Saint Francis of Assisi

Francis’ first rule for his followers was a collection of texts from the Gospels. He did not intend to found an order, but once it began he protected it and accepted all the legal structures needed to support it. His devotion and loyalty to the Church were absolute and highly exemplary at a time when various movements of reform tended to break the Church’s unity. 

During the last years of his relatively short life, Francis was half blind and seriously ill. Two years before his death he received the stigmata in his hands, feet, and side.

On his deathbed, at age 44, Francis repeated the last addition to his Canticle of the Sun, “Be praised, O Lord, for our Sister Death.” He sang Psalm 141, and at the end asked his superior’s permission to have his clothes removed when the last hour came in order that he could expire lying naked on the earth, in imitation of his Lord.

He recognized creation as another manifestation of the beauty of God. In 1979, he was named patron of ecology.