SAINT FRANCIS OF PAOLA

St. Francis of Paola

Feast day: April 2



Born in Paola, Calabria, Italy, in 1416;
Died at Plessis-les-Tours, France, on April 2, 1507;
canonized in 1519.


Francis's parents were of modest means and very devout. They were childless after many years of married life and prayed earnestly for a son. When God granted their prayer, they named the child after Saint Francis of Assisi, who was their special intercessor.

At 13, he joined the Franciscans at San Marco. There he was taught to read and learned to live austerely, which he did for the rest of his life. At 14, he accompanied his parents on a pilgrimage to Assisi and Rome. When they returned, he retired for a time to a place about a half mile from the town, and later, at age 15, to a more solitary place by the sea, where he lived in a cave as a hermit.

He was eventually joined by two other men (1436). Neighbors built them three cells and a chapel, where they sang the divine praises and where Mass was said for them by a priest from a nearby church. The foundation of his order in 1452 is said to have been called the Minimi fratres ('least brothers'), who accounted themselves least in the service of God. Their rule of life was notably austere.

About 17 years later, a church and monastery were built for them by the people of the area who had grown to love them, under the sanction of the archbishop of Cosenza. Francis maintained a regular discipline in the community. His bed was on a plank or the ground, with a log or stone for a pillow. He did not allow himself a mat until he was quite old. Charity was the motto he espoused, and humility was the virtue he urged his followers to seek. He asked that they observe a perpetual Lent, abstaining from meat, eggs, and dairy products.

The order received the approval of Pope Sixtus IV in 1474. The rule Francis wrote emphasized penance, charity, and humility. In addition to the three monastic vows he added one of fasting and abstention from meat. The friars were then called the Hermits of Saint Francis of Assisi (until the name was changed to Minim Friars in 1492), and they were composed of uneducated men with one priest. Francis also penned a rule for tertiaries and nuns.

If you read the long testimonies of the healed and the witnesses in the Acta Sanctorum, you would understand how Francis came by this reputation as a miracle-worker, and for other spiritual powers, especially his gifts of reading minds and prophecy.

Francis attained such fame as a worker of miracles that, in 1481, the dying King Louis XI of France sent for Francis, wishing the hermit to heal him, and promising to assist the order. Francis declined the invitation, but Louis appealed to Pope Sixtus IV, who ordered Francis to go. The king sent the dauphin to escort him to Plessis-les-Tours. When Louis fell on his knees before Francis and begged him to heal him, Francis told him that the lives of kings are in the hands of God and that Louis should pray to God.

The king and Francis had many discussions, and although Francis was an uneducated man, Philip de Commines, who was often present, wrote that he was so wise that hearers were convinced that the Holy Spirit spoke through him. He brought about a change of heart in the king, and Louis died, comforted, in his arms.

For a time he was tutor to Charles VIII, who respected Francis as his father had, and asked his advice on spiritual and state matters. Francis is credited with helping to restore peace between France and Brittany, and between France and Spain.

Charles built a monastery for Francis and his followers in the park of Plessis and another at Amboise, on the spot where they had first met. In Rome, he built the monastery at Santa Trinità del Monte on the Pincian Hill, to which only French Minims were admitted.

From the French court the renown of the saint spread to Germany and to Spain. The Emperor Maximilian and Ferdinand the Catholic founded new monasteries for him in their domains.

But Francis was so beloved that the French kings would not allow him to leave, and thus he spent the last 25 years of his life in France. He became famous for prophecies and miracles. He spent the last three months of his life in solitude in his cell, preparing himself for death.

On Palm Sunday, he became ill, and on Maundy Thursday, he assembled his brethren and urged them to love God, to be charitable, and to strictly observe the duties of their rule. He received the sacraments barefoot with a rope around his neck, according to the custom of the order, and died the following day.

As a witness at the canonization proceedings, "the worthy Jean Bourdichon, painter and chamberlain to our lord the king," testified that he had gone to the monastery of the Minimi after the death of Brother Francis and, in order to paint a likeness after the actual visage, had made a mold and cast of the face.

The saint died on the morning of Good Friday at ten and the burial took place on the morning of Easter Monday. Regarding the funeral, Bourdichon says that a vast crowd of believers assembled and went home gladdened and greatly consoled by the sight of the deceased.

The same witness further testified that since the body was interred in a spot very frequently flooded by the nearby river, the brothers decided, on the advice of the princess, in order that it should not decay more quickly than it need, to disinter him and to rebury him in a stone sarcophagus in a higher grave. This took place 12 days after the funeral.

The witness was present when the corpse was taken out of the earth and laid in the sarcophagus. He saw the face as sound, unravaged, and without trace of dissolution as it was before interment. He knew this, because he purposely laid his face against that of the dead, in order to detect decomposition by the sense of smell.

He regarded the absence of decomposition as a miracle. He deposed further that he made another mask to enable him to make a more accurate and better painting. Asked whether, after the brother's death, the body had been eviscerated or opened, he declared that he knew nothing about this. The next witness said such proceedings had not taken place. As late as 1527, the corpse was still completely unchanged. Later it was burned by the Huguenots