Feast 26 May
Apostle of Rome. The Oratory. Joy as an ascesis.
Sacred art
The portrait kept with St. Philip Neri is the image this library has of Philip. 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.
Died 1595. A saint who made holiness look like a joke until you noticed the hours in the confessional.
If it belongs to Philip, it is here, with a door back into the story.
Paris1290
A Host was said to have bled in a house in the Rue des Jardins in 1290, and a chapel rose on the spot. The medieval story accused a Jewish householder. That accusation is a libel. The chapel’s later life is a different history from the crime it was used to justify.
Basilica of Bom Jesus, Old GoaDied 1552; body in Goa
The Jesuit missionary dies on Shangchuan Island. Lime is poured in the coffin to speed decay for a later transfer. Months later the body is found fresh. It has lain in Goa for centuries, reduced by relic-taking, still exposed on feast days.
Calanda, Aragon29 March 1640
A young man’s right leg is amputated below the knee. Two and a half years later, after he anoints the stump with oil from Our Lady of the Pillar, he wakes with two legs. The hospital, the surgeon, the town, and a royal court take evidence.
Lipa, Batangas1948
A Carmelite postulant, Teresita Castillo, reported apparitions and a rain of rose petals. A 1951 local declaration of “no supernatural origin” was later contested; in 2015 the Archbishop of Lipa declared them authentic, and Rome promptly voided that declaration. The case remains wounded and unfinished.
