Feast of St. Gabriel Possenti

Since we don't have Fidei Defensor around the blogspere anymore to cover these things for us, I guess it's up to me to get up the required post in honor of the feast day of St. Gabriel Possenti.

Gabriel was the eleventh of thirteen children, born in Assisi in 1838. During his youth, one of his formative influences was a Irishman who was a training instructor for the papal army. Major O'Reilly taught the young Gabriel how to shoot, and he became quite a marksman.

In 1860, as the wars that would eventually lead to a national Italian state were raging up and down Italy, a band of deserters from Garabaldi's army were ravaging the town of Isola where Gabriel was in seminary with the Passionists. Gabriel went out, unarmed, to confront them, and after wresting a pair of revolvers from two of the soldiers, ordered the band to leave town. St. Possenti demonstrated his marksmanship by shooting a lizard that was scurrying across the road. The soldiers hurriedly left town.

You can read about him at gunsaint.com and also from a CE article here. The Catholic Encyclopedia has a brief article on him, but fails to mention his marksmanship.