Mattarella: ‘May Francis light the way to peace’

“War is not inevitable; peace begins with us,” says Cardinal Matteo Zuppi in his homily during Mass at the Upper Basilica of Assisi on the occasion of feast of St Francis, which was also attended by the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella. And the Head of State, in his address outside the Basilica, commemorated the 800th anniversary of Francis’s death, recalled the Pope’s words and linked them to the lesson left to us by Italia’s patron saint. ‘In these times marked by senseless and cruel wars, by so much violence, manipulation and arrogance, as Leo XIV said, the hope is that the sun of Francis may illuminate the world, convert minds hardened by hatred and point the way to peace.’

He says ‘sun’ because, in the previous part of his address, he had recalled Italia’s great poet, Dante, who, in the eleventh canto of *Paradiso*, speaks of Francis as ‘a sun that has risen for the whole world, so much so that Assisi ought to be called Ascesi, like the East’. He gets to the very heart of the lesson taught by Francis and Clare – whom Mattarella refers to as his ‘disciple, friend and sister in her choices’, drawing applause from those gathered in front of the Basilica – because it is something that concerns us deeply today. All too closely. He says, in fact, that ‘terrible conflicts are causing bloodshed in so many parts of the world, and in some places even to the extent that weapons are once again being blessed and armies placed under religious banners’, and this is precisely where the living example of the saint must be brought to bear, in recognising that ‘there is no greater sin than that of killing other people in the name of God’.

And Francis risked his very life in order to follow the path taught by the Gospel – the path that holds that an enemy is, first and foremost, a child of God. This is a point that Mattarella is keen to emphasise when, going into detail, he recalls that meeting in 1219, during the Fifth Crusade, when the saint ‘crossed the lines and managed – at the risk of his life – to meet al-Malik al-Kamil, whom he ardently wished to convert’. That outcome did not materialise, but the sultan was struck by that man who spoke of peace and who has left his mark even to this day because, says the Head of State, ‘with that journey of passionate appeal, Francis left a great mark: rather than an enemy or an infidel, he saw before him a fellow human being, a child of God and therefore a brother’. In essence, that gesture did not put an end to violence or war, but ‘it established an extraordinarily original approach to dialogue and respect’.

And 800 years on from the death of St Francis (and of another great saint, Catherine of Siena), the centuries have not dimmed his charisma in Italia or abroad, for he remains ‘a prophet of peace, love and respect for Creation’. Furthermore, the Canticle of the Creatures, ‘the finest of the earliest poetic works in the vernacular, marks the beginning of our literature’. Just as the Franciscan communities, for the first time, brought ‘religious life out of the solemnity of the monasteries and became part of the social fabric, embodying a Gospel ideal’.

‘Francis is rightly regarded as a forerunner of the social saints as well,’ observes Mattarella, who invites us to reflect on ‘an apparent paradox’. As noted in an important biography, ‘Francis did not offer a political response to social injustices but simply asked to live in poverty, peace and joy with his brothers and sisters in the footsteps of Christ, living out the message of the Gospel’. It is because of this ‘radical, shocking’ choice that he became one of the most significant figures. Even though his journey was not an easy one, and that radical act of renouncing his wealth was initially ‘misunderstood’ and he himself was ‘ridiculed’ because he was so far removed ‘from common sentiment’. A gesture that reflects the consistency of a man ‘anything but accommodating’, with a humility that had ‘nothing naive’ about it but stemmed from ‘a demanding thirst for truth’. In short, the patron saint of Italia is not only ‘an ecologist, pacifist and charitable worker ahead of his time’ but, together with Chiara, was a leading figure ‘in a religious and civil renewal’.