Juan José de la Cruz

Juan José de la Cruz, known in Italian as Giovanni Giuseppe della Croce, was born Carlo Gaetano Calosirto on 15 August 1654 on the island of Ischia in the Kingdom of Naples. He was the son of Giuseppe Calosirto and Laura Gargiulo and the third of seven brothers in a family later described as devout. From youth he was said to have shown an inclination to prayer, mortification, and withdrawal from ordinary amusements. In 1670, at about sixteen years of age, he entered the Discalced Friars Minor of the reform of Saint Peter of Alcantara, commonly called the Alcantarines, at the convent of Santa Lucia al Monte in Naples, taking the religious name John Joseph of the Cross.

He completed novitiate and studies and was ordained a priest. Within the Alcantarine province of Naples he served as master of novices, guardian of convents, and for a time as provincial minister. He took part in consolidating the Alcantarine observance in southern Italy and was known for insisting on the primitive Franciscan poverty and austerity associated with Peter of Alcantara. Contemporary reputation and later lives present him as a severe ascetic who practiced prolonged fasting, night vigils, and other penances, while also attending to the poor and acting as a spiritual director for clergy, religious, and laypeople.

Later tradition, formed especially in the processes of beatification and canonization, attributes to him prophecy, miraculous healings, and bilocation. Those claims belong to the cult that grew around him rather than to events that can be verified by independent historical documentation. What is better attested is that he was regarded in Naples as a man of prayer, with particular devotion to the Passion of Christ, the Eucharist, and the Blessed Virgin, and that he continued to give counsel in old age despite declining health.

He died in Naples on 5 March 1734. Local veneration began soon afterward. Pope Pius VI beatified him in 1789, and Pope Gregory XVI canonized him on 26 May 1839. His liturgical feast is kept on 5 March. He is honored as the principal patron saint of the island of Ischia. His tomb has traditionally been associated with the Alcantarine church of Santa Lucia al Monte in Naples.