Margaret of Castello canonization draws local faithful to Italy

By Doug Bean
Catholic Times Editor

Barbara Magree and her late husband, Paul, made a pilgrimage nearly 20 years from Columbus to Italy to visit a small town where a humble, disabled young woman lived a heroically virtuous life in the 14th century. 

In the spring of 2002, the Columbus St. Patrick Church parishioners traveled to Castello, Italy, praying for a miracle that Paul might be cured of cancer. Many graces flowed from that trip, but Paul succumbed to the disease four years later after a heroic battle.

Now, 15 years after Barbara lost beloved Paul, she will return to Italy this month with a small group of pilgrims from Ohio for the canonization on Sunday, Sept. 19 in Citta di Castello of St. Margaret of Castello, O.P., a lay Dominican who was formally declared a saint in April.

Father Stephen Alcott, O.P., pastor at Columbus St. Patrick Church and the director of the St. Margaret Guild and shrine located at the downtown parish, will accompany Barbara and one parishioner from St. Gertrude Church, a Dominican parish in Cincinnati. They will be joined in Italy by Father Raymond Snyder, O.P., who was a parochial vicar at St. Patrick for three years before leaving this summer for doctoral studies in Rome.

If not for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the contingent from Columbus likely would have been much larger. St. Patrick parishioners and more than 1,000 members of the guild from throughout the world have maintained devotion to Margaret for years.

The small Ohio contingent also plans to visit Mercatello sul Metauro, a village near Castello where Margaret lived in seclusion for most of her young life.

The blind and crippled Margaret’s disfigurement embarrassed her well-to-do parents, and so they kept her isolated in a room of their castle until they abandoned her at age 20 in nearby Castello, where they had taken her hoping for a miracle cure that she never received. One tower of that castle, where Margaret was born, remains at the top of a hill.

After her parents left her to fend for herself on the streets in Castello, Margaret devoted her life to serving the poor and imprisoned, the sick and the dying, and teaching the faith to children. She became a Third Order Dominican (the equivalent then of a religious sister), forgave her parents and never displayed any bitterness despite being afflicted with deformities that made life challenging.  

She died on April 13, 1320 at age 33 and was so beloved that the entire town attended her funeral. She was buried inside the Church of San Domenico, where her body lies incorrupt in a glass case under the altar.

Margaret had taken a step to becoming a saint when she was beatified in 1609. For 400 years, she remained Blessed Margaret until April, when she was granted what is called equipollent canonization, which occurs when the Church waives its judicial processes and the formal attribution of a second miracle normally required in the sainthood process.

She is the sixth saint to receive this designation from Pope Francis since 2013. Other well-known “equipollents” in Church history include Cyril and Methodius, Albert the Great and Thomas More.   

The Church recognizes her feast day on the calendar as April 13, which is the date when the Magrees visited Castello and attended Mass during their 2002 pilgrimage.

“When she was declared a saint (in April), I just felt I wanted to go again,” Barbara Magree said.

The Magrees had become acquainted with Margaret as members at St. Patrick Church, where a shrine is located and novena prayers to her are recited each Wednesday after the 11:45 a.m. daily Mass.

“We chose her as our patron after Paul was diagnosed” in the late 1990s, Barbara said.    
Margaret is a patron for the disabled and the unborn. Many people have prayed to her for healing, and it seemed natural to the Magrees to ask for her intercession.

“Even though (Paul) wasn’t healed, there were a lot of graces that came out of that along the way – a lot of strengths,” Barbara said. “Certain days would be brighter because I prayed specifically to her.”

Not long after returning from the trip, Paul began cancer treatments in the fall of 2002 that continued for the next few years. The longtime professional musician, public school music teacher and founder of the children’s choir Chorus Angelorum at St. Patrick’s passed away in 2006 at age 63.

“So you might think our pilgrimage was a failure,” Barbara said. “There was no healing, he had to start chemotherapy and radiation that year, and it was as if it went downhill from there. There was still a peace that our family had.”

Barbara, her six grown children and their families continue to pray to Margaret. All of the children have remained active in their Catholic faith. The Magrees’ oldest son, Father Michael Magree, S.J., is a Jesuit priest.

“There’s still a devotion there. I don’t know how to explain it,” Barbara said. “It’s important to our children to raise their children in the faith, and that’s a grace. I thank God every day for that.”

Other St. Patrickparishioners have long maintained a devotion to Margaret. 

Mike and Margaret O’Sullivan, in their fifth decade as members of the parish, had never heard of then-Blessed Margaret of Castello before they joined St. Patrick during a period in the 1970s when her shrine in the church was expanded.

“We have not asked her to be an intercessor for us for our own health reasons but rather for the courage and strength to help others in their struggles,” Margaret O’Sullivan said. “Cheerfulness and steadfast faith were her mainstay.

“Our devotion to St. Margaret is a quiet, private one. Like us, she was drawn to St. Dominic.”
Phil and Suzanne Scherer returned to Columbus from New York five years ago after having moved away from central Ohio 50 years ago. While living in New York, the Scherers founded the St. Gianna Molla Pregnancy Outreach Center in Dunkirk, near where they previously lived, and the pro-life couple was drawn to Margaret’s “incredible story.”  

“She’s my go-to person,” Suzanne said. “We did receive one very great blessing from her – almost an impossible case, a curing of cancer for a family member. So she’s really special.

“I really believe that God sends us the saints we need for the times we live in, and given the abortion and euthanasia culture and all of that, she’s the perfect go-to saint right now.”
For more information on the saint, visit littlemargaret.org.