At the stroke of midnight on Sunday, church bells tolled across the Italian hill town of Assisi to mark the 800th anniversary of the death St Francis. Source: OSV News.
The October 4 feast of the “the Little Poor Man of Assisi” was the pinnacle event amid a yearlong jubilee celebration, which began with the historic exposition of his relics for public veneration.
The feast day celebrations began on Saturday with a night procession and a solemn commemoration of the Transitus (passage), the traditional Franciscan prayer service in the Basilica of St Mary of the Angels marking St Francis’ transition into eternal life. The basilica houses the chapel where St Francis died on the night of October 3, 1226.
About 3000 people took part in the procession on the eve of the beloved saint’s feast day, singing hymns and voicing prayers as they retraced the route made by St Francis’s coffin, walking about 3kms uphill though the Assisi from the Basilica of St Mary of the Angels to the Basilica of St Francis, where he is buried.
The walk ended with a midnight Mass celebrated by Cardinal Ángel Fernández Artime, the pontifical legate for the papal basilicas of Assisi.
Reflecting on the meaning of St Francis’s transitus, Cardinal Artime told the congregation, “To live well means learning, day after day, to die to ourselves so that we may belong ever more fully to Christ.”
“The things we owned, our achievements, the image we projected of ourselves” will not matter in the end, the cardinal said. “Love will remain. Christ will remain. Francis dies poor, but he dies rich in the only wealth that never dies: the Lord.”
The following morning, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, the president of the Italian bishops’ conference, presided over a packed Mass in the basilica attended by Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella.
In his homily, Cardinal Zuppi, who just returned from a diplomatic visit to Moscow, said that St Francis continues to teach us to be peacemakers, bringing the gift of peace “wherever there is violence, hatred and misunderstanding.”
The Jubilee Year proclaimed by Pope Leo XIV celebrating the 800th anniversary of the death of St Francis of Assisi will continue until January 10, 2027.
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In Assisi, cardinals and friars celebrate the 800th anniversary of St Francis’ death (OSV News)
