St. Bonaventure and Friends

Today is the Feast Day of St. Bonaventure. 

St. Bonaventure was a brilliant scholar, a mystic, a biographer of St. Francis of Assisi, and is a Doctor of the Church.

And he was a Franciscan.

The Franciscan family includes three orders - a Frist Order with priests like St. Bonaventure, a Second Order for women religious, and a Third Order (now called Secular Franciscan) for lay people. (The Seculars can also include diocesan priests and deacons.)

Like St. Bonaventure, Franciscan family has across the three orders produced many saints.

St. Francis and St. Clare are well known. So is another early Franciscan, St. Anthony of Padua.

The roll of Franciscan Saints over the centuries includes:

St. Joseph of Cupertino (noted for levitation!)

St. Elizabeth of Portugal (a queen noted for her service to the poor and sick)

St. Lawrence of Brindisi (another Doctor of the Church)

St. Benedict the Moor (a son of slaves)

St. Bernadine of Siena (a great preacher and reformer)

St. Thomas More (who remained faithful to the Church against King Henry VIII)

St. Elizabeth of Hungary (a princess who was devoted to works of charity and who is a patroness of the Secular Franciscan Order)

St. Margaret of Cortona (a penitent who inspired us to name our home for pregnant women chose life, The Margaret Home)  

St. Junipero Serra (who founded missions in California and defended Native Americans against the Spanish colonists) 

St. Marianne Cope (who served the lepers of Molokai)

St. Maximilian Kolbe (who lost his life at Auschwitz)

Pope St. John XIII (who called for Vatican II)

 

St. Padre Pio (noted as a miracle worker and, like St. Francis, a Stigmatist) 

And so many more!

Pax et bonum