John Joseph of the Cross, OFM, born Carlo Gaetano Calosinto, was an Italian priest and a professed member from the Order of Friars Minor who hailed from the island of Ischia. John had a reputation for austerity and for the gift of miracles and was appointed Master of Novices. He was beatified in 1789, and canonized in 1839.
Carlo Gaetano Calosirto entered the Order of Friars Minor in Naples before he turned sixteen, and assumed the religious name of “John Joseph of the Cross”. John was the first Italian to follow the reform movement of Peter of Alcantara. He was sent to found a convent for the order at Afila in Piedmont in 1674, and assisted in the actual construction itself. John was ordained to the priesthood – much against his will it should be noted – and as the superior performed the lowliest tasks.
By 1702, the Italian convents were no longer dependent on the Spanish houses but were formed into a separate province, and as a result of this, John was appointed as the Vicar Provincial of the Alcantarine Reform in the Italian peninsula. As the superior, he ordered that no beggar should be sent away from the convent gate without being attended to. In times of need, he devoted to their necessities his own portions and even that of the convent he lived at. When John trekked across the mainland as the provincial he would not make himself known at the inns where he lodged because he disliked distinction and did not believe such should be paid to him.
John mostly that desired those whom he restored to health take some certain medicine that the cure might be attributed to a mere natural source and with regard to his own prophecies – which were numerous – he affected to judge from analogies and experiences.
John Joseph of the Cross was beatified under Pope Pius VI on May 24,1789, and was later canonized as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church on May 26, 1839, under Pope Gregory XVI. At the Aragonese Castle (Il Castello Aragonese) on Ischia there is a small chapel consecrated to him.