(March 9, 1909 in Quincy, Illinois – March 4, 1992 in San Antonio, Texas)[1] was a Franciscan friar, a scholar of the Catholic Church in Latin America, and director of the Academy of American Franciscan History.
He edited four volumes of the writings Junípero Serra, founder of the Franciscan missions in late eighteenth-century Alta California, canonized in 2015.
Tibesar served as editor of the peer reviewed scholarly journal, The Americas.
[2] Tibesar was the son of an immigrant to the United States from Luxembourg, and became a Franciscan in 1927 at age 18.
At the direction of the Franciscan province, he initially earned a Master’s in medieval European history at Catholic University of America in 1937, later returning there and earning a doctorate in Latin American history.