Acri's origins are genuinely unresolved. Some scholars identify it with ancient Pandosia ; others with Acheruntia , on the grounds that the Mucone was anciently called the Acheronte . Neither is settled, and the town's medieval fabric — the Annunziata of 1269 , San Nicola Ante Castillum, Santa Maria Maggiore — is where its documented history properly begins. The Capuchin church and convent date from 1590 .

The figure who defines the place was born here on 19 October 1669 as Lucantonio Falcone , son of Francesco Falcone and Diana Enrico, people of humble origins. Educated for the religious life by a priest uncle, and after considerable hesitation, he entered the Capuchins and took the name Angelo . He was ordained priest on 10 April 1700 in the cathedral of Cassano all'Ionio.

He became the most listened-to preacher in southern Italy in his century. He preached at Salerno, Napoli and Montecassino and through almost every town of Calabria — Cosenza, Catanzaro, Taranto, Reggio Calabria, Messina — in language deliberately plain enough for anyone to follow, though he was a serious student of scripture and the Fathers and had a genuine humanist and philosophical education. He took the side of the weak against the abuses of the powerful, attacked the corruption of his time and denounced social injustice with real persistence.

Despite his reluctance to hold office he was repeatedly made novice-master and guardian — at Mormanno, Cetraro and Acri — provincial visitor and definitor, minister provincial from 1717 to 1720 , and pro-visitor general in 1735 . In 1737 he gave his home town a wooden statue of the Madonna and Child of Neapolitan workmanship. He died at Acri on 30 October 1739 , aged seventy.

What followed is a study in slowness. Petitions for his cause came from across Calabria and the Mezzogiorno, from the court at Naples and from King Ferdinand himself. Leo XII beatified him in December 1825 — sources give the 9th and the 18th, one for the decree's publication and one for the ceremony. The formal canonisation process opened on 22 September 1853 . It was completed by Pope Francis on 15 October 2017 . Two hundred and seventy-eight years after his death, Acri finally had a saint of its own.

His basilica , dedicated to the Immacolata, stands in the Cappuccini quarter. It was built at the will of Padre Giacinto Osso da Belmonte , and it was paid for by the whole community together with the emigrants in America — which is the most eloquent single fact about this town's nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The convent beside it holds a museum of the saint's relics and effects; nearby, in Palazzo Falcone , the MACA houses contemporary art including a permanent room for the Acrese artist Silvio Vigliaturo.