The patroness of Santa Margherita di Belice is Saint Rosalia, celebrated on 4 September during the town fair. The town also venerates as patron the Most Holy Crucifix, whose feast is celebrated every year on the first Sunday of May with one of the town's most important and solemn religious celebrations: the statue of the Crucified Christ dates from the second half of the 14th century, was damaged by the January 1968 earthquake and restored first in 1969 and again in 1977. In the «Scinnuta di la Cruci», a moment of extraordinary popular participation, the Cross is lowered inside the mother church after the recitation of Vespers, amid the singing of the faithful, to be kissed.
In May 1993, during his pastoral visit to Agrigento, Pope John Paul II celebrated mass in the Valley of the Temples before precisely the Crucifix of Santa Margherita, placed on the altar, and from there launched his famous anathema against the Mafia, in the aftermath of the massacres that cost the lives of judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino: to commemorate that connection, on 9 May 2016 a bronze statue of John Paul II, the work of artist Gabriele Venanzio, was unveiled on the square in front of the mother church. The town, rebuilt after the Belice earthquake, is also known for having inspired settings of the novel «The Leopard» by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, brought to the screen by Luchino Visconti in 1963 in a film that won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.
