St. Peter Crisci of Foligno

  Posted on August 24, 2024  by admin  No comments

Born: 1243

Died: 19 July 1323 in the cathedral of Foligno, Umbria, Italy of natural causes, buried

in the cathedral of San Feliciano in Foligno, a chapel was built in his honour in the cathedral in 1385, chapel restored and relics enshrined in a wooden reliquary in 1870

Beatified: local devotion developed soon after his death, and by the late 14th-century there was a fair that grew up around devotions to him on 19 July, on 11 May 1400 Pope Boniface IX granted indulgences to those visited the cathedral of San Feliciano from 19 to 22 July.

Also known as Pietrillo

As a young man, Peter lived a wild, profane, and dissolute life. Around the age of thirty his parents died, he came into his inheritence, contemplated his parents’ deaths, and came to understand the emptiness of his life; Peter had a conversion experience, sold all that he had, gave it away to the poor. He even sold himself into slavery as an act of penance and to get more to give away, but his “owner” freed him. He became a penitent beggar, an urban hermit who devoted himself to the care and cleanliness of the cathedral in Foligno, Italy; he wore sack cloth, lived in its bell tower, and slept on the steps, open to the elements. He had a great dedication to the spirituality of Blessed Angela of Foligno and Saint Chiara of Montefalco. Made several barefoot pilgrimages to Rome and Assisi, Italy. He was so odd, so open about his penance, and attracted so much attention from the faithful that the Inquisition investigated him; they were particularly concerned with his habit of praying while staring at the sun; but they determined that his was an orthodox faith, just extreme in its penance. He is considered one of the “mad saints” or “holy idiots” or “fools for Christ”.