Domenico da Cese

Who was Domenico da Cese?

Padre Domenico da Cese was a stigmatist monk of the Capuchin order.

Padre Domenico was born Emilio Petrarca in Cese, Italy. At school, on January 12, 1915, when he was nine, he called out in class that there was going to be an earthquake that night and there was. He and his father were almost killed when their church collapsed on top of them and they had to be pulled from the rubble.

Emilio joined the Capuchin order and became a friend of Padre Pio who also bore the stigmata. Padre Domenico became a believer and proponent of the Holy Face of Manoppello eventually getting permission to live near the image.

In September 1978, when in Turin to visit the Shroud of Turin the six foot tall Domenico was hit by a young man driving a Fiat and died on his injuries on the seventeenth. He was buried in his hometown of Cese.