aint Margaret of Castello’s feast day is on 13 April. She was born blind in 1287 on the borders of Tuscany and Umbria to impoverished noble parents who abandoned their daughter after attempts to heal her blindness had been unsuccessful. Trusting in God she was fostered for brief periods by kind parishioners in Metola (now known as Città-di-Castello) and by unkind nuns who found their lax lifestyle challenged and reproached by Margaret whose life demonstrated holiness and saintly recollection. She was then adopted by a couple who took her into their home, where she became a Tertiary and lived until her death in 1320. Her interior life was very intense. Ecstasies, raptures and levitations and severe austerities and mortifications are reported of her as well as a dark night of the soul, as she sought to conform herself to God’s will. She learned patience and a great compassion for others in her school of suffering. After her holy death her heart was extracted and opened, and it was reported that three balls, like pearls, tumbled out, representing the three miraculous answers that her adoptive family had received through her intercession. Although physically blind her heart saw clearly.

Howard Trust