Francis was born at Assisi in late 1181 or early 1182, the son of Bernardone, a cloth merchant. ¹² He was a young man of means with the expectations that go with them, and his conversion was not a single moment but a slow turn that began after he came home from a military campaign and imprisonment at about the age of twenty. ¹

Around 1205, praying before the crucifix at San Damiano, Francis heard Christ speak to him three times: "Go, Francis, and repair my Church in ruins." ¹ He took it literally at first and began rebuilding the little church he was standing in. Benedict XVI notes that the ruinous state of the building was itself a symbol of the state of the Church at the time ¹ - the instruction meant more than masonry, and Francis grew into the larger meaning by first obeying the smaller one.

When his father reproached him for giving away his goods to the poor, Francis stood before the Bishop of Assisi and stripped off his clothes, renouncing his inheritance in public. ¹ It is the moment everything else in his life follows from.

In 1209 Francis went to Rome to put his plan of life before Pope Innocent III, who received him and recognised that the movement came from God. ¹ The Friars Minor grew from a handful of companions into an order.

Their centre was the Portiuncula, the small church of Santa Maria degli Angeli below Assisi. ¹ Clare, a young noblewoman of the town, followed the same path and founded the Poor Clares. ¹

In 1224, at the hermitage of La Verna, Francis received the stigmata in a vision of the Crucified Lord appearing as a seraph. ¹ The wounds of Christ marked the body of a man who had spent twenty years trying to be conformed to him.

He also wrote the Canticle of the Creatures, which addresses the sun, the moon, water, fire and death itself as brother and sister. ¹ Franciscan Media notes he was named patron of ecology in 1979. ² The Canticle is why: not sentimentality about nature, but the claim that everything that exists is related to you because it is made by the same Father.

He died at the Portiuncula on 3 October 1226, aged about forty-four, and was canonized two years later by Pope Gregory IX. ¹²

Saint Francis of Assisi is the patron saint of animals and of ecology, and also of merchants, messengers, and Italy. ² The animal patronage is the one everybody knows and the one most often reduced to a birdbath; the Canticle is the serious version of it.

The feast of Saint Francis of Assisi is celebrated on October 4, the day after his death. ² Many parishes bless animals on or near it.

When you have been given a job too big to start. Francis was told to repair a Church in ruins and began by picking up stones at San Damiano. ¹ He did the small literal thing in front of him and grew into the meaning of it. That is usually the only available way in.

When what you own is starting to own you. He stripped in the town square rather than negotiate with his father about the money. ¹ Most people are not called to that. Everyone is called to know which way the ownership is running.

When you want humility and cannot manufacture it. Franciscan Media puts it well: "Francis' poverty had a sister, Humility, by which he meant total dependence on the good God." ² Humility in Francis is not thinking little of yourself; it is having nothing left to fall back on but God.

When creation feels like scenery. The Canticle addresses the sun and the moon and even death as family. ¹ If the world has gone flat on you, Francis is the saint who insists it is populated by relatives.

When you want to be conformed to Christ and do not know what that costs. At La Verna he received the wounds. ¹ Francis is a warning as much as a model: he got exactly what he asked for.