A barefoot Franciscan friar in seventeenth century southern Italy knelt to pray, gave a small cry, and rose into the air. He did not come back down for nearly half an hour. He had done it before. He would do it again.

His name was Giuseppe Desa, born in 1603 in a village called Cupertino. The Franciscans had nearly turned him away as too slow to be a priest. He worked their stables for three years before they let him take orders.

In the canonisation process after his death, sworn depositions described more than seventy distinct levitations, witnessed in total by thousands of people. The records are very specific about how high.

At the convent of Grottella, the friars were raising a stone Calvary. The largest cross was thirty-six feet long. Ten labourers could not lift it. According to the testimony, Joseph flew from the friary gate to the hilltop, raised the cross as easily as if it were a straw, and dropped it into its hole.

In 1645 the Spanish ambassador to the Holy See, the Admiral of Castile, came to Assisi with his wife. In the basilica, Joseph fixed his eyes on a statue of the Virgin on a high altar and flew over the heads of the gathered crowd to her feet.

In 1649 the Lutheran Duke of Brunswick attended one of his Masses. He saw what he saw. Two years later, in front of Joseph, he made his profession of Catholic faith.

On 10 July 1657, on the road to Osimo, Joseph flew roughly thirty metres into the canopy of an almond tree, knelt on a slender branch, and remained there for half an hour. The branch, witnesses said, swayed only as it would have for a small bird.

Pope Urban VIII saw him do it once, in private audience. The Pope said: if Brother Joseph dies during our pontificate, we will testify at his canonisation.

The Church took ninety-six years to read the depositions. They canonised him in 1767. He is now patron saint of pilots and astronauts.

Skeptics call it leaping, illusion, exaggeration. Cardinals, princes, ambassadors and labourers, under oath, called it flight. The depositions are still in the archive. The almond tree is still on the road to Osimo.

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