After the visit and Holy Mass in the Basilica of Loreto sometime after lunch break people will drive to the Assisi to the city of Peace, to encounter with St. Francis. The recommended way is to take the A14 motorway north. Exit at Ancona Nord and then take the highway 76 towards Rome. After the city Fossato di Vico leaving the SS76 and follow directions to Assisi. It takes 2 hours and 15 minutes.
St. Francis from Assisi
St. Francis was born, between December 1181 and September 1182 by Pietro Moriconi Bernardone a rich cloth merchant, and the noble Lady Pica Bourlemont, initially given him the name of John, but the father, who at birth was in France on business when he returned he changed his name to Francis. After 24 years leading up to a dissolute life and have tried a military career (he was also imprisoned by the Perugia), St. Francis receives in his dream the Lord's call. To publicly renounce his father's belongings and walks with a few followers to a life of prayer and obedience to "Sister Poverty": The beginnings were very difficult because the ideas of St. Francis on poverty and simplicity of life are not understood by the people and the clergy. This is the period of the miracle of the wolf of Gubbio and the repair of St. Damian, St. Peter's and the Porziuncola of Santa Maria degli Angeli. St. Francis (the poet) did not go unnoticed and the people of Assisi began to change the opinion about this extravagant young and so after a while, he is helped by his early followers. History shows us how the first "disciple" Bernard of Quintavalle (a merchant) followed by Pietro Cattani (a lawyer). In this time conceived St. Francis (reading from the Missal and the Gospel) the first drafts of what would become the Franciscan rule: "If thou wilt be perfect go and sell your possessions and give her at the poor, so you will have treasure in heaven. Do not carry anything on the way, no stick, no bag, no sandals, no silver. Who wants to come after Me, renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me ". The first experiences "conventual" with his companions, St. Francis took them into the huts of Rivotorto. And in the hut of Rivotorto that shortly after they arrived Egidio (a farmer) and then Sabatino, Morico, Filippo Longo and priest Sylvester. Next came John, Barbaro and Bernard Vigilante and finally Angelo Tancredi. Were twelve and all the comrades dressed as Francis, with a rough tunic girded with a rope. Only in 1209 Pope Innocent III (after the sermon to the pigs!) approves and authorizes the Rule of St. Francis to preach to the Gentiles. St. Francis began wandering around the world coming to Dalmatian in Egypt (1219-20 was the time of the Crusades) by the Sultan Melek el Kamel. In 1224 St. Francis receiving the stigmata of a miracle never happened before then if not to the Son of God. St. Francis hears the approaching death, and carried back from Siena to Assisi and more specifically to the small chapel where Porziuncola die on a mattress on the bare earth October 4, 1226. Brother Elias, his successor and head of the order announced to the world the presence of the stigmata on the body of the saint, this revelation caused serious lacerations and skepticism in the church that will last even in later centuries. When St. Francis was declared a Saint (1228) by Pope Gregory IX, the bull of canonization did not mention the presence of stigmata In 1939 Pope Pius XII proclaimed St. Francis, patron of Italy.
St. Francis from Assisi
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