Elisa Aloi of Patti in Sicily was 27 years old and had suffered since 1948 from tubercular osteoarthritis (Pott's-type disease) of the right knee, with four chronic discharging fistulae, a destroyed joint, and a leg held rigid in a plaster cast. Antibiotics had failed; the surgeons of Messina were considering amputation.
She was carried to Lourdes on the Italian pilgrimage of June 1958. After the cast was removed at the Lourdes hospital, she was bathed in the piscines on June 5. The fistulae dried and closed within hours, the joint became mobile, and she was walking normally within days. The cure was followed for seven years by the Lourdes Medical Bureau and the International Medical Committee; the Archbishop of Messina recognised it as the 60th cure on May 26, 1965.