PREFACE:

“Hail Rita, vessel of love, bride of Christ, sorrowful, you, from the thorns of the Savior, are born beautiful as a rose”. This is the phrase, carved as a greeting on the central beam of the facade of the basilica.

The olfactory memory refers to the Saint, in January 1457, while she was ill in her monastic cell in Cascia, she asked a cousin to bring her a rose from her land from Roccaporena.  Tradition states that God granted this wish and Rita's relative was able to pick for her a rose that had bloomed in winter , among the snow .