Guarda (Friar Pedro da)

Friar Pedro da Guarda was a poor and humble Franciscan. He was born in 1435 in the city from which he took his surname, and he died in the convent of St Bernardino (São Bernardino), in the parish (freguesia) of Câmara de Lobos (‘seals’ den’), in the year 1505. The austerity of his life, the harsh penances to which he gave himself and his most exemplary practice of all the Christian virtues won him a reputation for sanctity even during his earthly pilgrimage. After his death many miraculous events were attributed to his intercession, and several beatification processes were set in motion so that he might canonically receive the veneration of the altars. The last was some 32 years ago, and various extracts from the principal documents of the process were published in a folio volume of 163 pages. The Holy See never pronounced on the canonisation, but the prelates of this diocese allowed a certain public cult, which for centuries never waned but instead grew more fervent with time. The Holy Servant of God, the name by which he was known and still is today, had countless fervent devotees, who flocked from all over the island to his burial place to implore his protection and help for the ills from which they suffered.

In the city of Guarda lived João Luís, a weaver, and his wife Águeda Gonçalves, and of their marriage Pedro was born in the year 1435. At the age of twenty he entered the Franciscan order, where he took his vows as a lay brother. For thirty years he lived in convents on the mainland, where the austerity of his life became well known and some prodigious events were attributed to him. Wishing to escape the admiration that his virtues aroused, he asked to withdraw to a convent of his order in Madeira, which he did around 1485. Seeking an obscure refuge in the convent of St Bernardino, in the parish of Câmara de Lobos, he lived there for about twenty years, and died on 27 July 1505. The penitent life he led in this retreat, and above all the miraculous events attributed to his intercession, drew the attention of his contemporaries, as we have already noted. A true halo of sanctity formed around his name, and it grew and swelled still further after his death.

No sooner had the governor of this bishopric, António Alfredo Santa Catarina Braga, arrived on the island in 1835 than he set about erasing the traces of the influence exercised by the religious orders, which had been expelled the year before. Bound up with that influence was the cult paid to the Santo Servo de Deus, and he moved without delay to prohibit every manifestation of a religious character in honour of the humble Franciscan. On 2 June 1835 António Alfredo went to the convent of St Bernardino, accompanied by several clergymen and some persons of social standing, and conducted a summary inquiry into the miraculous deeds attributed to Friar Pedro da Guarda. He then ordered that the statue of this religious, which was venerated there, be publicly burnt in his presence, together with other objects used in the ceremonies of worship offered to that humble lay brother of the Franciscan order. He had a record (auto) of the whole proceedings drawn up on the spot, a document full of rancour, even though it displays the greatest zeal for the integrity of Catholic doctrine and the prestige of religion. The following day he had a warrant (provisão) published in which the cult of the Santo Servo de Deus was utterly condemned and prohibited, imposing severe penalties on any clergy who failed to obey the orders contained in that warrant.

The act of the ecclesiastical authority caused great indignation and scandal throughout the island. This was not so much because of the prohibition of the cult, which could be justified under canon law, as because of the pomp and solemnity with which it was carried out, and above all because of the auto-da-fé performed on the image of the poor friar, whose memory certainly did not deserve to be exposed to such public execration.

It appears that the beatification process opened a few years ago is to go forward once more. It is possible that the Holy See will, in the near future, decree public veneration of Friar Pedro da Guarda, whom the people know only by the name of Santo Servo de Deus.

As stated above, several efforts were made to obtain the decree of beatification of the humble Franciscan Friar Pedro da Guarda. The most important of them all was the one undertaken around 1623, whose case file is still in Rome and which reached an advanced stage. In 1905 a new process was opened in the episcopal curia of Funchal and continued in Rome before the tribunals of the Holy See; in 1905 various separate documents from it were published in a folio volume of 180 pages. For reasons unknown to us, this process was not carried forward, and the investigations into the matter that had begun there, in the secretariat of the ecclesiastical congregations, remain suspended.

In 1864 a pamphlet (opúsculo) was published in Funchal containing a biography of Friar Pedro da Guarda, taken from the chronicles of the Seraphic Order in Portugal.