ASSISI, Italy (AP) — As Pope Francis entered his third week in a hospital battling pneumonia, hundreds of pilgrims continued to make their way to this hilltop town to pray at the tomb of St. Francis, the hometown medieval saint whom the pontiff chose as his papal name.
Groups from the United States, Ukraine and all over Italy made their way through a town of grey and brown stone houses that look little changed from when the saint was born here more than 840 years ago.
They said they were inspired by St. Francis’ love for the poor, peace and creation — all priorities for the pope, too, and the Franciscans, one of the largest orders in the Catholic Church.
“The life of St. Francis teaches the way to holiness is giving up yourself, getting rid of things that hold us back in our life here, and just offer ourselves to the Lord,” said the Rev. Paul Vu, who was visiting in early March with a group of 50 Vietnamese-American parishioners from Santa Ana, California.
Who was St. Francis?
In 1182, Francis was born to a wealthy family in Assisi, which rises above a fertile valley in central Italy. Praying in front of a crucifix, he heard a call to reform the church. He aspired to strip everything down to the essentials in the service of God.
The Santuario della Spogliazione, which literally means stripping, is a sober stone church on the hillside. It marks the spot where he gave up even his clothes in front of his father, who disinherited him. St. Francis was accepted into the church by the bishop as an advocate of the poor and went on to found a religious order that’s still active globally today, the Franciscans.
For Assisi’s current bishop, the Rev. Domenico Sorrentino, St. Francis’ renunciation of material encumbrances also signaled his love of creation and of peace.
“Francis, stripping himself, came back to nature in some sense. So we must receive nature as a gift of God, and respect this gift,” Sorrentino told The Associated Press.
During the Crusades, St. Francis befriended a Muslim sultan — their exchanges are still seen as an example of the kind of interfaith dialogue that St. John Paul II promoted by gathering leaders of the major global religions in Assisi during his papacy.
“Assisi is the place to pray for peace in the world and inside of ourselves,” said Elizabeth Nuñez, a Passionist sister from Colombia who was there in pilgrimage on a recent weekend.
St. Francis and Pope Francis
After being elected, a pope chooses a name to adopt for his papacy. Jorge Mario Bergoglio picked Francis in 2013.
“He explained it in a very simple way, that he chose Francis’ name because he’s the man of peace, of the poor, of brotherhood. The man who loves and respects creation,” said the Rev. Enzo Fortunato, who spent 30 years in Assisi and now leads the Vatican’s committee on World Children’s Day. “It’s a name that contains a life program.”
Several of the pope’s encyclicals — teaching documents for the church — pulled from Franciscan themes and quotes, including one about building a more inclusive church.
This year will mark the 800th anniversary of St. Francis’ celebrated “canticle of creatures,” where he praises God for the sun, the moon and other natural elements he refers to as brothers and sisters.
Pope Francis used its title for an encyclical highlighting the importance of taking care of the environment because it’s a gift from God that humankind only gets to protect, not exploit.
Dora Pell, a 75-year-old pilgrim from England, went walking in the woods around Assisi beloved by St. Francis and called it as moving as sitting by his tomb in the Basilica of St. Francis on the edge of town.
“It’s just a spirituality that’s based on love and inclusiveness,” she said. “It’s seeing Christ everywhere, in everything and everybody.”
What else is Assisi famous for?
The basilica contains a cycle of more than two dozen frescoes illustrating crucial moments in St. Francis’ life — including the “spogliazione.”
Painted by Giotto at the end of the 13th century, they marked a turning point in Western art. Their realism and careful rendering of space and depth went far beyond what was common in the Middle Ages and presaged the Renaissance.
They were spared destruction in the 1997 earthquake that hit the region, killing four people in the basilica itself.
Across town is the Basilica di Santa Chiara, dedicated to St. Clare, who embraced radical poverty to imitate St. Francis. He made available to her and the growing group of women following her a local church — the beginning of the Poor Clares order, now present in 70 countries with 20,000 sisters.
In between the two churches, in the Santuario della Spogliazione, lies the Blessed Carlo Acutis, an Italian teen who died in 2006 and will become the church’s first millennial saint when canonized in April.
That makes Assisi “a condensation of holiness in a small town,” Fortunato said. And it all links back to St. Francis’ choice 800 years ago.
“In the end, Francis is pure Gospel. He’s the good news,” Fortunato said.
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Giovanna Dell'orto, The Associated Press
