Saint Peregrine Laziosi

Priest of the Servite Order

Feast Day

May 1

Life

1260–1345

Canonized

1726

Order

Order of the Servants of Mary (Servites)

Born

Forlì, Romagna (modern Italy)

Peregrine was born in 1260 to a wealthy Forlì family of the anti-papal faction. As a young man he struck the future Saint Philip Benizi, then prior general of the Servites, in the face during a public disturbance; Philip turned the other cheek. The encounter so affected Peregrine that he repented, made a private pilgrimage to a Marian shrine, and eventually joined the Servites at Siena. He returned to Forlì about 1295 and there ministered for the rest of his life.

Peregrine practiced extraordinary penance. He took a vow never to sit when standing was possible, with the result that for thirty years he stood whenever not absolutely required to lie down. In his sixties he developed a cancer of the right leg, identified in modern medical descriptions as a malignant sarcoma. The surgeon decided the leg must be amputated.

On the night before the operation, Peregrine prayed before a crucifix in the chapter house of the friary. According to the eyewitness account preserved in the canonisation acts, he was granted a vision in which Christ descended from the Cross and touched the diseased leg. When the surgeon arrived the next morning, the cancer was gone. Peregrine lived for many more years and died of natural causes on May 1, 1345.

He was canonised by Pope Benedict XIII in 1726. His shrine in the Basilica of Saint Peregrine in Forlì remains a place of pilgrimage for cancer patients from around the world.