St. Rocco  was born at Montpellier,  the son of the noble governor of that city. His mother had been barren until she prayed to the Virgin Mary. When the babe was born he had a birth- mark in the shape of a cross on his breast that grew as he did.  He early began to manifest strict asceticism and great devoutness.

On the death of his parents in his twentieth year he distributed all his worldly goods among the poor like Francis of Assisi, though his father on his death-bed had ordained him governor of Montpellier, and set out as a mendicant pilgrim for Rome.

Coming into Italy during an epidemic of plague, he tended the sick in the public hospitals  and, it  is said to have effected many miraculous cures by prayer and the sign of the cross and the touch of his hand.

Ministering at the city of Piacenza (Northern Italy) he himself finally fell ill. He was expelled from the town; and withdrew into the forest, where he made himself a hut of boughs and leaves, which was supplied with water by a spring that arose in the place. He would have perished had not a dog belonging to a nobleman named Gothard supplied him with bread. Gothard, following his hunting dog that carried the bread, discovered Saint Rocco and became his disciple.

On his return incognito to Montpellier he was arrested as a spy and thrown into prison, where he languished five years and died on 16 August 1327, without revealing his name, to avoid worldly glory. After his death, tThe townspeople recognized him as well by his birthmark; he was soon canonized in the popular mind, and a great church erected in veneration.

Numerous brotherhoods have been instituted in his honor. He is usually represented in the garb of a pilgrim, often lifting his tunic to demonstrate the plague sore in his thigh, and accompanied by a dog carrying a loaf in its mouth.