Fr. Dominic Monti

Dominic Monti, known throughout his religious community as Fr. Dominic V. Monti, O.F.M., was an American Franciscan friar, Catholic priest, historian and longtime educator at St. Bonaventure University in western New York. He died on September 16, 2026, while in hospice care, at the age of 83, after 61 years as a Franciscan friar and 55 years as an ordained priest.

Born in 1943 in Bradford, Pennsylvania, a town about twenty miles from St. Bonaventure University, Monti felt drawn to religious life as an undergraduate. He entered the Franciscans' minor seminary in Callicoon, New York, in 1963, was received into the order the following year, and made his first vows in 1965. He earned a bachelor's degree magna cum laude from St. Bonaventure in 1967, followed by further theological study at the Catholic University of America and a master's degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He was ordained a priest in 1971 and later earned a doctorate with distinction in the history of Christianity from the University of Chicago Divinity School in 1979.

Monti spent much of his career teaching, first at Christ the King Seminary and the Washington Theological Union between 1979 and 2002, and then back at St. Bonaventure, where he returned in 2002 to teach in the theology department. He became internationally recognized as an expert on the history of the Franciscan movement, contributing two volumes to the scholarly Works of St. Bonaventure series and writing Francis & His Brothers, a widely read popular history of the Order of Friars Minor. He later served as professor of Franciscan Research at the university's Franciscan Institute and, from 2005, as provincial vicar of Holy Name Province, the largest Franciscan province in the United States.

Monti was also called upon to lead St. Bonaventure itself during one of its most difficult periods. When a recruiting scandal involving the men's basketball program forced the resignation of university president Robert Wickenheiser in 2003, Monti was appointed interim president, a post he held for fifteen months. He was widely credited with steadying the institution and restoring confidence among students, faculty and alumni through a period of public embarrassment. Although many expected him to be named permanent president, he asked not to be considered for the role and returned to teaching once Sr. Margaret Carney was installed as his successor in 2004. He later chaired the university's theology department.

St. Bonaventure University announced Monti's death, describing him as a revered Franciscan scholar and educator whose devotion to the Franciscan intellectual tradition was matched by decades of service to the institution. The cause of death has not been made public. As a professed Franciscan friar bound by vows of celibacy and poverty, Monti had no spouse or children; his life's work was centered on teaching, scholarship and the Franciscan community he served for more than six decades.