Born to a poor family with deep religious roots, he received his first religious formation and love for the Eucharist from his sickly mother, whom he lost at the age of 12, in 1869. Suffering from ill health, he did his best to help his family on the fields. After briefly serving within them military service and being sentimentally close to a girl named Rosina, on the example of Saints Rocco and Joseph Benedict Labre, he decided to live as a pilgrim, with the blessing of his father. He traveled on his foot across Europe, visited holy sites around Italy, France, Portugal and Spain.
Many looked at him as a vagabond and he suffered several humiliations and perils. Whilst visiting Lanciano, near Pescara, he joined the Franciscan Order as a Tertiary and retired to the desert of Antequera, Malaga, Spain, living a life of deep fasting and prayer.
On February 23, 1884, he moved to Alcoy, where he died prematurely aged only 27, gravely ill and malnutrited, on March 9. His funeral was attended by thousands of people, seeking to touch rosaries as relics and pray before his body. Pope John Paul II, declared him Venerable on July 1, 2000.
Born to a poor family with deep religious roots, he received his first religious formation and love for the Eucharist from his sickly mother, whom he lost at the age of 12, in 1869. Suffering from ill health, he did his best to help his family on the fields. After briefly serving within them military service and being sentimentally close to a girl named Rosina, on the example of Saints Rocco and Joseph Benedict Labre, he decided to live as a pilgrim, with the blessing of his father. He traveled on his foot across Europe, visited holy sites around Italy, France, Portugal and Spain.
Many looked at him as a vagabond and he suffered several humiliations and perils. Whilst visiting Lanciano, near Pescara, he joined the Franciscan Order as a Tertiary and retired to the desert of Antequera, Malaga, Spain, living a life of deep fasting and prayer.
On February 23, 1884, he moved to Alcoy, where he died prematurely aged only 27, gravely ill and malnutrited, on March 9. His funeral was attended by thousands of people, seeking to touch rosaries as relics and pray before his body. Pope John Paul II, declared him Venerable on July 1, 2000.
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