October 25: ST. ANTONIO DE SANT'ANNA GALVÃO: The Friar with Paper Pills

St. Antonio de Sant'Anna Galvão, known as Frei Galvão, turned tiny handwritten prayers into pills the sick could actually hold.

As the friary's confessor in colonial São Paulo, Frei Galvão listened patiently to the sick and suffering who had nowhere else to go, then wrote a prayer to Our Lady on a scrap of paper, rolled it into a tiny cylinder, and gave it to them in faith. The healings that followed were remarkable enough that his paper pills are still made and given out today.

"It was a pill. A prayer made into something you could hold."

Want to keep living Frei Galvão's story after the episode ends? Grab our free Family Pack — a saint calendar with daily challenges, feast-day activities, family discussion questions, and more — free for email subscribers, so your family can follow along together: https://shop.catholicsprouts.com/pages/every-days-a-feast-day-follow-along