Saint Peregrine Laziosi

St. Peregrine was born at Forlì about 1265 AD, the only son of the noble Laziosi family. His father was a leader of the Ghibelline faction.

In those years the city was the surest refuge in Romagna for Ghibelline exiles. Romagna had belonged to the Papal State since 1278 AD. Forlì would not obey the Pope, and from the summer of 1281 AD papal troops besieged it.

Pope Martin IV placed Forlì under interdict from March 1282 AD to September 1283 AD, suspending almost all public worship and sacraments in the city. In May 1282 AD papal and French cavalry broke into the city, and its defenders under Guido da Montefeltro killed thousands of them in the streets. St. Peregrine, then about seventeen, was on his city's side against the Pope.

At Pope Martin IV's request, St. Philip Benizi, prior general of the Servants of Mary, came to Forlì and urged its people to return to obedience to the Pope. The people of Forlì beat St. Philip Benizi and drove him out of the city.

Catholic Tradition holds that St. Philip Benizi stood outside the walls with his companions, praying for the citizens who had injured him. St. Peregrine had seen how patiently St. Philip Benizi bore the citizens' attack, and he went out to him to ask his forgiveness.

The readings for St. Peregrine's feast, approved by Pope Paul V, name St. Philip Benizi as the guide who led him into religious life.

St. Peregrine was about thirty when he entered the Order of the Servants of Mary, between 1290 AD and 1295 AD. He trained as a novice at Siena, not at Forlì, and there came to know Blessed Francesco da Siena.

When his novice training ended, he was sent home to Forlì. He lived in the convent there until he died.

Back at Forlì, St. Peregrine sang the daily prayers with the friars, fasted, stayed awake at night in prayer, read the Bible and went often to confession. He also worked among the poor and the peasants. His people called him a second Job for his humility and patience.

In Catholic Tradition, he chose as a penance never to sit down, and kept to it for thirty years.

At about sixty, a sore opened on St. Peregrine's right leg. It grew so grave that the Forlì physician Paolo de Salaghis judged the leg must be amputated, and came to the convent to operate. As Catholic Tradition tells it, on the night before the operation St. Peregrine got up and, barely able to hold himself upright, made his way to the convent's chapter room.

There he prayed hard for healing before a fresco of the Crucifix. He fell asleep on the benches and, in a dream, saw Jesus come down from the Cross and free him from the disease. He woke and went back to his cell, and in the morning the physician could only confirm that the leg was completely healed.

St. Peregrine died of a fever in the convent at Forlì on May 1, 1345 AD, at eighty. His body was laid out in the choir of the Servite church, and everyone wanted to come close and touch objects to it.

He was placed not in the ground but in a niche in the church wall. The Dicastery for the Causes of Saints calls that burial a sign of a veneration granted to few. Local Tradition at Forlì tells that so many people poured in from every side that the city gates could not be closed.

In July 1608 AD the prior of the Servite convent at Forlì opened a formal Church inquiry into St. Peregrine's holiness and miracles. Witnesses swore on the Gospels that the body in the church was his, venerated by the whole city for about two hundred and sixty years. Camilla de Ferramontibus testified that her eight-year-old son Ludovico, dying of dropsy, was cured when touched with the cap St. Peregrine had worn in life.

Pope Benedict XIII canonized St. Peregrine at Rome on December 27, 1726 AD, with St. John of the Cross and St. Francis Solano. St. Peregrine was declared patron of Forlì in 1942 AD, and the city keeps his feast on May 1. Every Wednesday at five in the afternoon, the basilica that holds his body offers prayer for the sick, above all for those with cancer.