St. Francis of Assisi

Italian Catholic friar, mystic, and founder of the Order of Friars Minor (Franciscans), the women's Order of St. Clare, and the Third Order of Penitents — the medieval saint whose radical embrace of poverty, kinship with all created beings, and visible identification with the suffering Christ made him one of the most influential and most beloved figures of the second millennium. Born around 1181/1182 in Assisi to a wealthy cloth merchant, Francis as a young man pursued knighthood and worldly success before, through a series of conversion experiences in his early twenties, renouncing his inheritance, embracing voluntary poverty, and devoting himself to rebuilding ruined chapels and serving lepers. The order he founded in 1209 grew rapidly into one of the largest religious movements in the medieval Church. He composed the Canticle of the Sun (Cantico delle Creature), one of the earliest poems in vernacular Italian; received the stigmata at La Verna in 1224; and died at the Porziuncola in October 1226. (Note: the famous 'Peace Prayer' beginning 'Make me an instrument of your peace' is an anonymous twentieth-century French prayer first published in 1912, traditionally attributed to Francis but not authored by him.)