Cascia

In 1330 in the small city of Cascia in Umbria, central Italy - the same town that would later become famous as the home of St. Rita of Cascia - a local priest was summoned urgently to bring Holy Communion to a gravely ill peasant who lived in the countryside outside the town. This was the practice of bringing Viaticum (the last communion) to the dying, one of the Church's most sacred duties.

About this miracle

However, instead of properly carrying the consecrated Host in a pyx or ciborium as Church law required, the priest acted with careless irreverence. He placed the Body of Christ within the pages of his prayer book (breviary) as if it were merely a bookmark, treating the Blessed Sacrament with shocking disrespect. He then proceeded on his journey to the sick man's home.

When the priest arrived at the peasant's house and opened his breviary to retrieve the Host and administer Holy Communion, he discovered something that filled him with terror. The Host had miraculously transformed into a clot of living blood. The Host was actively bleeding, and there were round crimson stains of blood on both pages of the breviary between which the Host had been placed. The transformation was visible to all present - a visible divine response to the priest's sacrilege.

Filled with panic and remorse, the priest realized the gravity of his sin against the Eucharist. He immediately left the peasant's house without administering communion and ran to the Augustinian monastery in the region to confess what had happened. He sought out Blessed Simon Fidati (also called Simone Fidati da Cascia), an Augustinian friar known throughout the area as a holy man and wise spiritual director. The priest made his confession to Blessed Simon and showed him the bleeding Host and blood-stained breviary pages.

Blessed Simon Fidati recognized the miracle immediately and took custody of the sacred relic. Word of the miracle spread quickly, and Church authorities initiated an investigation. In 1389, fifty-nine years after the event, Pope Boniface IX officially confirmed the authenticity of the miracle, giving it the highest level of Church recognition.

Over the centuries, the blood stains on the two pages of the breviary have undergone a remarkable transformation. The stains have gradually formed the outline of a human face, with both pages now displaying the image of a bearded man's face - understood by the faithful to be an image of the face of Christ. This ongoing transformation of the bloodstains adds another miraculous dimension to the original event.