St. Margaret of Castello — Her Parents Sealed Her in a Room. Then Left Her With Strangers.

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A little girl is standing at the entrance of
a church in a town she has never been to before.

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She is somewhere between 14 and 17 years old.
She is blind. She walks with a severe limp.

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Her spine curves sharply, leaving her hunched.
She is small, even for a child her age, significantly

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smaller than anyone around her. Her parents
brought her here on a pilgrimage. They had

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been told there was a miracle worker buried
at this church, a holy man whose intercession

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has healed people. They came hoping their daughter
would be healed. And unfortunately, she was

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not healed. So her parents did what they had
been wanting to do for years. They left. They

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walked out of that church. got on their horses
and rode away, and they did not take her with

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them. She stood there, blind, disabled, alone
in a city she did not know, and listened to

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the sound of her parents leaving. That is where
this story begins, and what she became in the

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years after that moment is one of the most
unexpected things I have come across. in building

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the show.

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Welcome to our porch. Hi, my name is John O'Connor.
This is Everyday Saints. And if you are new

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here, welcome. Stick around and if this connects
with you, subscribe so you don't miss next

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week. We drop a new saint every Thursday. Every
other week on this show, we tell the story

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of an unknown saint. Someone history almost
completely forgot. This is one of those weeks.

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And I want to warn you. The beginning of this
story is genuinely hard to hear, but stay with

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me, because where this story ends is something
no one who knew the beginning could have predicted.

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Her name was Margaret of Castello. She was born
in 1287. She died in 1320 at the age of 33.

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She was canonized, officially declared a saint
by Pope Francis, and 2021, over 700 years after

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her death. This is her story. We are starting
in the year 1287. The castle of Metola, a fortified

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stone fortress in the rugged hill country of
central Italy, near the border of what is now

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Umbria and Marcae. Cold stone walls, the smell
of wood smoke. and the sounds of soldiers.

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A military household run by a man named Perisio,
a captain of some regional standing who had

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recaptured this castle from an enemy and been
given it as a reward. Perisio and his wife

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Amelia are expecting their first child and Perisio
has prepared celebrations. Two feasts, one

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at the castle for the servants. one in the town
for the dignitaries. He is expecting a son,

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an heir, a child who will carry the family name
and standing forward into the next generation.

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The child is born a girl. Not only a girl, but
a child with severe physical disabilities.

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Blind, her spine curves sharply from birth,
leaving her hunched and unable to walk normally.

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One leg shorter than the other. Her growth significantly
restricted. Everything that Perisio had imagined

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when he pictured his heir, strong, capable,
impressive. This child was, in his eyes, the

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complete opposite. There were no feasts. Instead,
Perisio and Amelia told people the child was

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sickly and unlikely to survive. They hid her.
For the first years of her life, they kept

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her below stairs among the servants, not acknowledging
her publicly as their own, not introducing

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her to guests, not allowing her existence to
be known to the world beyond their household

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walls. And then, when she was about six years
old, something happened that forced their hand.

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A guest at the castle nearly discovered her.
The secret was about to become untenable. So,

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Perisio made a decision. He had a small cell,
a single room, barely larger than a closet,

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built adjacent to the chapel of the castle.
Stidone walls, a small opening through which

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food could be passed, and through which she
could hear Mass being celebrated on the other

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side of the wall. And Margaret, six years old,
blind, disabled, and the daughter of a man

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who could not bear to acknowledge she existed
was placed inside. The door was sealed. She

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would live in that cell for approximately a
decade. I want you to sit with that for a moment.

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Not the physical conditions, though those are
hard enough. The psychological reality of it.

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A child growing up knowing that the people who
were supposed to love her most had decided

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Her existence was a problem to be managed rather
than a person to be raised. That her value

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in their eyes was so low that the solution
was simply to make her invisible. What that

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does to a child, what it would do to almost
any child is obvious. You would expect bitterness,

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rage, a deep and permanent wound that shaped
everything about who you became. That is not

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what happened to Margaret. Her father's chaplain
visited her frequently, instructed her in

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the faith, brought her the sacraments. And in
that small stone cell with nothing but time

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and silence and prayer, Margaret built an interior
life of extraordinary depth. She memorized

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prayers. She meditated for hours. She developed
what her later biographers described as a profound

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and unshakable sense of being loved. Not by
her parents, who had made their feelings clear,

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but by God, who apparently had not. She came
out of that cell years later, not broken. but

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radiant. Eventually, the castle became militarily
unsafe. The threat of invasion meant the family

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needed to move, and this created a logistical
problem for Perisio. He could no longer simply

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keep Margaret sealed away in a cell adjacent
to his chapel. He had to do something with

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her. What he chose to do reveals exactly who
he was. He had heard about a Franciscan shrine

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in the city of Castello where a holy man was
buried whose intercession had reportedly produced

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miracles. Perisio and Amelia decided to take
Margaret on a pilgrimage to this shrine. Not

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out of devotion, no, but out of calculation.
If she could be healed, if God would simply

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fix her, then the problem would be solved. She
would become the heir they had always wanted,

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or at least someone they could acknowledge
without shame. Now picture the journey, a family

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traveling to a holy site, bringing their disabled
daughter they had hidden from the world for

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a decade, hoping that at the end of the road,
she would become someone different, someone

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they could love. They arrived at the church
of San Francesco in Castello. They prayed.

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They placed Margaret before the shrine. They
waited. Nothing happened. No vision, no healing,

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no miracle. Just a blind girl with a curved
spine standing in a church exactly as she

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had arrived. And in that moment, standing before
the tomb of a holy man who had not healed their

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daughter, Precio and Amelia made the decision
they had apparently been building toward for

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years. They left. They simply walked out of
the church, mounted their horses, and rode

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away. Without her. Without a word of explanation.
Without making any arrangement for her care

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or her survival. They abandoned their disabled,
blind teenage daughter in a city she had never

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been to among people she did not know. with
no money, no shelter, and no idea what just

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happened. The historical record does not tell
us what Margaret felt in that moment. She never

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recorded it. Her later biographers describe
her as having accepted it with peace. I find

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that hard to fully believe and also somehow
completely consistent with who she was becoming.

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What the record does tell us is what happened
next. The people of Castello found her. Not

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the wealthy people. Not the powerful people.
Not the kind of people who could have offered

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her comfort and ease and a soft place to land.
The poor people. The beggars. The people who

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slept in doorways and knew what it meant to
be discarded by a world that had decided they

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didn't count. They recognized something in her
immediately. and they took her in. She learned

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to beg. She slept in doorways and empty buildings.
She moved through the streets of Castello

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with a walking stick, blind and hunched and
small, entirely dependent on the charity of

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people who had almost nothing themselves. And
here is the thing the record keeps returning

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to, the thing that every person who has encountered
her in those early years in Castello mentioned

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when they later described her. She was joyful,
not performing joy, not the brittle cheerfulness

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of someone who had decided that optimism is
a survival strategy. Genuine, deep, inexplicable

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joy, the kind that made people stop and stare.
Because it did not fit. It did not make sense.

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A girl abandoned by her parents, begging in
the streets. blind and disabled and without

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a single material comfort. And she was the
most at peace person most of them had ever

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encountered. People began seeking her out, not
to help her, to be near her, to talk to her,

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to ask her for her prayers. Word spread through
Castello the way word spreads in a small city

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when something unusual is happening, quietly,
persistently. and from neighbor to neighbor.

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Eventually, a group of nuns offered her a place
to live. She moved into their convent. And

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almost immediately, to the nuns' great credit
in recognizing it, even if they couldn't handle

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it, they realized she was more devout than they
were. More disciplined, more serious about

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prayer and fasting and the interior life than
the community the nuns had built. It made them

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uncomfortable. Eventually, The nuns asked her
to leave and she left without complaint. She

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went back to the streets. The poor people of
Castello took her in again, this time more

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permanently rotating her between their homes.
A community of people who had nothing were

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taking care of someone who also had nothing
and finding out in the process that she was

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giving them far more than they were giving her.
She eventually joined the Dominicans, not as

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a nun living in a convent, but as a lay member.
So think of it like this, being part of a team

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without being on the full-time roster. She followed
their way of life, their prayer schedule, their

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rule, but she lived out in the world among the
people of Castello. She went to mass daily.

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She went to confession daily. She prayed for
hours. She visited prisoners in the city jail,

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sitting with people in darkness because darkness
held no terror for someone who had never seen

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light. She was, by every account that survives,
one of the most genuinely happy people anyone

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in Castello had ever met. Margaret died on April
13th in the year 1320. She was 33 years old.

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She had been ill for some time. Her body, which
had never been strong, finally gave out. She

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received the last sacraments. Dominican friars
chanted psalms and procession outside her door.

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And she died according to the accounts of those
present in complete serenity. No fear, no bitterness,

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no last minute reckoning with everything that
had been done to her. Just peace. The same

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peace she had carried her entire life. And then,
The city of Castello did something extraordinary.

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When word spread that Margaret had died, the
townspeople, the ordinary, poor, working people

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of Castello, flooded into the streets. They
came to her funeral in such numbers that the

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parish priest, who had not been particularly
attentive to her during her life, tried to

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have her buried in a simple grave outside the
church. The crowd refused. They demanded she

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be buried inside with honor in a place where
they could come to pray. The priest, well,

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he resisted. But at the funeral in front of
the crowd, a disabled girl was miraculously

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healed. He immediately allowed the burial inside.
When her body was examined years later, two

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remarkable things were documented and recorded
by the local bishop. Her remains were incorrupt,

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preserved decades after her death without the
decay that should have occurred. And inside

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her heart, when it was examined, three small
pearl-like stones were found on which appeared

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to be carved images that witnesses described
as religious figures. The Greek root of margarite,

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margaron, means pearl. So margarite, means pearl.
And a kind maid, if you think back to the

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beginning of the story, had given her that
name at birth, when her parents could not bring

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themselves to name her. She was finally canonized
by Pope Francis in April of 2021, 700 years

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after her death. Her incorrupt body still lies
under the main altar of St. Dominic's Church

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in Castello. people still come to pray there.
All right, back on the porch. I've been sitting

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on Margaret's story for quite a bit now. And
the one thing I keep returning to is the joy,

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not the abandonment as devastating as that is,
not the miracles as remarkable as those are,

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the joy, the specific documented inexplicable
joy. of a woman who had been given every possible

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reason to be bitter and wasn't. Because here's
what I notice. Margaret did not achieve joy

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in spite of what was done to her. She achieved
it in the middle of it. In a sealed cell. On

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the streets of Castello. In a convent that asked
her to leave. In a city of strangers who had

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become, through no design of her own, her family.
She did not wait for her circumstances to improve

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before she allowed herself to be at peace. She
found peace inside the circumstances. And I

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think that is the harder and more useful thing
because most of us are waiting for something

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to change before we let ourselves be okay. We
are waiting for the relationship to work out

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for the career to stabilize. for the family
situation to resolve, for the wound from the

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person who was supposed to love us and didn't,
the parent, the partner, the friend, to stop

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hurting before we allow ourselves to move forward.
Margaret had a wound that never healed in the

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conventional sense. Her parents never came back.
There was never any reconciliation scene. No

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letter of apology. No moment where Parisio and
Amelia appeared at the gates of Castello and

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said, Hey, I was wrong. As far as the historical
record shows, they simply disappeared from

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her life the day they rode away from that church.
And she built something extraordinary anyway.

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In a city of strangers. With a body that never
worked the way bodies are supposed to work.

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With nothing. No money, no family, no status,
no advantages of any kind. She built joy. From

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the inside out. In the only place that joy can
actually be built. So, the practical challenge

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this week is this. Find 10 quiet minutes in
the car, before bed, wherever works for you.

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And ask yourself one honest question. What condition
have I placed on my own piece? Not a rhetorical

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question, a real one. Write it down if that
helps. Say it out loud if nobody's listening.

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What is the thing you are waiting on before
you allow yourself to be fully okay? When the

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relationship heals, when the career stabilizes,
when the person who hurt me finally says, they're

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sorry. When my circumstances look different
than they do right now. Name it specifically.

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Not things need to get better. No, what specifically
needs to get better before you give yourself

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permission to be at peace? Margaret's answer
to that question was nothing. There was no

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condition. Her parents never came back. Her
body never healed, the nuns never apologized,

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and she built something extraordinary anyway,
from the inside out, again, in the only place

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it can be built. You don't have to have her
answer yet. Just be honest about what yours

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currently is. That's the whole challenge. Just
name it. And now it is time for the closing

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prayer. Lord, thank you for Margaret. Thank
you for a girl born into a family that could

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not see her worth. And who found in a sealed
cell with nothing but silence and your presence,

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something so solid that no amount of rejection
could shake it. For everyone listening who

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has been made to feel like a problem to be managed
rather than a person to be loved, remind them

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of Margaret. Remind them that the people who
failed to see their value were simply wrong.

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That worth is not assigned by parents or circumstances
or the world's judgment of what is useful and

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impressive. And for anyone carrying a bitterness
they feel completely entitled to, because they

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are, because what has been done to them was
genuinely wrong, give them just a glimpse of

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what Margaret found on the other side of it.
Not to minimize the wound, no, just to show

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them what is possible. We love you, even when
the people who were supposed to show us what

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love looks like didn't. Amen. One more thing
before we go. Margaret of Costello is the patron

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saint of the unwanted, the disabled, the blind,
the abandoned, the homeless, and people rejected

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by religious orders. Now, that last one is a
specific nod to the nuns who asked to leave

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their convent. She was canonized in 2021. making
her one of the newest saints in the Catholic

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Church, though her beatification happened all
the way back in 1609. Beatification is the

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official church declaration that a deceased
person is in heaven and can be publicly venerated

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as blessed. It took 400 more years for the formal
canonization. Some things just move slowly.

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Her feast day is April 13th, the day she died.
Her incorrupt body is still in Castello, in

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St. Dominic's Church, under the main altar.
If you ever find yourself in that part of Umbria,

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and you should, it is extraordinarily beautiful
countryside. She is worth visiting. The girl

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her parents named Pearl, but could not yet see
the value of, is still there, still drawing

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people in. hundred years later. That is episode
eight of Everyday Saints. If Margaret's story

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moves you, share it. One person, someone who
might need to hear that the people who failed

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to see their worth were simply wrong about them.
Leave a review if you have a minute. It genuinely

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00:23:35,288 --> 00:23:40,930
helps more people find the show. Next week,
we go back to a known saint. One of the most

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dramatic stories in the entire New Testament,
a man who didn't just drift from faith. He

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actively hunted down the people who had it,
and then had the most sudden, complete,

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and world-changing reversal of direction in
the history of the early church. I'm John

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O'Connor. Thanks for sitting on our porch with
us, and I will see you next week.