In the 15th century the friary of Santa Maria del Popolo joined the observant reform movement that tried to restore the original purity of monastic life. The general chapter of the Augustinian observants in May 1449 established five separate congregations for the observant friars in Italy. That of Rome-Perugia was sometimes named after Santa Maria del Popolo although the monastery never had the official position of a mother-house. In 1472 the friary was given over by Pope Sixtus IV to the Lombard Congregation, the most important and populous of all, and it became its Roman headquarter and the seat of its procurator general (ambassador) at the Roman Curia.