It all began in Nice in 1844 at the Church of the Annunciation. This church was entrusted to the pastoral care of the Congregation of the Oblates of the Virgin Mary (O.M.V.) by Mgr Galvano, Bishop of Nice. The congregation was then invited to Fontenay-aux-Roses in the Île-de-France region in 1959, by the Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Maurice FELTIN (1949-1966).

At the time, in the 19th century, Nice had not yet become French and devotion to Saint Rita had not yet been introduced. It was Father Andrea Bianco (1900-1970), O.M.V., who, in 1935, introduced devotion to Saint Rita into the church by installing a beautiful statue of the Saint in one of the side chapels and inviting the faithful to get to know her and pray to her. Since then, the church, still named “Notre-Dame de l’Annonciation“, has become known as the “Sainte Rita” Church, Chapel or Shrine. Saint Rita, celebrated every year on May 22, is the patron saint of hopeless cases, “the saint of impossible causes”.

Faced with this influx of faithful and afflicted people in Nice, the Oblates of the Virgin Mary of Nice thought it would be a good idea to found a chapel dedicated to Saint Rita in the Paris region, especially as the request had already been made by some of the faithful. So, in 1959, at the invitation of the archbishop of the time, they decided to establish a community in Fontenay-aux-Roses. They first built a student residence, the Résidence Universitaire Lanteri (R.U.L.), named after their founder, Pio Bruno Lanteri, and then the chapel, dedicated to Rita, in 1990. It was consecrated on November 21, 1992 by Mgr François Favreau, then Bishop of Nanterre.