BONAVENTURA of Barcelona, Blessed. — Before entering the Order of Friars Minor (1640), he was called Michael Baptist Gran; he was born in Riu-dons in the province and diocese of Tarragona on 24 Nov. 1620. In 1658, while coming to Italy, he added to his name the appellation “of Barcelona.” In imitation of his native land and also of other regions of Italy, he established in Latium austere Franciscan houses of retreat; thus in 1662 he founded in Ponticelli Sabina a convent of retreat with statutes approved by Pope Alexander VII, soon followed by two others at Montorio Romano and at Vicovaro and finally that of St. Bonaventure on the Palatine (Rome), where he died on 11 Sept. 1684. His reform, called the “Little Reform,” to which St. Leonard of Port Maurice belonged, lasted until its merger in 1897. He was beatified by Pius X in 1906.
Giuseppe M. Pou y Marti