By 1345, Fr. Peregrine Laziosi, OSM — sixty years old and in his fortieth year as a Servite friar at Forlì — had for years borne an ulcerating tumour on his right foot that the surgeon Paulo Salaghi finally judged inoperable except by amputation. The surgery was fixed for the following morning.
That night, Peregrine dragged himself into the chapter house and prayed before the wooden crucifix on the wall. In the vision that was to become the fixed iconography of his cult, he saw Christ reach down from the Cross and touch the diseased foot. When Salaghi arrived at daybreak the tumour was gone and the flesh whole; Peregrine went on to live another five years, dying in 1345 aged eighty.
The crucifix of the vision is still displayed at the Basilica of San Pellegrino Laziosi at Forlì. Peregrine was beatified in 1609 and canonized by Benedict XIII on December 27, 1726; his liturgical feast is May 1. He is invoked worldwide by cancer patients through the daily 'Novena to St. Peregrine' and the wearing of the St. Peregrine oil.