Most grateful for so great a miracle, the family did not put off going to Conversano to return thanks and redeem their vow to the Saint of the Impossible, and many people took notice of the child that had been cured, how she walked without difficulty and without a halt, both her legs being precisely of the same length.
The following stupendous fact that happened in the case of a person who had never even heard the name of St. Rita of Cascia shows how much God wishes glory to be given to His famous servant.
To Vito Palazzi and his wife Rosina Surico of Gioia del Colle, near Bari, a child was born in 1897, who was christened Filippo. From birth the infant had one of its feet turned, so that the sole of the foot was twisted to a right angle from the place it ought to occupy. Doctors were consulted, but to no effect. They declared no care could remedy the defect, and that an operation would be dangerous and useless. The poor mother could only weep distractedly. One night, after crying excessively, she was sleeping, when a nun appeared to her in her sleep. 'Rosina,' said she, 'why do you weep? Can you not have recourse to me in your affliction?' 'And who are you, O, blessed sister?' said she. 'I am Blessed Rita of Cascia,' said the nun. 'O, Blessed Rita,' said the afflicted woman, 'cure my little Filippo for me;' and she showed the saint her infant's twisted foot. 'Have faith, Rosina,' said the saint to her; 'the defect in the child is a serious one, but God can do all things;' and so saying she made the sign of the Cross three times on the foot and disappeared. When the woman awoke on the following morning she remembered the vision, and, hurrying from her bed, she ran to the infant's cradle; she undid the bandages and looked at its feet, and found them both as they ought to be, for the deformity of the left foot had disappeared. She knelt on the floor and thanked the saint most earnestly. She then called her husband, showed him the infant's foot, and told him of the vision and miracle. She remembered St. Rita, and wrote to Conversano for a large picture of her, which she had framed, and before which she keeps a lamp burning night and day; and she likewise had a High Mass sung before the saint's altar, nor is she ever wearied in telling the miracle and giving glory to the saint to whom she owes it.
CHAPTER IX
HER CANONIZATION
In reading the wonderful and miraculous facts of the life of St. Rita and the very many prodigious works done by God through her intercession, the reader must have asked himself more than once how it is that so grand a soul, whose heroic virtues shine so brightly, and who was, like the greatest saints of the Church, favoured by God with most singular graces and sublime privileges, should be adorned with the aureole of a saint and raised to highest honours of the altars only after more than four centuries had passed since she had gone to immortal glory in heaven.
The only reasonable answer to this question, the only explanation of a delay not by any means unique in the history of the canonization of the great heroes of the Church, is that the judgments of God are incomprehensible and His ways unsearchable, and the Divine wisdom which in His own time makes each cause produce its effect, and all things regulates in number, weight, and measure, so disposes it that the exaltation of His servants on earth then takes place when it is for the greater glorification of His Church and the greater spiritual advantage of Christians. This just reflection ought to console us in the sorrow we naturally feel at the long delay that has occurred in bringing to a happy termination the process of the canonization of our heroine.
After the privilege of reciting the office and celebrating Mass in honour of the saint had been granted to the Augustinian Order and the Diocese of Spoleto in 1627, as soon as the solemn festivals we have described were brought to an end, devotion to St. Rita increased to such an extent, and the desire of the faithful became so fervent to have their great advocate enrolled by the Church's supreme authority in the catalogue of the Blessed and afterwards of the Saints, that in August, 1737, her cause was resumed in the state and terms in which it was found. On the 3rd of August in that year an ordinary session of the Congregation was held to debate the point whether the case excepted in the decrees of Pope Urban VIII. was fully established, and in the result the Congregation found the answer to be in the affirmative, and Pope Clement XII., on the 13th of the same month, confirmed the finding of the Congregation. On the 25th of July in the following year remissorial letters were therefore sent to the Ecclesiastical Courts of Spoleto, in whose jurisdiction Cascia then was, authorizing them to institute an Apostolic process of inquiry regarding the virtues and miracles of Blessed Rita, it being the unbroken practice of the Holy See not to grant the supreme honours of the altars unless it be shown that the theological and moral virtues were practised in a heroic degree. But the process then begun was interrupted by various events, and was not resumed until 1851. Without further interruption it was finally perfected in 1855, and its validity was approved in 1856 in Rome by Pius IX., of happy memory. Meanwhile the fame of the extraordinary graces and miracles granted by God through the saint's intercession was everywhere increasing, but it is hard to collect the proofs and institute a process that will satisfy the rigorous requirements which the Church exacts in those matters.
Nevertheless, juridical proofs of some of these miraculous occurrences were not wanting. In fact, in the years 1851 and 1852 there was held by Apostolic permission in the Ecclesiastical Courts of Nursia, under the jurisdiction of which Cascia had passed, a process of inquiry into the reported case of instantaneous curing of a girl—Elisabetta Bergamini, who had been suffering from conjunctivitis complicated with ulcerous keratitis. Owing to the efforts of the Most Rev. Mons. Casimiro Gennari, then Bishop of Conversano, and at present titular Archbishop of Lepanto and Assessor of the Inquisition, who is most zealous, as we have said, in spreading devotion to St. Rita, the authorization of the Holy See was asked for and obtained in 1887 to institute a formal Apostolic process of inquiry into the case of Cosimo Pelligrini, of the town of Conversano, who was reported to have been miraculously cured. As soon as the inquiry was perfected, it was scrutinized in an ordinary Congregation of the Rota on the 28th of June, 1892, and its validity recognised. On the 17th of the following month the Holy Father deigned to confirm the sentence of the Sacred Congregation.