A blind girl stirred a cup of corn and saw

CASCIA, Umbria, September 1833 AD — A cup of corn. That is what the mistress of the boarders handed Elisabetta Bergamini, to keep her hands busy. She started stirring it with her hand. Then she called out that she could see. She pulled the two patches of green silk off her eyes. The nuns had hung them there because light hurt her. She did not know which grains the nuns were throwing out. So she held one up and asked.

Seven years of barely any light

Elisabetta was a girl from Terni. She had been living at the monastery of Saint Mary Magdalene at Cascia since earlier that year. About seven years before, smallpox had pitted her whole face and taken her sight. She could only just tell light from dark. Several doctors at Terni tried one treatment after another, and none of them did anything.

The doctor who looked after the monastery checked her eyes when she arrived. He said what the others had said: the disease could not be cured, and only a miracle would give her back her sight.

So her parents sent her to Cascia to pray to Saint Rita of Cascia. They asked that she be given her sight, or else be taken by God.

St. Rita had been a nun of that same house, and she died in her cell there in 1457 AD. Her body was never buried. It has lain in the monastery ever since. Since at least 1500 AD the nuns have baked little loaves stamped with her picture. They set them in front of her body and give them away.

A black habit and a small silver rod

Elisabetta was in constant pain. Every day her eyes had to be washed, and that hurt her badly too. Her eyelids had to be pulled back as far as they would go.

That month the nuns decided to dress 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 put it on the girl and touched her eyes with a small silver rod. Tradition says the rod once touched St. Rita’s forehead. Afterwards the mistress of the boarders noticed that less was running from Elisabetta’s eyes. The change gave the girl more confidence in the saint.

Sort the whole cup

On the morning she was cured, the nuns were out in the courtyard sorting corn for the little loaves, the way they always did. The mistress of the boarders brought Elisabetta out and sat her down next to one of them. Elisabetta could not see what she was doing. She began mixing the good grain that had already been picked over back in with the poor corn. The nun beside her told her to keep still. That was when the mistress gave her the cup.

After she called out, the nuns ran over to look at her eyes. They were clear and healed.

The nuns wanted to be certain. They had her sort the whole cupful, and she did it without a single mistake. Then everyone in the house went together to the saint’s body to give thanks. Elisabetta saw it for the first time. She cried, crossed her arms and thanked the saint out loud. The monastery’s doctor looked at her eyes afterwards. He said the saint had worked a great miracle, and that without it she would never have seen again.

What she did next

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

Years later the Holy See counted her cure as one of the three miracles approved for St. Rita to be made a saint. Pope Leo XIII canonized St. Rita of Cascia on Ascension Day, May 24, 1900 AD.