Francesco A. Lentini

Francesco A. Lentini was an interesting person. He was born in Rosolini in the province of Siracusa, Sicily in the year 1889. Because of an unknown birth defect he was born with three legs.

He appeared before the leading doctors in Europe and America and they could not tell him why he was in this condition. He was very good spirited about his abnormality. He was quoted as saying, “you will notice that none of my limbs are alike- yet, I have three and yet haven’t a pair.” He said that “there were people who were a great deal worse off the I am, who have far less to live for, and who have but a fraction of the pleasure that I get out of life.”

Jokingly he said, “when I swim I use the extra limb as a rudder”. People asked him how he bought his shoes. He said, “I buy two pairs and give the extra left shoe to a one- legged friend of mine who had the misfortune to lose his right leg, so you see every time I buy a pair of shoes I really do a good deed along with it”. He used the attention that his abnormality attracted to himself to preach about sexual purity.