Blessed Bonaventure of Forli
  March 31th  

    Blessed Bonaventure Tornielli was born at Forlì and was a man of good family. He does not seem to have entered the Order of Servites until 1448, when he was thirty-seven years old, but his fervour and austerity of life rapidly enabled him to make up for lost time. After his ordination he prepared himself for apostolic work by a year of retirement, and then began to preach with wonderful eloquence and success. He was especially commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV to undertake this apostolic mission, and throughout the papal states, Tuscany and the Venetian province his sermons were productive of a notable reformation of life. Towards the close of 1488 he was elected vicar general of his order, an office in which he gave proof of great administrative ability and charity. But he still continued his missionary work, and he had just finished preaching the Lent at Udine when on Maundy Thursday 1491 God called him to Himself, worn out by age and the hardships of the life he had been leading. His relics were ultimately convayed to Venice, where a cultus grew up marked by many miraculous cures. This cultus was confirmed in 1911.

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See the decree of confirmation printed in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, vol. iii (1911), pp. 659-660; and F. Cornelius, Ecclesiae Venetae, vol. ii, pp. 34-51.

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Butler's Lives of The Saints, Herbert J. Thurston, S.J. and Donald Attwater Nihil Obstat: PATRICIVS MORRIS, S.T.D., L.S.S., CENSOR DEPVTATVS. Imprimatur: E. MORROGH BERNARD, VICARIVS GENERALIS WESTMONASTERII: DIE XXIII FEBRVARII MCMLIII