The St. Peregrine Novena
Nine days with the patron of those facing cancer
The St. Peregrine Novena is nine days of prayer asking St. Peregrine Laziosi to intercede, traditionally prayed for those living with cancer and other serious illness, and those who care for them. The feast day is 1 May. AngelGuard publishes when to begin, how the nine days work, and what the novena asks for.
Quick facts
What is the St. Peregrine Laziosi novena?
The St. Peregrine Novena is nine days of prayer for someone facing cancer or another serious illness. It is one of the few novenas most people meet at a specific moment rather than through the calendar: someone is diagnosed, and a relative hands them this. Peregrine was a fourteenth-century friar who developed a cancer of the leg severe enough that amputation was scheduled. The account holds that he spent the night before in prayer before a crucifix, and that the wound was found healed in the morning. He lived another two decades. That is the story behind the patronage, and it is why he is invoked by people facing exactly that kind of news. It is worth being careful and honest about what this novena is. It is not an alternative to treatment, and the Church has never proposed it as one. Praying it alongside oncology is the normal Catholic practice and there is no tension in it. If you are choosing between a novena and a doctor, that is a decision the Church would tell you not to make. It is also worth saying that Peregrine was healed and most people who pray his novena are not, at least not in the way they asked. The Church does not treat that as failure or as insufficient faith. What the novena asks for is healing, and what it very often gives is the ability to keep going, which is not the same thing and is not nothing.
How to pray it
Pray it whenever the need arises rather than waiting for the feast day. This is a novena of circumstance. If you are praying for someone else, tell them. A novena prayed quietly on someone’s behalf is a real gift, and knowing that nine days of prayer are being said for you does its own work. Name the person and the specific outcome you are asking for. Then, and this is the harder half, add the request for what to do if the answer is no. Novenas prayed with only one acceptable outcome tend to end badly. And keep the medical care going. Prayer and treatment are not competitors, and no one should ever feel they must choose.
About the prayer text
Several versions of this novena circulate, and the wording is traditional rather than something to be improvised. Rather than publish a text we have not verified against a reliable Catholic source, this page gives you the structure, the timing, and the intention. Take the words themselves from your parish, your missal, or a Catholic publisher, and stay with one version for the full nine days.