Guido Maria Conforti (30 March 1865 – 5 November 1931) was a Roman Catholic Italian archbishop who founded the Xaverian Missionaries (S.X.)

[1] He attended an elementary school run by the De La Salle Brothers from 1872 and each day on his way to the school he would stop by the church of Santa Maria della Pace, his parish church, where he used to have conversations with the crucified Jesus Christ.

[2] Although his father would have preferred that he stay and manage the farm, Conforti enrolled in the seminary in Parma in November 1876.

He began reading the works of Francis Xavier which inspired a desire to be a missionary, but his requests to join the Society of Jesus or the Salesians of Saint John Bosco were denied.

Leo XIII appointed him Archbishop of Ravenna in May 1902 following the death of Cardinal Agostino Gaetano Riboldi.

[3] Conforti is said to have provided the initiative behind Pope Benedict XV's encyclical Maximum illud, issued on 30 November 1919.

[6] The cause of sainthood was introduced in Parma on 29 May 1959 under Pope John XXIII and the work done on a diocesan level culminated on 11 February 1982 with Conforti being declared Venerable by Pope John Paul II on account of his life of heroic virtue.