Saint Gaspar del Bufalo

A great blessing about the Altieri Palace, where they lived, and where the father worked, was that it was right across the street from the Gesú, the Mother Church of St. Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuit community. There is a chapel in that Gesú dedicated to St. Francis Xavier, one of the founders and great Saints, along with St. Ignatius of Loyola, of the Jesuit order. Gaspar’s mother, Annunziata, prayed often at that chapel. There was a relic of St. Francis’ arm at the foot of the altar, where Annunziata knelt. She prayed there every day, sometimes twice and three times a day.
We have to believe the Lord orchestrated everything in the life of this future Saint. Gaspar was a very sickly child, very frail.. A time was to come when Gaspar, only a year or so old, was going blind. He suffered from an incurable disease of the eyes. Annunziata prayed for a healing for her son. She had great faith in the power of prayer, and in the great Saint, Francis Xavier’s intercession. God blessed her faith and miraculously cured Gaspar of his eye’s affliction. Annunziata thanked Our Lord Jesus and the intercession of St. Francis Xavier the rest of her life. She told her son many times throughout his life of the miraculous cure he had received through the gift of prayer.