Sanctuary of Cascia

A mountain town in Umbria

Cascia is a municipality in the province of Perugia, in Umbria, nestled in the Valnerina — the valley of the upper Nera — at about 600 metres above sea level, between the Umbrian Apennines and the border of the Marches.^[3] It is a mountain land, marked by the earthquakes that have regularly struck the region: a fact that weighed heavily in the architectural history of the sanctuary, built in the 20th century in a monumental style precisely because the old buildings had suffered and a lasting setting was wanted.

The sanctuary does not stand at the exact centre of the medieval town, but on a rise, the hill of Sant'Agostino, so named because it had hosted the Augustinian presence for centuries. It is there, on the hillside, that the basilica, the monastery and the hospitality buildings are concentrated today: a complex that forms less an isolated church than a small spiritual town.^[4]

The monastery where Saint Rita lived

The historic core of the sanctuary is not the basilica, but the monastery. Founded in the 13th century and first placed under the patronage of Saint Mary Magdalene (Santa Maria Maddalena), it has belonged from the outset to the Augustinian family.^[5] It was in this community that Saint Rita (c. 1381–1457) entered after her widowhood and that she lived for over forty years, until her death — the entire "religious" part of her life unfolded within these walls.^[6]

Of the old monastery, spaces survive that pilgrims can still approach: the cell where the saint lived, a 16th-century choir, and a garden where a rose garden (roseto) is kept in memory of the rose which, according to tradition, Rita asked for in the depths of winter.^[7] These places belong to the hagiographical narrative; what matters for understanding the sanctuary is that they have remained inhabited: the community of Augustinian nuns never left the hill, and everything else grew up around their enclosure.

The 1900 canonization and the influx of pilgrims

For centuries, Rita's tomb was a regional devotion, venerated in the monastery's narrow church. Everything changed at the turn of the 20th century: the canonization of Rita, proclaimed by Leo XIII in 1900, gave the devotion a universal dimension and caused an influx of pilgrims that the small convent church could no longer contain.^[8] The problem became concrete and material: where to put the crowd? It was from this overcrowding that the project of a great sanctuary was born.

Mother Maria Teresa Fasce, the soul of the project

The maker of the new sanctuary was a nun: Mother Maria Teresa Fasce (1881–1947), a Genoese who became abbess of the Cascia monastery.^[9] A woman of organisation as much as of prayer, she understood that to make Saint Rita known to the world, both an instrument of outreach and a building worthy of welcome were needed. She founded for this purpose a devotional bulletin, Dalle Api alle Rose ("From Bees to Roses"), and it was in its pages, in June 1925, that the project of a great sanctuary was publicly launched for the first time.^[10] She spread the figure of Saint Rita by every means, with a simple conviction: the saint of impossible causes needed a basilica worthy of her.^[11]

From dream to building site: Brasini, Chiapetta, Calori

The passage from dream to plan was laborious. A first design, entrusted to the Roman architect Armando Brasini, proved too costly and oversized for the monastery's means.^[12] In 1931, on the advice of Don Luigi Orione, Mother Fasce wrote to Pope Pius XI: he made a substantial donation and charged his own engineer, Maria Spirito Chiapetta, with drawing up a new design on a feasible scale.^[13] The plan was then revised by the architects Giuseppe Calori and Giuseppe Martinenghi, who gave it its definitive Greek-cross form.^[14] From this journey was born a building of fruitful compromise: vast enough for the crowds, sober enough to be financed by the offerings of devotees alone.

The foundation stone (20 June 1937)

On 20 June 1937, Cascia lived a historic day: the basilica's foundation stone was laid and blessed by Cardinal Enrico Gasparri.^[15] The building site, opened on the hill of Sant'Agostino, mobilised for ten years the resources gathered by Mother Fasce from the faithful the world over — a popular funding, made of small offerings and sacrifices, worthy of a saint invoked by the poor and the despairing.^[16]

The war and the death of Mother Fasce

The Second World War (1939–1945) considerably slowed the works: scarce materials, mobilised labour, a drained economy.^[17] Mother Fasce would not see the completion of her work: she died on 18 January 1947, only a few months before the consecration.^[18] The detail is poignant — she who had carried the project for over twenty years passed away just as the building was all but finished, like a foundress called home before the inauguration of her cathedral.

The consecration (18 May 1947)

On 18 May 1947, the basilica was solemnly consecrated.^[19] The same day, the body of Saint Rita, until then kept in the monastery's old church, was transferred to the new basilica and laid in the shrine prepared for it.^[20] Ten years after the foundation stone, the hill of Sant'Agostino had its great sanctuary; all that remained was to have it recognised by the universal Church.

Here are the major stages of this genesis, from the first design to the consecration:

Elevation to the rank of minor basilica (1955)

On 1 August 1955, Pope Pius XII raised the church to the rank of minor basilica.^[21] This title, granted by the Holy See, sealed the new stature of a sanctuary which, in under twenty years, had risen from the narrow convent chapel to the rank of a national pilgrimage centre, soon international.

A Greek-cross plan and a great dome

The building consecrated in 1947 follows a centred Greek-cross plan: four arms of equal length radiating around a central dome, and ending in four great apses.^[22] This arrangement, inherited from Byzantine architecture and the great centrally planned buildings, directs the whole space towards the luminous centre of the dome, beneath which the liturgy unfolds. Colonnades support a high gallery (matroneum), giving the interior an amplitude and verticality worthy of the crowds it must hold.^[23]

The whole is in a style the guides describe as modern and neo-Byzantine: modern in its 20th-century structure and volumes, neo-Byzantine in its central plan, its domes and its decoration of mosaics and large paintings.^[24]

The Tivoli travertine facade

The facade, facing the sloping forecourt, is clad in the pure white of Tivoli travertine, framed by two bell towers.^[25] This facing of bright stone, luminous under the Umbrian sun, is what first strikes the visitor: it signals the sanctuary from afar and stands out, by its monumental whiteness, against the grey and brown stone of the old town. The central portal is adorned with sculpted scenes from the life of Saint Rita, the work of the sculptor Eros Pellini.^[26]

The decoration: Montanarini, Ferrazzi, Manzù

The basilica's interior is a veritable museum of 20th-century Italian sacred art, the fruit of a decorative campaign that mobilised several great names. The central dome was covered with frescoes by Luigi Montanarini — a vast composition of about 300 m² dominated by the dove of the Holy Spirit.^[27] The other apses and chapels received frescoes by Luigi Filocamo, Silvio Consadori, Gisberto Ceracchini, Cesarino Vincenzi and, for the apse dedicated to the saint, Ferruccio Ferrazzi, author of a Saint Rita in Glory.^[28] The high altar is the work of the sculptor Giacomo Manzù, one of the most famous Italian artists of the century; the stained-glass windows are by Armando Marrocco and Consadori, and the organ by the Pinchi firm.^[29]

Everything in the Cascia basilica converges on the saint's shrine: Montanarini's dome, the painted apses, Manzù's altar are but the monumental setting of a body.^[30]

The heart of the upper basilica is the chapel of Saint Rita, set in one of the four apses and treated in a refined neo-Byzantine style.^[31] The saint's body rests there in a glass shrine, itself set in a marble sarcophagus made in 1930 and installed in the basilica on the day of the consecration, 18 May 1947.^[32] The marble ark bears on its faces the figures of the cardinal virtues, and a wrought-iron grille protects the whole.^[33]

It is before this shrine that devotion concentrates: pilgrims file past, pray, leave intentions. The sanctuary does not present the body as a curiosity, but as the goal of the pilgrimage — the very reason the basilica was built. On the question of the preservation of saints' bodies and the Catholic veneration of relics, see Incorrupt bodies and Why venerate relics?.^[34]

A crypt become a basilica

Beneath the upper basilica, the space that originally served as a crypt was fitted out and opened in 1988 as the lower basilica.^[35] This second sanctuary, more intimate, is not a mere basement: it gathers three major memories of the place — the foundress's tomb, the remains of a Blessed Augustinian, and the relic of a Eucharistic miracle — which make it a stage of the pilgrimage in its own right.

The tomb of Blessed Maria Teresa Fasce

It is in the lower basilica that Blessed Maria Teresa Fasce rests, the foundress-abbess, beatified by John Paul II on 12 October 1997.^[36] The sanctuary she had dreamed of thus keeps her who had willed it: her tomb has become, in turn, a place of prayer, and her feast is celebrated on 18 January, the day of her death.^[37]

Blessed Simone Fidati of Cascia

The lower basilica also keeps the remains of Blessed Simone Fidati of Cascia (c. 1285–1348), an Augustinian born at Cascia, preacher and theologian, author of a vast commentary on the Gospel, the De gestis Domini Salvatoris.^[38] His presence in this place is no accident: it was he who, according to tradition, was witness and confessor of the priest of the 1330 Eucharistic miracle, and who brought the relic back to Cascia. The sanctuary thus reunites, under one roof, the witness and the prodigy.

The relic of the Eucharistic miracle of Cascia (1330)

The most singular treasure of the lower basilica is the relic of the Eucharistic miracle of Cascia. In 1330, according to the old documents kept by the Augustinians, a priest called to the bedside of a sick man near Siena negligently slipped a consecrated host between the pages of his breviary; when administering communion, he discovered that the particle had turned into blood, staining both pages of the book.^[39] The priest, distraught, confessed it to Blessed Simone Fidati of Cascia, who took charge of the relic.^[40]

According to a tradition reported on site, whoever looks at the relic against the light believes they can still make out the features of a face.^[41]

The event was recognised by a bull of Pope Boniface IX, dated 10 January 1401, which granted to those who would visit the church of Sant'Agostino on Corpus Christi day the Portiuncula indulgence.^[42] An examination of the two pages, carried out in 1687, concluded that the bloodstains matched perfectly.^[43] Today, one of the bloodstained pages is kept at Cascia, in a silver reliquary, within the sanctuary built on the site of the old Sant'Agostino church.^[44] The full account of the prodigy and its scholarly file are covered in Ignispedia's article on Eucharistic miracles; the essential point is retained here: this miracle belongs to the treasure of the place, and it stands in the same line as Bolsena or Lanciano.^[45]

As Manoppello is guarded by Capuchins, Cascia is guarded by a women's community: the Augustinian nuns of the Saint Rita monastery, direct heiresses of the 13th-century community in which the saint lived.^[46] Their enclosure adjoins the basilica; they ensure continuous prayer at the heart of the sanctuary, watch over the historic spaces — Rita's cell, the 16th-century choir, the rose garden — and keep the living memory of the place.

This continuity is the spiritual backbone of the sanctuary: at Cascia, the modern basilica is not a building set upon an abandoned site, but the monumental extension of a monastic life that has remained alive to this day. The pilgrim who prays before the shrine prays above the community which, behind the enclosure, continues the office that Rita herself sang six centuries ago.

The feast of Saint Rita (20–22 May) and the blessing of the roses

The great moment of the year is the feast of Saint Rita, celebrated from 20 to 22 May, which draws to Cascia thousands of pilgrims from Italy and abroad.^[47] 22 May, the feast day, opens with the ringing of the bells and a historic procession from Roccaporena — Rita's native village — through the centre of Cascia, followed by the solemn pontifical Mass, the Supplica to Saint Rita and, on the basilica steps, the famous blessing of the roses.^[48]

"Dear brothers and sisters, the worldwide devotion to Saint Rita is symbolized by the rose. It is to be hoped that the life of everyone devoted to her will be like the rose picked in the garden of Roccaporena the winter before the saint's death. That is, let it be a life sustained by passionate love for the Lord Jesus; a life capable of responding to suffering and to thorns with forgiveness and the total gift of self, in order to spread everywhere the good odor of Christ (cf. 2 Cor 2:15) through a consistently lived proclamation of the Gospel." — Saint John Paul II^[49]

The rose has become the Ritian symbol par excellence — to the point that the faithful bring roses by the thousand to be blessed, which they then take home as a sacramental of the saint of impossible causes.^[50] This rite, attached to the place and its feast, makes the Cascia forecourt, every 22 May, one of the great devotional gatherings of Umbria.

The modern hospitality complex

Faithful to Mother Fasce's vision, who wanted to welcome as much as to celebrate, the sanctuary has acquired over the decades a veritable hospitality complex.^[51] It includes the Hall of Peace (Sala della Pace), opened in 2008 and able to hold some 700 people; a House of Spiritual Exercises with 55 rooms for prayer groups; and the Hotel of the Roses (Hotel delle Rose), the former Pilgrim's House, which offers 160 rooms.^[52] This infrastructure expresses a conviction: a living sanctuary must be able to lodge, feed and lead in prayer the crowds it attracts.

The radiance of the "saint of the impossible"

Saint Rita's reputation as advocate of desperate causes has carried the name of Cascia far beyond Umbria. The sanctuary is today an international pilgrimage destination, and Ritian devotion has spread the world over — to shrines and parishes dedicated to Cascia on several continents.^[53] Like Manoppello for the Holy Face, Cascia has become a point of convergence: not through the grandeur of its architecture, but through the density of the graces attributed to it.

Cascia is not a prestige sanctuary: it is a mountain monastery become, through the holiness of a nun, one of the great pilgrimage places of Italy. Everything there is ordered to a single gesture: praying beside a saint who went through everything — marriage, bereavement, waiting, illness — and who remains the face of hope for impossible causes.

The white basilica, Montanarini's dome, Manzù's altar, the glass shrine, the relic of the blood, the rose garden behind the enclosure: the whole leads the pilgrim from the monumental to the intimate, from the great nave to the small cell where Rita lived. The sanctuary only extends what the monastery already did in the 13th century — guarding, praying, welcoming — on the scale of a Church become worldwide. That is what the Augustinian nuns offer to those who climb the hill of Sant'Agostino: not a spectacle, but an encounter, under the sign of the rose given in the depths of winter.

Related Ignispedia articles

• Saint Rita of Cascia (c. 1381–1457) — the saint's life, her widowhood, her entry into the monastery, the forehead wound and her reputation as saint of impossible causes.
• Eucharistic miracles — the complete file, including the 1330 Cascia miracle kept in the lower basilica.
• Manoppello Shrine — another Italian sanctuary built around a relic and guarded by a stable religious community.
• Incorrupt bodies — the question of the preservation of saints' bodies, including Saint Rita's.
• Why venerate relics? — the Catholic doctrine of veneration.

Main sources

• Santuario di Santa Rita da Cascia, it.wikipedia.org — history of the sanctuary, monastery, lower basilica, hospitality complex.
• Basilica di Santa Rita da Cascia, it.wikipedia.org — chronology of the construction, architects, decoration.
• Basilica of Santa Rita of Cascia, en.wikipedia.org — architecture, artists, shrine.
• Official sanctuary site, santaritadacascia.org — the basilica, the 22 May feast, Mother Fasce, Blessed Simone Fidati.
• Miracolo eucaristico di Cascia, it.wikipedia.org — the 1330 prodigy and the relic kept at Cascia.
• Maria Teresa Fasce, it.wikipedia.org — the Blessed abbess, foundress of the great sanctuary.