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The saints

St. Francis of Assisi

A rich young man embraced a leper, heard a crucifix speak, and gave everything away.

Feast: 4 October · about 1181 to 1226 · The Middle Ages · Assisi, Italy

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The Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi, seen from the hillside: two stacked churches and a long arcade above the Umbrian plain.

Timothy A. Gonsalves, 2023. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Home / The saints / St. Francis of Assisi

San Damiano, below Assisi, about 1205

A young man kneels in a crumbling chapel outside Assisi and hears a voice from the crucifix.1

“Go, Francis, and repair my house, which as you see is falling into ruin.”

The voice Francis heard at San Damiano1

He took it literally. He sold his father’s cloth to buy stones. It took him a while to understand which house was meant.

Patron of Italy2; all who study and work in ecology3

01St. Francis of Assisi

The leper on the road

Francis was the son of a wealthy cloth merchant, and dreamed of glory as a knight.1

One day, riding across the Umbrian plain, he came face to face with a leper, and instead of turning away he dismounted, embraced the man and gave him all the money he had.1

From then on he gave himself to nursing lepers and to prayer.1

02St. Francis of Assisi

Lady Poverty

Taken before the bishop by his furious father, Francis stripped off the very clothes he wore and gave them back to him.1

“Hitherto I have called you my father on earth; henceforth I desire to say only 'Our Father who art in Heaven'”

Francis, before the bishop of Assisi1

Brothers gathered around him, and Pope Innocent III gave a verbal sanction to their rule and leave to preach repentance everywhere.1

Praying on the mountain of La Verna around the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, he saw a seraph, and the marks of the five wounds of Christ appeared on his body.1

Eight hundred years later, people who have never opened a Bible still put his statue in their gardens. He would want you to read the Gospel instead.

Live it this week

Go meet the person you avoid

Francis got off his horse and embraced the leper he was scared of. This week, pick one person you usually steer around (the guy outside the grocery store, the coworker nobody eats with) and stop, learn their name, and actually talk.

Notes

How we know · 3 sources for this page
  1. Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), “St. Francis of Assisi”. New Advent edition. newadvent.org
  2. Vatican News, Saint of the day: “St. Francis of Assisi”. Dicastery for Communication, Holy See. vaticannews.va
  3. Pope Francis, Laudato si’ (2015), 10. vatican.va. vatican.va

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: World English Bible, Catholic edition (public domain); Verse numbers are modern, with Douay-Rheims numbers in brackets where they differ. Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an errorCorrections.