Who is St. Francis of Assisi? Why did the Pope chose to go by his name?

The Hindu

21-04-2025

When Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was anointed as the Pope, he chose to rename himself as Francis after St. Francis of Assisi, the medieval saint who founded the Franciscans, one of the largest orders in the Catholic Church.
St. Francis' tomb is situated at the hilltop town on Assisi in Italy, where the saint was born here more than 840 years ago.
'The life of St. Francis teaches the way to holiness is giving up yourself, getting rid of things that hold us back in our life here, and just offer ourselves to the Lord,' said the Rev. Paul Vu, who was visiting in early March with a group of 50 Vietnamese-American parishioners from Santa Ana, California.
In 1182, St. Francis was born to a wealthy family in Assisi, which rises above a fertile valley in central Italy. Praying in front of a crucifix, he is said to have heard a call to reform the church. He aspired to strip everything down to the essentials in the service of God.
The Santuario della Spogliazione, which literally means stripping, is a sober stone church on the hillside. It marks the spot where he gave up even his clothes in front of his father, who disinherited him. St. Francis was accepted into the church by the bishop as an advocate of the poor and went on to found a religious order that's still active globally today, the Franciscans.
For Assisi's current bishop, the Rev. Domenico Sorrentino, St. Francis' renunciation of material encumbrances also signaled his love of creation and of peace.
'Francis, stripping himself, came back to nature in some sense. So we must receive nature as a gift of God, and respect this gift,' Sorrentino told The Associated Press.
During the Crusades, St. Francis befriended a Muslim sultan — their exchanges are still seen as an example of the kind of interfaith dialogue that St. John Paul II promoted by gathering leaders of the major global religions in Assisi during his papacy.
On why Pope Francis chose the name, Rev. Enzo Fortunato, who spent 30 years in Assisi and now leads the Vatican's committee on World Children's Day, says: 'He explained it in a very simple way, that he chose Francis' name because he's the man of peace, of the poor, of brotherhood. The man who loves and respects creation.' 'It's a name that contains a life programme,' he says.
Several of the pope's encyclicals — teaching documents for the church — pulled from Franciscan themes and quotes, including one about building a more inclusive church.
This year will mark the 800th anniversary of St. Francis' celebrated 'canticle of creatures,' where he praises God for the sun, the moon and other natural elements he refers to as brothers and sisters.
Pope Francis used its title for an encyclical highlighting the importance of taking care of the environment because it's a gift from God that humankind only gets to protect, not exploit.
The basilica is Assisi contains a cycle of more than two dozen frescoes illustrating crucial moments in St. Francis' life — including the 'spogliazione.'
Painted by Giotto at the end of the 13th century, they marked a turning point in Western art. Their realism and careful rendering of space and depth went far beyond what was common in the Middle Ages and presaged the Renaissance.
They were spared destruction in the 1997 earthquake that hit the region, killing four people in the basilica itself.
Across town is the Basilica di Santa Chiara, dedicated to St. Clare, who embraced radical poverty to imitate St. Francis. He made available to her and the growing group of women following her a local church — the beginning of the Poor Clares order, now present in 70 countries with 20,000 sisters.
In between the two churches, in the Santuario della Spogliazione, lies the Blessed Carlo Acutis, an Italian teen who died in 2006 and will become the church's first millennial saint when canonized in April.