Short biographies of St. Francis

and St. Clare of Assisi

Saint Francis of Assisi (1182-1226), was an Italian mystic and preacher, who founded the Franciscan movement. Born in Assisi, Italy and originally named Francesco Bernardone, he was the son of a wealthy merchant. As a young man, Francis led a worldly, carefree life. Following a battle between Assisi and Perugia, he was held captive in Perugia for over a year. While imprisoned, he suffered a severe illness that brought about questioning of his way of life. Back in Assisi in 1205, he performed charities among the lepers and began working on the restoration of dilapidated churches. Francis’s change of character and his expenditures for charity angered his father, who legally disinherited him.

In 2008, Francis began preaching. Soon other men asked to join him and Francis founded his original order, later called the First Order; they elected Francis superior. In 1212 he received a young, well-born woman of Assisi, Clare, into the Franciscan fellowship; through her was established the Order of the Poor Ladies (the Poor Clares), later the Second Order of Franciscans. It was probably later in 1212 that Francis set out for the Holy Land, but a shipwreck forced him to return. In 1219 he was in Egypt, where he succeeded in preaching to, but not in converting, the sultan.

In September 1224, after 40 days of fasting, Francis was praying upon Monte LaVerna when he felt pain mingled with joy, and the marks of the crucifixion of Christ, the stigmata, appeared on his body. Francis was carried back to Assisi, where his remaining years were marked by physical pain and almost total blindness. He was canonized in 1228. In 1980, Pope John Paul II proclaimed him the patron saint of ecologists. In art, the emblems of St. Francis are the wolf, the lamb, the fish, birds, and the stigmata.