The Pope revealed that when he decided to choose the name Francis as pontiff he was fully aware that he was a saint «very popular, but also very misunderstood» and, on the eve of the 800th anniversary of his death, he asked the Church for confidence «in a closed and individualistic world».
«What everyone needs is justice, but also trust. Only faith restores the breath of the Spirit to a closed and individualistic world. With this additional breath, it is possible to address the great challenges of today, such as peace, care for the common home and a new model of development, without surrendering to facts that seem insurmountable,» Francis stressed in an audience at the Vatican Apostolic Palace with representatives of Franciscan orders, congregations and families who are coordinating the celebration, with a series of initiatives from 2023 to 2026, of the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi.
The Pope has defined the ‘poverello’ of Assisi as a «man of peace and poverty, who loves and celebrates creation» and invited to welcome his centenary as an opportunity to tend to «decline together the imitation of Christ and love for the poor». «Francis lived the imitation of the poor Christ and love for the poor inseparably, as two sides of the same coin,» he said.
The Franciscan itinerary planned for the eighth Franciscan centenary will have as its first stop the town of Fonte Colombo, near Rieti (in the region of Lazio), where Francis wrote the Rule, the document he drew up with which he intended to give the community of friars who followed him both the spiritual discourse of the nascent Franciscan Order and a series of practical norms intended to regulate their daily life.
«Francis is the man of peace, the man of poverty and the man who loves and celebrates creation; but what is the root of all this, what is the source? Jesus Christ; a man in love with Jesus Christ who, in order to follow him, is not afraid to make a fool of himself, but goes forward, the Pontiff pointed out. The source of his whole experience is faith. Francis receives it as a gift before the Crucifix, and the Crucified and Risen Lord reveals to him the meaning of life and of human suffering», the Pope assured.
Another stop will be La Verna, in the heart of the Tuscan Apennines on Mount Penna, the place where, in 1224, Francis of Assisi received the stigmata. Finally, in 2026 he will go to Assisi to commemorate the Transitus of Francis, in 1226, at the Porziuncola, an event that reveals the essence of Christianity.
