Miguel Ángel Gaitán (July 9, 1966—June 24, 1967), also known as El Angelito Milagroso (Spanish for "Miracle Child" — "angelito", which is diminutive for ángel (angel), is a reference to his name) was an Argentine

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

 baby who died of meningitis, fifteen days before his first birthday.

He was born in Banda Florida, on the banks of the Bermejo River

Bermejo River

The Bermejo River is a river in South America that flows from Bolivia to the Paraguay River in Argentina. The river is generally called Bermejo in spite of its different names along its way, but it also has its own Native American names; in Wichí it is called Teuco, and in Guaraní it is called Ypitá...

, in Villa Unión

Villa Unión

Villa Unión is a city and seat of the municipality of Villa Unión, in the north-eastern Mexican state of Coahuila....

, head of the Coronel Felipe Varela department

Departments of Argentina

Departments form the second level of administrative division in the provinces of Argentina. There are no departments in the city of Buenos Aires, which has so far been divided into neighbourhoods as its administrative divisions, but is to be divided now into communes by a recently passed local act...

 of the province of La Rioja

La Rioja Province (Argentina)

La Rioja is a one of the provinces of Argentina and is located in the west of the country. Neighboring provinces are from the north clockwise Catamarca, Córdoba, San Luis and San Juan.-History:...

, Argentina. He was the 12th son from Argentina Nery Olguín and Barnabas Gaitán (which had fifteen children but only nine survived). Miguelito died on June 24, 1967 when he was urgently transported by an ambulance to Chilecito

Chilecito

Chilecito is a city in the Argentine province of La Rioja, and head of the department of Chilecito.-Overview:It's located in the valley formed by the Sierras de Velazco to the east, and the Sierras de Famatina to the west. The city was founded in 1715 by Spanish colonizers...

.

His corpse remained remarkably well preserved, as was discovered after a violent rainstorm in 1973, seven years after his death, which unearthed the baby's coffin. After four attempts to build tombs to shelter the coffin, which kept appearing collapsed the next day, the locals decided to keep the coffin out in the open. But then the coffin's lid kept being removed, and presuming those to be signs that he didn't want to be hidden, but rather seen by the people, his mother finally transferred the body to a coffin with a glass lid, on which he has stayed to the present day, revered by people from all Argentina which recurred to him for miracles as a folk saint

Folk saint

Folk saints are dead people or other spiritually powerful entities venerated as saints but not officially canonized. Since they are saints of the "folk", or the populus, they are also called popular saints...

. He eventually gained international fame, being covered by several newspapers, most notably the New York Times.