João
Mendes da Silva, better known as the Blessed Amadeus of Portugal, was
born in 1420 in Campo Maior on the eastern side of the country. The
youngest son of twelve children, he was closely related to the Counts of
Vila Real and Viana do Alentejo, whose lands lay near the border of
Portugal and Spain. St. Beatriz da Silva, the foundress of the Order of
the Immaculate Conception, was one of his sisters, and a strong devotion
to this prerogative of Our Lady – centuries before it was defined as a
dogma – was a profound spiritual characteristic they both shared.
João
was married very young, but soon after entered the Hieronymite
monastery of Santa Maria de Guadalupe in Spain, where he spent about ten
years. Inspired by a vision of the Immaculate Conception of Mary Most
Holy to join the Franciscans, he sought admission to their friary in
Ubeda in Lombardy where he entered as a lay brother in 1452 and took the
name of Amadeus.
Initially not well received by his confreres,
some of whom took him for a religious fraud, he was widely persecuted
within the Order bearing all the humiliations inflicted upon him with
great patience. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1459 at the
insistence of his superiors. Amadeus subsequently became renowned
throughout the houses of the Order for his holiness and miracles.
In
1469, he founded the Friary of Notre Dame de la Paix under the
protection of the Archbishop of Milan. This friary soon became the
center of a Franciscan reform which eventually spread throughout Italy
and beyond. When the Minister General of the Franciscan Order, Francesco
della Rovere, was elected to the throne of Peter as Pope Sixtus IV, he
summoned Amadeus to Rome to be his confessor and counselor.
The
reform of the Franciscan Order begun by St. Amadeus led to his founding
of a distinct branch of the Friars Minor which was ultimately named
after him. Amadeus later returned to Milan, where he died in 1482.
Monday, August 9, 2021
Bl. Amadeus of Portugal
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