St. Margaret of Castello, O.P.
Virgin, Dominican Tertiary, Patron of the Disabled and Unwanted
1287 – 1320 | Feast Day: April 13
Born Into Rejection
The life of St. Margaret of Castello begins not with a triumph, but with an abandonment — and yet, from that moment of rejection, God was already writing one of the most extraordinary stories of sanctity in the history of the Dominican Order.
Margaret was born in 1287 in Metola, in the Duchy of Urbino, Italy, to Parisio and Emilia, a wealthy and powerful noble family. Her birth, however, was a catastrophe to her parents’ ambitions. She was born severely disabled — a dwarf, hunchbacked, blind, lame, and with one leg shorter than the other. To a family of noble pride and social ambition, she was an embarrassment.
Her father Parisio, a military commander of great local prestige, refused to let anyone know she had been born. Margaret was hidden away, raised essentially in isolation, and eventually — when she was perhaps six years old — walled into a small cell attached to a chapel so that she would not be seen by the world.
Hidden With God
What the world considered a curse, God was turning into a school of holiness. In her tiny cell, Margaret could hear Mass through a small opening and received spiritual formation from a kindly chaplain, who taught her the faith and introduced her to the life of prayer. Rather than growing bitter at her confinement and abandonment, Margaret grew in profound union with God.
She learned to pray the Divine Office by memory, developed a deep devotion to the Rosary, and spent her years in contemplation of the Passion of Christ. The cell that was meant to be her prison became her cloister.
The Final Rejection
When Margaret was around fifteen or sixteen, her desperate parents brought her to a shrine in Città di Castello where miraculous healings were reported, hoping at last to rid themselves of their burden. They prayed publicly for her healing — and nothing happened. God did not cure her. Enraged and humiliated, her parents abandoned her on the steps of the shrine and walked away.
Margaret was left alone, without family, without resources, without sight, in a city she did not know. This moment — the final, complete rejection by the two people most obligated to love her — could have destroyed anyone. Instead, it set her free.
Welcomed by the Poor
The people of Città di Castello, witnessing what had happened, were moved with compassion and took her in. Various families of the city housed her in turn, and it was among the poor and the marginalized that Margaret found her true family. She quickly became known for her holiness, her joyful spirit, and her inexhaustible charity toward those who were suffering.
She joined the Dominican Third Order, received a white habit, and began her apostolate in earnest — visiting prisons, caring for the sick, teaching children the faith, and consoling those in despair. The same woman whom her parents considered worthless became the most sought-after spiritual presence in the city.
Miracles and Mystical Life
Margaret’s interior life was extraordinarily rich. She experienced mystical visions, bilocation, and ecstasies. It is reported that she would fall into ecstasy at Mass, levitating during the consecration. Her love for the Eucharist was the center of her entire life.
She bore her physical sufferings with such evident joy that those around her were confounded — she called her disabilities gifts from God that kept her close to the suffering Christ. She was known to say that her blindness was a mercy, as it kept her eyes turned inward toward God rather than outward toward the distractions of the world.
At her death on April 13, 1320, at the age of thirty-three — the same age as Our Lord at His crucifixion — the city of Città di Castello turned out en masse. During her funeral Mass, a young girl who had been crippled from birth was reportedly cured when her parents pressed her against Margaret’s body.
Incorruptibility and Canonization
Upon examination after her death, three small stones were found near her heart, carved with images of the Holy Family — the Nativity of Our Lord, the Annunciation, and the Presentation in the Temple. These stones, and her incorrupt body, are still venerated today in the Basilica of Saint Dominic in Città di Castello.
Margaret was beatified in 1609 by Pope Paul V. After centuries of veneration, Pope Francis canonized her on October 13, 2019 — the feast of Our Lady of Fatima — making her the first person with a visible disability to be canonized in the modern era.
Patronage
St. Margaret of Castello is the patron saint of:
- The disabled and physically handicapped
- The unwanted and abandoned
- The homeless
- Orphans
- The pro-life movement
- Persons with Down syndrome
St. Margaret of Castello pray for us.