Il “Glorioso San Giovannino di Gesù”: culto familiare e devozione popolare

The article proposes some considerations on the cult that arose in a town in Campania, Cimitile, in the years between the two world wars. The body of Giovanni Esposito, who died at the age of eighteen, is exhumed: the body is surprisingly mummified. A local cult of the boy, renamed Saint Giovannino of Gesù, is born. In a culture constantly waiting for evident and powerful manifestations of the divine dimension, a series of popular devotional practices become common and shared.