Blessed Archangel of Calatafimi

This holy man, of the illustrious Placentini family, was born in Calatafimi, in the diocese of Mazzara, in Sicily. From his childhood, he showed a marked taste for solitude; he first retired to a cave near a chapel, where he spent his days and nights in prayer and where he had an apparition of the most holy Virgin: then, as the holiness of his life and the report of his miracles brought him many visitors, he hid himself in the vicinity of Alcamo. It was in this retreat that he built, under the protection of Saint Anthony, a small hermitage known only to a few men; he himself lived in a cave that was later called the cave of the Blessed Archangel. When the hermitages were suppressed grotte du bienheureux Archange Sicilian Franciscan religious, provincial vicar, and hermit. in Sicily by Pope Martin V, he went to Palermo where he r eceived the h pape Martin V Pope who confirmed the tradition by a bull in 1437. abit of the Franciscans from the hand of Blessed Matthew of Agrigento; he th en returned to Alcamo to complet bienheureux Matthieu d'Agrigente Franciscan who gave the habit to Archange. e his novitiate, and there converted his hermitage into a convent of which he was named provincial vicar.