Joseph of Cupertino

Who they were

Giuseppe Desa was born at Copertino near Lecce on 17 June 1603, in a stable, because his father had been ruined by a friend's debts. A shop boy as a child, then ill for five years, he had little schooling. Drawn to St Francis, he was turned away by the Conventual Franciscans, the Reformed and the Capuchins because of his poor education and the ecstasies in which he dropped whatever he held.

Condemned by a court to work unpaid to settle his dead father's debt, he begged again at the convent of the Grottella, and the friars helped him study. At his exam for the diaconate the bishop asked him to comment on the one Gospel passage he knew well. Ordained, he lived a life of ecstasies and levitations, and died at Osimo on 18 September 1663.

The miracles

He is invoked by students facing exams. The miracles examined for his causes are not described in the sources we have used.

Why that counted as sanctity

Unlearned and rejected, Joseph was lifted up by God's grace: his holiness was pure humility and love, and God gave him what study could not.