MARCO da BOLOGNA, blessed. — Born in Bologna of the senatorial Fantuzzi family around 1405; died in Piacenza on 10 April 1479. He studied in Bologna, where at the age of twenty-seven he entered the Observant Friars Minor. He was a disciple of Blessed Giacomo Primadizi and of St Bernardino da Siena.
Endowed with exceptional gifts of leadership, he was vicar general of the Observants no fewer than three times (1452–55; 1464–67; 1469–72), visited all the provinces of the Order, and spread the Observance, defending it in Rome from the violent attacks to which it was subjected. In 1464 he visited the Holy Land and the neighbouring Franciscan missions. By virtue of the office he held, he was in contact with the most eminent Franciscans of the period, particularly with St Giovanni da Capistrano and St Giacomo della Marca; and he was greatly esteemed by the popes Nicolò V, Callisto III, Pio II, and Paolo II, who in 1471 wished to raise him to the cardinalate, which he humbly refused. The final years of his life were devoted to an intense apostolate, preaching in the principal cities of Italy and establishing Monti di Pietà for the benefit of the poor. His cult was approved by Pio IX in 1868. Feast: 10 April.
Clary, Aureola serafica, I, Quaracchi 1898, pp. 791-805; B. Bughetti, Quo anno et die b. Marcus Fantuzzi de Bononia obierit, in Arch. francisc. histor. 2 (1909), pp. 537-47; P. Sevesi, Storia dell'Ordine francescano, I, Milano, 1942 V. indice; cf. also Wadding, Annales, X-XV, passim. Alberto Ghinato