Omer Englebert was born in Belgium in 1893 and died in Jerusalem in 1991. He entered the Order of Friars Minor in 1909 and was ordained a priest in 1924. A few years later he left the order to become a member of the diocesan clergy. He was a historian as well as a spiritual master and he sought to combine the best of the scholarship of his day with the spiritual and societal influences that formed St. Francis of Assisi. He succeeded in producing a classic story of the life of this well-loved saint.