Deepertruth: The Eucharistic Miracle of Calanda, Spain 1640

Miguel-Juan Pellicer was born in 1617 to a poor family of farmers in Calanda, a village about 100 kilometers from Zaragoza.

At 19 years of age, he decided to go to work for an uncle near Castellon de la Plata. One day, while working in the fields, he fell under a wagon full of grain and the wheels fractured his right leg. 

Miguel-Juan was immediately taken to the local hospital in Valencia. Realizing that it would be impossible for the doctors to cure him, he decided to discharge himself and begin a 13-kilometer trip towards Zaragoza to ask the Madonna of Pilar for help.

 He walked with crutches, leaning the knee of the fractured and now infected leg on a piece of wood. He reached Zaragoza in October 1637, waning and feverish.

He dragged himself to the Sanctuary of Pilar where he made his confession and received the Holy Eucharist. He was immediately sent to recover at Royal Hospital of Grace. 

Given the status of his gangrene, the doctors established that the only way to save his life was to amputate his leg, so the limb was cut off with a saw and scalpel slightly below the knee and cauterized with red hot metal.

A young practitioner, Juan Lorenzo Garcia, took the amputated limb and buried it in the cemetery next to the hospital.