Feast Day July 20
St. Margaret was the daughter of a pagan priest at Antioch, located in modern day Turkey. Also known as Marina, she was converted to Christianity, whereupon she was driven from home by her father. She became a shepherdess and when she spurned the advances of the Roman prefect, he charged her with being a Christian. He had her tortured and imprisoned. While she was in prison she had an encounter with the devil in the form of a dragon. According to the legend, he swallowed her, but the cross she carried in her hand so irritated his throat that she was able to burst out (she is patroness of childbirth). The next day Margaret was led out to be beheaded, she thanked God that the end of her suffering had come. She prayed that in memory of her miraculous deliverance out of the womb of the dragon, women in childbirth who invoked her might find help through her sufferings.
St. Margaret is the patron saint of pregnant mothers and women in childbirth.
