Italy's prime minister said.



'St. Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata' by Salvador Maella

Quote:He was a young runaway who understood how the goods of this world were a hindrance toward holiness, and who chose to unite himself to Lady Poverty … living the evangelical counsels in the Rule of the Seraphic Order. Francis was thus poor, of that holy poverty which is neither miserable nor abject, but noble and proud, because it is confident of the help of Providence.

He was a tireless preacher of the Gospel. In 1219 he went as far as Cairo, to the court of al-Malik al-Kamil: on that occasion he wished to face the trial by fire to demonstrate the truth of the Catholic Faith and persuade the Sultan to convert and desist from fighting the Christians engaged in the Fifth Crusade.

St. Francis was a promoter of the decorum and dignity of the Liturgy. In his writings we read a thousand recommendations on the respect and adoration due to the Blessed Sacrament, and we know that he spared nothing to purchase pyxes and sacred vessels to donate to poor churches…His veneration for the Ministers of the Most High was such that it led him to refuse to receive the Priesthood considering himself unworthy of it.

In short, Francis was the heroic example of those virtues that in an age of crisis and war would reform the Holy Church.

Quote:In what, then, was St. Francis “the most Italian of Saints, the holiest of Italians”? We can say that he was the most Italian of Saints, because in him was shown that temperament proper to our people, made up of serene charity towards the poorest and the needy, that charity that so many Orders and Congregations have seen born over the centuries under the breath of the Holy Spirit.

A character made up of charity and love for God, of solid and unblemished Faith, of daily witness by example. In Francis we also find that unshakable certainty in the eternal Truths, of that Rome where Christ is Roman (Par XXXII, 102) that still survives in our people despite the devastating action of the modernist hierarchy.

He was also the holiest of Italians, for his life was an example and model of true humility, of holy poverty, of total abandonment to God and in God, to the point of receiving the Sacred Stigmata that assimilated him even in the flesh to the Passion of the Lord. He bore on himself the signs of the infinite Charity of Christ, before which every earthly good, every wealth, every pleasure disappears and is annihilated, and has a meaning only if oriented to the Good and to eternal salvation.