Dear Brothers and all the members of the Hospitaller Family of Saint John of God,

Following the Jubilee Year of the approval of our Hospitaller Fraternity by the Bull Licet ex debito, I have the joy of announcing to you the forthcoming opening of the Diocesan Process of Beatification and Canonisation of the Servant of God, Brother Boniface Bonillo Fernández, a Brother of our Hospitaller Order, belonging to the Province of Spain.  

The date for the opening of the Cause has been set for Sunday, 18 December 2022, the Fourth Sunday of Advent, at 6.00 p.m. with the ceremony of the induction of the Ecclesiastical Tribunal. The event will take place during the celebration of Vespers presided over by the Most Revd Mgr Demetrio Fernández González, Bishop of Córdoba in the chapel of our Hospital of St John of God in Córdoba, where the mortal remains of the Servant of God Brother Bonifacio lie. 

Brother Boniface was born in Cañaveruelas (Cuenca), on 14 May 1899, to Manuel and Higinia, a simple and deeply Christian couple.

He was baptised on the 17th of the same month and year, in the parish church of Nuestra Señora de la Paz, and in 1908 he received the sacrament of the Eucharist for the first time, the centre-piece of his spiritual life and his Hospitaller vocation.

In 1923, he left his hometown and started working at the Centro de la Inmaculada, run by the Fatebenefratelli, in Barcelona; from here, God led him on the path of service to the poor and sick.

The following year, on 12 August, he entered the Hospitaller Order of St John of God as an aspirant in the San José Psychiatric Sanatorium in Ciempozuelos (Madrid). 

On 7 December 1924, the vigil of the Immaculate Conception, he entered the novitiate at the San José de Carabanchel Alto Centre (Madrid). At the end of the novitiate, on 3 June 1926, he took temporary vows, consecrating himself as a Hospitaller Brother of St John of God. On 20 December 1926 he was assigned to the Community at Santurce, Bilbao, where he began his mission as almoner, an office he would continue to perform until the day he died in Córdoba. On 3 June 1929, he was definitively consecrated by solemn profession in the church of San José in Carabanchel Alto. At the request of his superiors, he carried out his mission in various communities: San Rafael (Madrid), Carabanchel Alto and Granada. On 5 May 1935, he was assigned to the San Rafael Clinic in Córdoba, (now the St John of God Hospital), where he remained for 43 years, travelling around the city and the province begging for alms for the children being cared for in the home.

He always had a great devotion to the Blessed Virgin, the beacon and guide of his Hospitaller apostolate.  On 10 December 1972, the Spanish government, recognising his outstanding mission of charity, awarded him a major honour: the Grand Cross of Merit.

After dedicating his life to poor and sick children, he died in Córdoba on 11 September 1978 with a reputation for holiness. In 1999, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth, his mortal remains were transferred to the chapel of the St John of God Hospital in Córdoba, where many faithful and the sick people seek his intercession for favours and graces.

In this first phase of the process of Canonisation, the members of the diocesan tribunal will hear the testimony of witnesses who will be called upon to report concrete facts regarding the heroic exercise of Christian virtues by the Servant of God. At the end of the diocesan preliminary investigation, and if all the testimonies and the information gathered are deemed suitable, the acts and documentation will be forwarded to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints for the start of the Rome phase.

We thank Our Lord for the gift of Brother Boniface to our Religious Family, a man who knew how to make his life a hymn to Hospitality through practical and humble service by the side of the poor and the sick.

We now commit this journey of verification to Our Lord, trusting that it will conclude positively with the recognition by the Church of the heroic virtues practised by the Servant of God.

United in Our Lord, I send you all my cordial best wishes, committing to Saint John of God and the Servant of God, Brother Boniface, our daily journey of Hospitality for the good of the needy, the poor and the sick.   

Brother Jesús Etayo, O.H.