Saint Zita

Saint Zita was a lay servant from Lucca in Tuscany. From the age of twelve until her death she worked in the household of the well-to-do Fatinelli family, and by her faithfulness in everyday duties, her prayer and her care for the poor she set an example for all who work in other people’s homes. The Roman Martyrology commemorates her on April 27.

She came from a poor family in Monsagrati, a village not far from Lucca. She was born at the beginning of the thirteenth century; the year 1218 is usually given, but it is not certain. As a girl of twelve she entered service with the Fatinelli family. The beginning was hard: the other servants resented her diligence and piety, and because of them her employers, too, treated her harshly and unjustly for a long time.

Zita bore this patiently and without resentment. She worked conscientiously, regarded her duties as service rendered to God himself, and joined work with prayer. Pope Pius XII wrote of her that by her modesty, reserve and gentleness she gradually won over her employers. In time the Fatinellis gave her their full trust and placed her in charge of the whole household.

She cared for the poor in a special way and shared with them what she herself had, setting aside part of her own food for them. The best-known story about her, handed down as a legend, is linked to this care. The master of the house, told by a jealous servant that Zita was taking food out to the poor, stopped her as she was carrying bread in her apron. Asked what she was carrying, she answered that it was flowers, and when she opened her apron, flowers fell out of it.

Zita died in Lucca on April 27. The year of her death is usually given as 1278, although some sources give 1271 or 1272. The people of the city at once began to venerate her as a saint, and many miracles were attributed to her intercession. At the beginning of the fourteenth century Dante Alighieri, in the “Divine Comedy,” called one of the magistrates of Lucca “one of the elders of Saint Zita,” as if the saint’s name stood for the city itself. Her body rests in the Basilica of San Frediano in Lucca.

At the end of the seventeenth century Pope Innocent XII approved her cult. On March 11, 1955, Pius XII, by an apostolic letter, proclaimed her the heavenly patroness of domestic servants and of women engaged in household work. This had been requested by the Archbishop of Lucca, Antonio Torrini, by many cardinals and bishops from all over the world, and by many servants themselves. John Paul II, visiting Lucca in 1989, named her among the saints of that city as a woman of the people.