What is a Saint?
A saint is a person that is recognized for his/her holiness and likeness or their relationship with God. Also saints are role models that help you find faith and help you in your deepest problems, saints have significant roles in your life whether you know it or not. Saint Margaret of Cortona is the saint that inspires me the most because even through her hardest moments where she wanted her life to end she had help and ended up believing more in faith and in god than she used to before.
Saint Margaret of Cortona is her birth name but without saint, also her name Margaret means “Pearl”. Saint Margaret of Cortona was born 1247 in Laviano, Italy. Margaret of Cortona’s mother had died was she was only seven years old. Her father was a farmer in Italy, he was devastated when Margret’s mother had died but then a few years later he got together with another woman and married her. Margaret’s stepmother did not get along with Margaret, her stepmother wanted nothing to do with her, she wanted Margaret to not be part of her life. Margaret and her stepmother never got along and when they had discussions her father wouldn’t even try to break up the fight, he doesn’t care whether they get along or not as long as he is not the one to get hurt.
When Margaret was seventeen she has had enough of her family that didn’t even want her there so she decided to move out by herself. A few days later she had heard about a young man needing a servant at the castle in Montepulciano. Since she had been living with another person she had to make some money so that she can pay where she lives. She had gone up to the castle and she had fallen in love with the young man that needed a servant, he was wealthy because he had lived in a castle and she was just becoming a servant for him. Later on when they started to get serious about their relationship he had promised Margaret that he would marry her. But after a while of Margaret wait for him to fulfill his promise he never married her.
Margaret got pregnant from the wealthy man and it was a boy, Margaret then lived with the wealth man for nine more years and served him as his mistress. In the year 1274 the wealthy man was killed by brigands and dumped his body in a shallow grave. When he died Margaret gave all his expensive and luxurious things to the poor so that she could have some money of her own. She blamed herself for giving the wealthy man an irregular life, but when the only thing she had given him was her love. Saint Margaret of Cortona did go to school. When Margaret was rejected by her father when she tried to go live with him again she had hit rock bottom so she went to ask the monks for help at St. Francis in the town of Cortona.
She sought to be a member of the Third Order of St. Francis. One day she full of loneliness and sadness, she went to mass and she tied a rope around her neck. But when the friars of the church had seen the helped her, they help her start a new life with prayer and helping the sick and poor. One day Saint Margaret of Cortona heard “God’s call to summon others to Him by preaching.” When she realizes that she has a connection to God she then embraces it by sharing things God has told her to tell people. When she started tell people from her town Cortona she started to get very well known because she made other people believe in God. When everyone knew her even people from all around from Italy, Spain, and France came to her just for her faith and belief in God. Miracles she does are of healing, that’s why many people came to her because if anyone had health problems she would be the one to help fix them or heal
When Saint Margaret of Cortona had died, she was buried in the church of St. Basil in Cortona. Saint Margaret had died in Cortona, Italy. Miracles she had done were healing but it is unknown to who she had done them too. She also received messages from heaven. Saint Margaret of Cortona was canonized on May 16, 1728, she was canonized by Pope Benedict XIII. After her death the church of Saint Margherita in Cortona was rebuilt in her honor. Saint Margaret of Cortona is preserved in a shrine at the Franciscan church at Cortona which bears her name. Saint Margaret of Cortona, feast day is February 22 and May 12. Saint Margaret of Cortona is the patron saint of the falsely accused, hobos, homeless, insane, orphaned, mentally ill, mid wives, penitent, single mothers, reformed prostitutes, step children and tramps. She is the patron on saint of Laviano, Italy.
