St. Francis of Assisi
St. Francis of Assisi
St. Francis of Assisi (c. 1181–1226) was an Italian friar who founded the Franciscan order and is among the most widely venerated saints of Christianity. The son of a wealthy cloth merchant, he spent a carefree youth and sought glory as a knight, but captivity and illness turned his thoughts toward God. According to his early biographers, while praying in the ruined chapel of San Damiano he heard Christ ask him to "repair my house." He renounced his inheritance before the bishop of Assisi and embraced poverty, serving the poor and people with leprosy. Pope Innocent III approved his rule of life around 1209, and with St. Clare he founded the Poor Clares. He wrote the Canticle of the Sun, praising God through all creation, and created a living nativity scene at Greccio in 1223. Canonized in 1228, he is the patron saint of Italy and of ecology.
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Saints and Reformers of Christianity
St. Paul spread the early Christian faith through his journeys and letters, and St. Augustine's Confessions and City of God shaped Christian thought for centuries. St. Francis of Assisi embraced poverty and founded the Franciscan order, and St. Thomas Aquinas composed the Summa Theologiae. In the sixteenth century, Thomas More and Martin Luther stood on opposite sides of the Reformation.
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