Blind girl sorting corn at Cascia calls out that she can see

CASCIA, Umbria, September 1833 AD — A blind girl who had been handed a cup of corn to keep her hands busy called out in the courtyard of the Augustinian convent here this month that she could see. She pulled off the two patches of green silk that had been hung over her eyes against the pain of light, and, not knowing which grains the nuns were throwing out, held one up and asked.

The girl is Elisabetta Bergamini, of Terni, a boarder in the monastery of Saint Mary Magdalene since earlier this year. About seven years ago smallpox pitted her whole face and destroyed her sight so completely that she could barely tell light from dark. Several doctors at Terni put her through one treatment after another and none of them did anything. The physician who attends the convent examined her when she arrived and said the same as they had: the disease was incurable, and only a miracle would give her back her sight. Her parents sent her here to pray, through the intercession of Saint Rita of Cascia, either to be given her sight or to be taken by God.

St. Rita was an Augustinian nun of this house, and she died in her cell here in 1457 AD. Her body was never buried. She was carried into the nuns’ church wrapped in a sheet, with no coffin, to be laid in the burial niche, and the people of the town kept coming to venerate her until the burial simply never happened. The body has lain in the monastery ever since, and since at least 1500 AD the nuns have baked little loaves stamped with her image, set them before it and given them away. Those who ask a favour say an Our Father and a Hail Mary, eat a piece of the bread and drink a little water, in memory of the bread and water that were the saint’s own food.

The family had a particular reason for choosing Cascia. Elisabetta’s father’s stepmother was cured by St. Rita some years ago. An aunt of the girl’s is in the house as well, a nun called Sister Maria Maddalena.

Elisabetta was in constant pain. Light hurt her enough that the two patches of green silk had to be hung over her eyes. A discharge mixed with tears ran from them steadily, strong enough to eat channels down her nose and cheeks. The smell of it was hard to stand near. On the doctor’s orders Sister Maria Maddalena and the mistress of the boarders washed her eyes every day with a marshmallow decoction. That treatment hurt her badly too, because her eyelids had to be pulled back as far as they would go.

She was still in that state this month, when the nuns decided to put her in a black votive habit in St. Rita’s honour. The confessor blessed it and touched it to the case that holds the saint’s body. They dressed the girl in it and touched her eyes with a small silver rod which tradition says once touched St. Rita’s forehead. The mistress noticed afterwards that the flow from her eyes had slackened, and the change gave Elisabetta more confidence in the saint.

On the morning she was cured, the nuns were in the courtyard sorting the corn for the little loaves, as was their custom. The mistress of the boarders brought Elisabetta out and sat her down next to one of them. She could not see what she was doing, and she began mixing the grain that had already been picked over back in with the poor corn. The nun beside her told her to keep still. The mistress then gave her a cup with some corn in it to keep her occupied.

As soon as she had the cup she started stirring the corn with her hand, and then she called out. The nuns ran over to look at her eyes and found them clear and completely healed.

They wanted to be certain. They had her sort the whole cupful, and she did it without a mistake. Then the community went together to the saint’s body to give thanks. Elisabetta saw the saint’s body for the first time, and she wept, crossed her arms and gave her thanks aloud. When the convent’s doctor examined her afterwards, he said the saint had worked a great miracle, and that without it the girl would never have seen again.

Elisabetta stayed at Cascia nearly three years more, and her eyes were strong the whole time. She learned to read well enough to recite the office in choir with the nuns and to read the instruction aloud for the lay sisters, and she learned to write and to sew — work that needs sharp eyes.

The Church does not take a cure of this kind on a doctor’s word alone. Before the Holy See declares anyone a saint, it requires two things to be proved on sworn testimony in a church court. The first is that the person practised the virtues to a heroic degree; the second is that miracles have been worked through that person’s intercession. Four proved miracles have been required for as long as the Church has kept the rule.

The apostolic inquiry into St. Rita’s virtues and miracles had been opened in 1738 AD, then interrupted by one event after another, and it was not taken up again until 1851 AD. In that year and the next, by apostolic permission, the ecclesiastical courts of Norcia held a formal inquiry into the instantaneous cure of Elisabetta Bergamini; Cascia had by then passed under their jurisdiction. The larger process ran on without further interruption, was completed in 1855 AD, and its validity was approved at Rome in 1856 AD by Pope Pius IX.

A well-known physician of Rome was asked for his judgment on the case and gave it in writing, under oath. He ended: “It is a matter of conscience and of necessity to reiterate my opinion that this cure has been instantaneous, perfect, and lasting, in no way caused by art or by natural forces, impossible to take place except by miracle, which by science and by conscience must be classified with the great inexplicable portents which the Omnipotent God allows to be performed by His faithful servants, and in our case by Blessed Rita of Cascia; and this I again repeat in my deposition under my oath.”

The Holy See approved three miracles for St. Rita’s canonization: the fragrance that comes from her body, the cure of Elisabetta Bergamini, and the cure of Cosimo Pellegrini, a tailor of Conversano. Pope Leo XIII dispensed with the fourth as a special favour, rather than approve a defective inquiry of 1775 AD into the cure of an Augustinian nun of Cascia. He had the decree approving all three read out and published on Palm Sunday, April 8, 1900 AD. He canonized St. Rita of Cascia on Ascension Day, May 24, 1900 AD, together with St. John Baptist de La Salle.