Deepertruth: Stand In The Gap With Us And Blessed John of Parma

Stand In The Gap With Us And Blessed John of Parma 3/21/2024

St John of Parma was a Priest and abbot of Saint John’s Abbey in Parma, Italy. He was born in the 10th century AD in Parma, Italy, and died in 982 AD. We celebrate his feast day on May 22 every year in the Catholic Church.

The seventh general minister of the Franciscan Order, John was known for his attempts to bring back the earlier spirit of the Order after the death of Saint Francis of Assisi.

He was born in Parma, Italy, in 1209. It was when he was a young philosophy professor known for his piety and learning that God called him to bid good-bye to the world he was used to and enter the new world of the Franciscan Order.

After his profession, John was sent to Paris to complete his theological studies. Ordained to the priesthood, he was appointed to teach theology at Bologna, then Naples, and finally Rome.

In 1245, Pope Innocent IV called a general council in the city of Lyons, France. Crescentius, the Franciscan minister general at the time, was ailing and unable to attend. In his place he sent Friar John, who made a deep impression on the Church leaders gathered there. Two years later, when the same pope presided at the election of a minister general of the Franciscans, he remembered Friar John well and held him up as the man best qualified for the office.

And so in 1247, John of Parma was elected to be minister general. The surviving disciples of St. Francis rejoiced in his election, expecting a return to the spirit of poverty and humility of the early days of the Order.

The pope called on John to serve as legate to Constantinople, where he was most successful in winning back the schismatic Greeks.