St. Margaret of Cortona

St. Margaret of Cortona was born in 1247 at Laviano in Tuscany, Italy, the daughter of a farmer. Losing her mother young and unhappy at home, she went as a young woman to live for some nine years as the mistress of a nobleman, bearing him a son. When her lover was murdered and she found his body, she was seized with horror and grief and, in a profound conversion, resolved to give the rest of her life to penance for her sins.

Rejected by her father, she found refuge at Cortona, where the Franciscan friars received her, and she became a Franciscan tertiary about 1277. She embraced a life of severe penance, prayer, and humility, caring for the sick and the poor and founding a hospital and a confraternity for their relief, while she herself begged for her bread. Granted deep mystical graces and long struggling against temptation, she became a great model of the mercy shown to repentant sinners, so that she is sometimes called a second Magdalene. She died at Cortona on 22 February 1297 and was canonized in 1728.