On 11 October we celebrate St. John XXIII, whom the Franciscan Family, as a member of the Third Order of Friars Minor, recognises as one of its outstanding sons.
Born in Sotto il Monte, Diocese and Province of Bergamo (Italy), on 25 November 1881, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli entered the seminary in 1892. In 1896 the Spiritual Father of the Bergamo Seminary, Fr. Luigi Isacchi, admitted him to the Secular Franciscan Order, whose Rule he professed on 23 May 1897.
In 1959, when Pope John received the Friars Minor in the Basilica of St. John Lateran on the occasion of the 750th anniversary of the approval of the Rule (unstamped), he recalled his belonging to the Third Order by making his own the words of Joseph in Genesis: "I would like to address a special word from my heart to those present here who belong to the peaceful army of the Lay Tertiaries of St Francis: Ego sum Ioseph, frater vester (I am Joseph, your brother). It is with tenderness that I tell you this. I have been like this since I was barely fourteen years old when, on the 1st March 1896, I was regularly enrolled there through the ministry of Canon Luigi Isacchi, spiritual father and director of the Seminary of Bergamo. I bless the Lord for this grace, which he gave me in happy synchrony with the act of beginning my ecclesiastical life with the sacred tonsure in the same year".
And he went on to recall "the serene and innocent joy" of this concurrence of being a Franciscan tertiary and a cleric on his way to the priesthood, and the joy of feeling caught in the snare of simplicity that would accompany him to the altar and for the rest of his life.
It is precisely because of this relationship that the cause of canonisation was entrusted to the General Postulation of the Order of Friars Minor. Luca De Rosa, General Postulator and Postulator of the Cause, in the presentation of Notebook 54 of L'Osservatore Romano, noted that John XXIII, for his constant reference to the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi, could well inherit the title of universal brother given to Francis, because he was an untiring messenger and prophet of peace, dialogue and reconciliation among men, and because he spoke a language and made gestures that were understandable to all and that opened hearts.
