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Saint Bonaventure
was born in 1221 at Bagnoregio (near Viterbo, Italy) and
named after his father, John of Fidanza.
He died at Lyons in 1274 and his feast day is 15th
July.
St. Bonaventure was especially noted for his spiritual
writings and was called the Seraphic Doctor.
John joined the Franciscan order in 1243, taking the name
Bonaventure. Noted for his learning and good judgement,
Bonaventure was elected minister general of the Franciscans
in 1257, at a time when the order was divided over how
strictly it could observe St. Francis’s commitment to
poverty. He healed the division and thus came to be regarded
as the order’s second founder and the greatest friar minor
after St. Francis of Assisi.
Pope Gregory X made him cardinal archbishop of Albano in
May 1273. Bonaventure assisted in the preparations for a
council at Lyons and was instrumental in reconciling the
Eastern and Western divisions of the church. He died at
Lyons in July 1274 and the reconciliation lasted for only
another thirty years.
Bonaventure was a man of the highest intellectual
attainments, and personal simplicity. He wrote the official
Life of St. Francis of Assisi, and he himself travelled and
preached the Franciscan way of life.
Pope Sixtus IV declared Bonaventure a saint in 1482, and in
1588 Pope Sixtus V designated him a Doctor of the Church.
His emblem is a cardinal’s hat.
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