Joseph of Cupertino

Born in 1603 in a shed in Apulia, his mother having been evicted from her house for debt, he grew up sickly and absent-minded, unable to learn a trade. The Capuchins sent him away after eight months; the Conventual Franciscans of the Grottella took him on as a stable hand. He was finally admitted to orders, it is said, because the examiner happened on the one gospel passage he could expound. A priest in 1628, he became the object of a fame he never sought: witnesses report, by the dozen and under oath, that he rose from the ground during prayer — some seventy episodes appear in the processes. The Inquisition questioned him, found nothing against him, but the Church, embarrassed, removed him from view: he was assigned in turn to Assisi, Pietrarubbia, Fossombrone and finally Osimo, forbidden to celebrate in public, to write or to receive visitors. He obeyed without complaint and died at Osimo in 1663. Canonised in 1767, patron of students and, since the twentieth century, of aviators, he is commemorated on 18 September.