President Sergio Mattarella of Italy paid tribute to St. Francis in an address in Assisi on October 4, the 800th anniversary of the saint’s death.
“We would not be doing justice to the saint of Assisi if his figure were exhausted in that of an ecologist, pacifist and social worker,” said President Mattarella. “Francis and Clare—his disciple, friend and sister in choices, protagonist with Francis of that great work of religious and civil renewal—were above all in love with God and the Gospel.”
“We would not be wrong, I believe, if we sought the most authentic Francis in the mystery of those silent, very long, intimate conversations with God in the grotto of the Shrine of La Verna,” he added. “Or if we grasped the most characteristic trait of his overflowing charity in that kiss, surprising and unexpected, given to the leper.”