Feast 18 September
The flying friar. Patron of students who cannot pass.
Sacred art
The portrait kept with St. Joseph of Cupertino is the image this library has of Joseph. The honour goes to the person, and through the person to God. It is not a machine, and it is not a substitute for the life written below.
Franciscan. Levitation as a pastoral problem. Died 1663. The Church canonized the humility, and recorded the flights.
Pray with Joseph
If it belongs to Joseph, it is here, with a door back into the story.
Nazarethc. 1 BC
Jesus is conceived in Mary without a human father. The Church holds this as history, not as a metaphor for a spiritually impressive child.
Cupertino, Assisi, OsimoLevitations c. 1630–1663
A Conventual Franciscan of limited academic gifts, whose ecstasies included public levitations so frequent that his superiors hid him. Witnesses include cardinals, a pope’s circle, and annoyed friars.
San Cristóbal de La Laguna, TenerifeDied 1731; still shown in La Laguna
A Dominican sister of the Canary Islands, famous for levitation, bilocation, and prophecy. Her body remains intact in the convent of Santa Catalina, one of the best-preserved in Spain, exposed every 15 February.
Knock, County Mayo1879
On a wet evening, fifteen villagers see Mary, St. Joseph, St. John the Evangelist, and a Lamb on an altar against the parish gable. No word is spoken. The rain does not touch the vision.
Cova da Iria, Fátima1917
In 1917, in a hollow of pasture called the Cova da Iria, near the village of Fátima in Portugal, three shepherd children — Lúcia dos Santos, ten, and her cousins Francisco Marto, nine, and Jacinta Marto, seven — saw a lady brighter than the sun, six times, on the 13th of the month from May to October. She asked for the rosary every day, for the conversion of sinners, for devotion to her Immaculate Heart, and that a chapel be built. On 13 July she showed them hell and spoke of war and of Russia. On 13 October, before a crowd of tens of thousands standing in the rain, including reporters who had come to mock, the sun appeared to dance. Francisco and Jacinta died in the influenza. Lúcia lived until 2005 as a nun. The bishop of Leiria declared the apparitions worthy of belief on 13 October 1930.
