Umbria, around 1381. She married in obedience to her parents, lived eighteen years with a violent husband, was widowed in a feud, lost her two sons to illness within a year, and then entered the Augustinian convent at Cascia where she served for forty years, receiving the partial stigmata of the crown of thorns on her forehead.

Her cause for canonization moved slowly across the centuries. She was beatified in 1627 by Pope Urban VIII and canonized in 1900 by Pope Leo XIII. The Catholic devotion to her as patroness of impossible causes is preserved at the Basilica of Saint Rita in Cascia, one of the principal Catholic pilgrimage centers in Italy.

Structure of the novena

Each day of the novena attends to one aspect of Saint Rita's life: her childhood vocation, her difficult marriage, her widowhood, the loss of her sons, her entry to the convent, her contemplation of the Passion, her stigmata, her death, and the universal patronage she now exercises in heaven.

When the novena is prayed

The traditional dates of the novena are May 13 through May 21, ending on the eve of the Memorial of Saint Rita on May 22. The novena may also be prayed at any time of year for apparently impossible personal needs.

Theological foundation

The novena rests on the Catholic doctrine of the Communion of Saints and on the particular Catholic understanding of Saint Rita's life: that her perseverance through humanly impossible circumstances gives her an intercessory understanding of the cases of those who pray to her today.

Pairing with other prayers

The novena pairs naturally with the Saint Jude Novena (sister patronage of impossible causes), the Surrender Novena, and the Holy Rosary. For broader Catholic suffering theology, see Saint Padre Pio.

Sources

The principal sources are the canonization documents of 1900 and the Augustinian biographical tradition preserved at Cascia. The standard English biography is Joseph Sicardo, Life of Saint Rita of Cascia (1924, multiple reprints).