Guess this unwed mother, whose feast day is February 22 ...

I am a female saint from the Middle Ages ... and here is my story.

Can you guess who I am?

Childhood loss and PTSD

In 1247, a daughter was born in Tuscany, Italy destined for sorrow and sanctity. When she was 7-years-old, her mother died. Her loving family life died with her.  Her father remarried, but the new stepmother and rules brought trauma, pain, stress and discomfort. While she grew in outer beauty, her heart was bruised with loss, neglect and longing. These early wounds were the source of a plan that only God could grow into grace and love.

Cohabitation, pregnancy and society outcast

At 17, seeking affection and belonging, she fled with a wealthy, married knight. He placed her in one of his Italian hunting castles, where luxury softened the edges of her loneliness. In 1264 she bore a son, a child of extraordinary gentleness and innocence. She knew the boy could never inherit his father’s name or titles, yet she clung to him with fierce maternal devotion. She loved him as her mother would love, had her mother lived. 

Abandonment and poverty

All fantasies shattered when her knight was murdered. Their guard dog led her to his remains, creating more trauma. His family cast her and her child out at once, stripping them of home and money. Her parents, already ashamed of her choices, refused to receive them. Homeless, destitute and a single mother whose child failed to thrive under heavy grief; they wandered the countryside with no earthly refuge. Yet in this desolation, God prepared her for greatness.

Religious conversion and lay vows

The local Franciscans found them and offered shelter in a humble casa di campagna. It was their gentle charity that saved them. She describes it as — a “holy-water, misted-cloud of swirling love.” Her soul’s dormant seeds of hope and faith began to sprout. They helped tend her son, meanwhile discerning his gifts and charisms from the Holy Spirit. Under their guidance, the boy blossomed into an architectural savant, intuiting flying buttresses and weight ratios into 13th century church designs.

In the quiet of Adoration, she found in the monstrance the virtues she lacked: docility, patience, fortitude and charity. She nursed the sick for wages, and her compassion elevated her to the role of midwife. Having lived in the gutter, God called her to seek frightened young mothers, soothe angry families, and cradle vulnerable infants with the tenderness for which she longed, but never received.

Legacy and Patronage

Mother and son both professed Franciscan vows — he as a friar, she as a Third Order Lay person. Together they transformed the region: he designed/built a hospital, while she founded an order of nursing sisters dedicated to dignifying women in crisis. Her own past, once a source of shame, became the wellspring of her ministry. Upon exhumation postmortem, her remains were incorrupt, a sign of Divine favor. In 1728, Holy Mother Church canonized her, raising her as a beacon for all who have stumbled, suffered and bore children outside the world’s approval.

Who am I?

St. Margaret of Cortona, is known as the penitent of Tuscany: patroness of single mothers and witness to the transforming mercy of God. If you are an unwed mother, God loves you and your child. He has a plan for you, just as He had for St. Margaret. Every soul matters to our heavenly Father. Come home to Him, and see.

Source

Name 7 saints with Pro-Life crises | Catholic365