St. Francis of Assisi

The rich merchant's son who traded a life of silk and swords for poverty, peace, and a love of all creation — and founded an order that reshaped the Church.

Feast: October 4 1181–1226 (45 years) Founder Patron of Ecology

Patron Of

Animals Ecology Italy Merchants

Reflect on St. Francis of Assisi

Francis met God by embracing the very thing he feared and letting go of everything he owned.

Reflection Questions

1
Francis got down off his horse and kissed the hand of the leper he had always dreaded. What do you think changed in him in that moment?
2
Who or what are the 'lepers' in your own life — the people or situations you tend to cross the road to avoid?
3
What is one concrete way you could move toward someone this week instead of away from them?

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St. Anthony of Padua

Doctor of the ChurchJune 13

A gifted Portuguese scholar who hid his learning by washing dishes in a Franciscan hermitage — until one surprise sermon gave him away, and he spent the last nine years of his short life as the most powerful preacher in Europe.

St. Germaine Cousin

Shepherdess of PibracJune 15

A sickly shepherd girl despised by her own household, who slept under the stairs, prayed in the fields, and shared her scraps with beggars — and whom heaven, and eventually all of France, refused to overlook.

St. Boniface

Apostle of GermanyJune 5

An English monk who walked away from a quiet life of books to spend forty years preaching in the German forests — felling a god's oak with an axe, building a church across half a continent, and dying with a book raised over his head.