The Healing Journey

April 13, 2026

“There is a much greater and much more painful hunger than the hunger for bread: the hunger for love, the feeling of being wanted, to be somebody to somebody. The feeling of being unwanted, unloved, rejected. That’s a very great hunger and a very great poverty.”
— St. Teresa  of Calcutta

A 700-year-old woman’s incorrupt body lies at the base of an altar in the Church of St. Dominic in Castello, Italy. A woman whose sanctity moved thousands of people to come to her funeral when she died at 33 years old and whose intercession has led to an estimated 200 miracles over the centuries.

St. Margaret of Castello was born blind, hunchbacked and lame, and her family abandoned her as a child to beg on the streets.

“Little Margaret,” as she was called, was born into a family of wealth and privilege in a castle near Perugia, Italy in 1287. Her parents wanted a son to carry on their noble ancestry … but instead God gave them a daughter who was blind, lame and deformed.

St. Margaret of Castello, whose feast day is April 13, has come to be known as the patron of the “unwanted.” She was a scandal to her parents because she was a hunch-backed dwarf, and they were determined to hide her. At 6-years-old, she was evicted from the castle and imprisoned for 13 years in a tiny cell next to a chapel in the forest.

When she was 19, her parents brought her to Castello, hoping for a miraculous cure, but there was none. They abandoned her in the church, and for a year she had to beg on the streets until the townspeople who were moved to pity took her in.

Despite her infirmities, she was intelligent and full of goodness, and she loved God with a fervor that inspired those she met. She eventually became a lay Dominican and spent her remaining years visiting prisoners, educating children, caring for the sick and poor, and comforting the dying. Although her personal pain was great, she brought joy and love to those who suffered from the same affliction as she did — they were “unwanted.”

Little Margaret died at 33. Over the centuries, her story has inspired countless people, and her life offers a telling lesson for our age: A child who had no value to her parents had inestimable value to God. And through her, God did great things.
©J Pisani

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