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This Altar is located on the South Side of the
Church.
We often refer to this area as the St. Francis Chapel due to
the wrought Iron Grate which encloses this Altar.
Saint Francis of Assisi
b.1182 d.1226
Feastday: October 4
Italian mystic and preacher, who founded the
Franciscans. Born in Assisi, Italy, he appears to have received little
formal education, even though his father was a wealthy merchant. As a
young man, Francis led a worldly, carefree life. 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. Francis then discarded
his rich garments for a bishop's cloak and devoted the next three years to
the care of outcasts and lepers in the woods of Mount Subasio.
He gathered round him the 12 disciples who became the original brothers of
his order, later called the First Order; they elected Francis superior. In
1212 he received a young, well-born nun of Assisi, Clare, into Franciscan
fellowship; through her was established the Order of the Poor Ladies (the
Poor Clares), later the Second Order of Franciscans. Francis went to
the Holy Land, staying there until 1220. On his return home he found
dissension in the ranks of the friars and resigned as superior, spending
the next few years in planning what became the Third Order of Franciscans,
the tertiaries.
In September 1224, after 40 days of fasting, Francis was praying upon
Monte Alverno 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.
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