Giacomo Gaglione

Giacomo Gaglione, TOSF (July 20, 1896 – May 28, 1962) was an Italian member of the Third Order of St. Francis, who became the founder of the Apostolate of Suffering. On 3 April 2009, he was declared venerable by Pope Benedict XVI and the Congregation for the Causes of Saints has opened his process of beatification.

Biography Gaglione was born in Marcianise, in the Province of Caserta from a wealthy family. At the age of sixteen, in June 1912, just as he was about to graduate from high school, he felt the first symptoms of the disease that immobilize him in bed with paralyzed legs: ankylosing spondylitis. Treatment with boiling mud, surgery, orthopedic traction, electrotherapy were all useless.

In 1919 Gaglione went to the noted Capuchin mystic, Pio of Pietrelcina with the hope of obtaining a cure, but on the contrary this meeting led him to accept his illness as Christian mission. In January 1921, he was examined by a doctor, later to become saint, Giuseppe Moscati and in August of the same year he enrolled in the Third Order of St. Francis, professing the following year, taking the name of Francis, in veneration of Francis of Assisi.

In August 1929, after 17 years of immobility, Gaglione made the first of his nine pilgrimages to Lourdes, Since 1952 the Apostolate had its periodical: Hosts upon the world. At that time he released his second book, In the Mirror of my Soul.

On 20 October 1961 Gaglione published his last book: 50 years of the Cross to be able to smile

Gaglione died May 28, 1962, in Capodrise. At his funeral celebrated the next day were many people from all over Italy. the corpse was transferred to the local parish church of St. Andrew.