There is a particular silence that follows the word cancer in a doctor’s office — a silence in which everything you were worried about an hour ago becomes very small. St. Peregrine Laziosi (1260–1345), a Servite friar from Forlì in Italy, is the saint the Church gives to people standing inside that silence. Catholics call him simply the cancer saint: he carried a cancerous wound in his own leg, was scheduled for amputation, and — the tradition of his canonization holds — woke on the morning of the surgery healed.
His devotion today belongs to chemo chairs and waiting rooms: patients, spouses gripping a phone for scan results, parents of sick children, oncology nurses. Peregrine does not promise anyone a cure. What he offers is company from someone who has sat exactly where you are sitting — and the intercession of a man the Church has trusted with its hardest cases for three hundred years.
The young man who struck a saint
Peregrine did not begin devout. He was born in 1260 in Forlì, in the Romagna, to a prosperous family, and as a young man he ran with the city’s anti-papal faction at a time when Forlì was under interdict. When St. Philip Benizi, head of the Servite Order, came to preach reconciliation, the eighteen-year-old Peregrine heckled him — and then struck him in the face.
Philip’s response undid him. The saint literally turned the other cheek and offered it. The tradition of Peregrine’s life records that this single act of meekness broke something open in the young man: he sought Philip out, begged forgiveness, and was received with kindness. Converted, he eventually joined the Servite Order — the Servants of Mary — at Siena, and returned to Forlì to found a Servite house, where he became known for austerity, for preaching, and for tireless care of the poor and the sick. Tradition adds a striking penance: that for decades he stood whenever it was not necessary to sit, an offering that may have contributed to the disease in his leg.
The night before the amputation
In his sixties, Peregrine developed a cancerous growth on his right leg — an open, spreading wound so grave that the surgeon, Paolo Salaghi, determined the leg must be amputated. In the fourteenth century that sentence was very close to a death sentence, and Peregrine knew it.
The night before the surgery, he dragged himself to the chapter room of the friary and prayed before the crucifix. There, as the tradition received at his canonization recounts, he fell into a light sleep and saw Christ reach down from the cross and touch his leg. When he woke, the wound was gone. The surgeon, arriving to operate, found nothing to amputate — no trace that the disease had ever been there. Peregrine lived roughly twenty more years, dying at Forlì in 1345 at about eighty-five, and the healing became the heart of his cause: he was beatified in 1609 and canonized by Pope Benedict XIII in 1726.
The Church presents this healing as it was received: the tradition examined and trusted in his canonization, not a laboratory record. But note what the story actually teaches. Peregrine did not pray with a bargain in his hand. He prayed before the crucifix — before the image of God who suffers — and left the outcome with Him. That, and not the cure, is the part every one of us can imitate.
For the one who just got the diagnosis
If the diagnosis is yours: the fear is not a failure of faith. Christ Himself asked for the cup to pass. Bring St. Peregrine the actual things — the scan on Thursday, the pathology report, the treatment you are dreading, the people you are afraid to leave — and ask him to carry them with you to God. Many patients pray to him daily through treatment; many oncology units and parishes hold regular St. Peregrine Masses and blessings with his relic.
If the diagnosis belongs to someone you love: Peregrine is the saint of the person in the second chair — the one who drives to every appointment and does the fearing that the patient is too tired to do. Pray for your person by name. And do not neglect the Church’s own medicine for the seriously ill: the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick, which any Catholic facing a grave illness or major surgery should ask for — it is grace for the living, not a signal of the end.
What the Church actually prays for
The Church prays boldly for healing — Christ healed the sick, and His Church has never stopped asking. And the Church walks just as faithfully with those who are not healed, whose suffering, united to Christ’s, is never wasted (CCC 1505, 1521). St. Peregrine’s patronage is not a promise of cure; no saint’s is. It is the promise that no one carries cancer alone — not the patient, not the family, and not those whose road leads home to God sooner than anyone wished.
His feast day and devotion today
St. Peregrine’s feast is kept on May 1, the day given him in the Roman Martyrology and the Servite calendar; some parishes and dioceses — especially where May 1 is observed as St. Joseph the Worker — keep him on May 4 instead. His body rests in the Basilica of St. Peregrine at Forlì.
Devotion to him has grown with the disease he is invoked against: shrines, novenas, and monthly St. Peregrine Masses for cancer patients now exist across the world, and his medal is one of the most requested in Catholic hospitals. He is invoked for cancer above all, and also for other serious, chronic, or incurable illnesses — including, in recent decades, by those living with AIDS — and for everyone whose leg, limb, or body is threatened by disease.
Prayers
Prayer to St. Peregrine
O great St. Peregrine, you have been called “The Mighty” and “The Wonder-Worker” because of the numerous miracles which you have obtained from God for those who have had recourse to you. For so many years you bore in your own flesh this cancerous disease that destroys the very fibre of our being, and who had recourse to the source of all grace when the power of man could do no more. You were favored with the vision of Jesus coming down from His cross to heal your affliction. Ask of God and Our Lady the cure of the sick whom we entrust to you. Aided in this way by your powerful intercession, we shall sing to God, now and for all eternity, a song of gratitude for His great goodness and mercy. Amen.
Common Questions
What is St. Peregrine the patron saint of?
St. Peregrine Laziosi is the patron saint of cancer patients — he is widely called simply “the cancer saint.” He is also invoked for other serious, chronic, or incurable illnesses, for those facing amputation, and by the families and caregivers of the sick.
Was St. Peregrine really healed of cancer?
The tradition received at his canonization holds that the cancerous wound in his leg was healed overnight after he prayed before the crucifix, the night before a scheduled amputation — the surgeon found nothing to remove. The Church examined and trusted this tradition in canonizing him in 1726. He lived about twenty more years.
When is St. Peregrine’s feast day?
May 1, as given in the Roman Martyrology and the Servite calendar. Some places keep his memorial on May 4, especially where May 1 is observed as the feast of St. Joseph the Worker.
Does praying to St. Peregrine guarantee healing?
No — and honest devotion never claims it does. The Church prays confidently for healing and accepts that God’s answer is not always cure. St. Peregrine’s intercession is sought for healing, for strength through treatment, and for peace whatever the outcome. Prayer accompanies medical care; it never replaces it.
How do I pray to St. Peregrine for someone with cancer?
Name the person and their illness, and ask St. Peregrine to intercede with God for them — using the traditional prayer or your own words. Many pray a nine-day novena, attend a St. Peregrine Mass or blessing where offered, and continue daily prayer throughout treatment. A Catholic who is seriously ill should also ask their parish for the Anointing of the Sick.
Sources & Church Teaching
- Servite tradition and the acts of his cause: beatified 1609; canonized by Pope Benedict XIII, 1726
- Roman Martyrology, May 1 (St. Peregrine Laziosi, priest of the Order of Servants of Mary)
- Basilica of St. Peregrine, Forlì (his relics and the tradition of the healing before the crucifix)
- Catechism of the Catholic Church 1505, 1521 (Christ and the meaning of illness); CCC 1514–1515 (Anointing of the Sick); CCC 956 (the intercession of the saints)