Blessed John of Parma, O.F.M., was an Italian Franciscan friar, who served as one of the first Ministers General of the Order of Friars Minor (1247–1257). He was also a noted theologian of the period. John was born about 1209 in the medieval commune of Parma in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna; his family name was probably Buralli. Educated by an uncle, chaplain of the Church of St. Lazarus at Parma, his progress in learning was such that he quickly became a teacher of philosophy. When and where he entered the Order of Friars Minor (commonly called the "Franciscans"), the old sources do not say. Ordained a priest, he taught theology at the University of Bologna and the University of Naples, and finally taught the Sentences of Peter Lombard at the University of Paris. He assisted at the First Council of Lyons in 1245, representing the current Minister General, Crescentius of Jesi, who was too ill to attend.
At the General Chapter of the Order held at Lyons in July 1247, John was elected Minister General, at the suggestion of Pope Innocent IV, who had been impressed by him during his service at the Council of Lyons two years earlier.
At the end of his term of office, John retired to the hermitage at the famed village of Greccio, near Rieti, memorable for the Nativity scene first introduced there by St. Francis of Assisi. There he lived in voluntary exile and complete solitude; his cell near a rock is still shown. But another trial awaited him. Accused of Joachimism, he was submitted to a canonical process at Cittá della Pieve (in Umbria), reportedly presided over by St. Bonaventure and Cardinal Giovanni Gaetano Orsini, Cardinal protector of the Order. Angelus Clarenus tells us that the concealed motive of this process was John's attachment to the literal observance of the Rule; the accusation of Joachimism, against which he professed his Catholic faith, being only a pretext.
Upon his acquittal, he returned to Greccio and continued his life of prayer and work. It was there, it is said, that an angel once served his Mass, and that in 1285 he received the visit of Ubertin of Casale, who has left an account of this meeting. Hearing that the Orthodox were abandoning the union agreed upon in 1274, John, now 80 years old, desired to use his last energies in the cause of Christian unity. He obtained the permission of Pope Nicolas IV to go to Greece, but reached only as far as Camerino, in the March of Ancona, where he died in the local friary on 19 March 1289.
He was beatified by Pope Pius VI in 1777; his feast day is celebrated by the Friars Minor on 20 March.