edited by Virtus Zallot

The selection of quotes presented here aims to suggest a portrait of Francis of Assisi in which Costantino Ruggeri could have reflected himself: the saint of joyful poverty that liberates, of unconditional and selfless love for humanity and creation, of the Gospel practiced in the concreteness of life and encounters. We like to recognize Ruggeri as a friend of Francis, thinking of him alongside those he himself portrayed.

This is how Francis loved poverty, never separated from joy. His is, in fact, a voluntary, liberating poverty that spiritually protects one from the thirst for power and possession, from violence, from desires that have become needs, and from the constraints of daily life. Voluntary poverty is physical freedom—it forces one to walk and walk—but above all mental freedom: it allows one to truly listen to the words of the Gospel, to love without reservation.

Francis, however, displays a unique and innovative attitude in his delicate care for animals; He lives the relationship in full brotherhood, feeling himself a creature among God’s creatures. In reality, two sentiments coexisted within him: the utmost consideration to be given to every being, even inanimate ones, because they are created by God, reflecting His greatness and beauty; and the anthropocentric and hierarchical awareness of divine creation, intended, after the sin of our First Parents, for the exclusive benefit of humanity […].

Nothing is easier a priori than introducing Saint Francis of Assisi. He left behind numerous writings that inform us of his sensitivity, his intentions, his ideas. A friend of simplicity in his works as in his life and in his ideals […]. Friend and brother to all creatures and to all creation, he responded with such solicitude, fraternal understanding in all, such charity in the highest sense of the term—that is, love—that history has, as it were, reciprocated with an identical sympathy and affectionate and general admiration. All who have spoken or written about him—Catholics, Protestants, non-Christians, unbelievers—have been touched and often enchanted by his charm.

Poverty is the form of this freedom directed toward God. He wants to be completely free; free toward God. Nothing between him and God. Poverty is the form of this. […]. This freedom, however, is love. Not primarily the freedom of the intellect, which knows its superiority; not, first and foremost, the freedom of the will, which resolves itself in orderly exercise, but love in immediacy, the strength of the heart touched by God. For this reason, in all this there is no “no.” Everything is “yes.” Everything blossoms and shines and lives. It is the great “gaze into the gaze” with God.

He did not invent new formulas for life; he simply realized what the Gospel indicated: and he realized it in the concrete reality of everyday life. In this, Francis of Assisi remains, for his time, a personality capable of making an exceptional and extraordinary impact […] but, at the same time, precisely because he always, deliberately, throughout his life, touched upon certain eternal aspects of human reality—pain, suffering, poverty, marginalization—because he remembered that Christ is present there, he marked out a path that the Christian conscience from the 13th century onward could no longer exclude, which it had to always keep in mind, both for Francis of Assisi and for those who were his sons, the Friars Minor.

But Francis—and here lies his genius, his supreme friendliness—does not limit his friendly predilection to the men and women closest to him. He will feel and call himself a friend even to that which has no human face or voice and with which exchange occurs in the most arcane spheres of sensitivity and creativity. Even phenomena, signs, events, and charisms are “friends” of Francis: objects of his “lauda” (and isn’t praise, the need and urge to celebrate, the irreplaceable language of friendship?). Work, poverty, and toil are friends; the wolf of Gubbio is a friend; and finally, in the Great Song, water, fire, wind, earth, and stars are friends; and finally, death.

For him, God is not an idea, much less a concept. […] For him, God is first and foremost a presence linked to physical notations and an experience that begins with the senses, passes through the body, and leads to the spirit. [… God] is perceptible only through his concrete, palpable manifestations: nature, the sheets of parchment on which his name is written, the stone churches in which the Eucharist is celebrated, the forms of bread and wine that are the tangible signs of his incarnation and of his infinite love for humanity. The very carnal approach to the divine stems from an extremely sensitive nature: in Francis, what we call religious sentiment belongs to the emotional level and is expressed externally.

¹ C. Frugoni, Vita di un uomo. Francesco d’Assisi, Einaudi,Torino 1995, p. 62.
² Ivi, p. 61.
³ C. Frugoni, Francesco e l’invenzione delle stimmate. Una storia per parole e immagini fino a Bonaventura e Giotto, Einaudi, Torino 2010, 238.
⁴ J. Le Goff, San Francesco d’Assisi, Laterza, Ro- ma-Bari 2006, pp. 17-18.
⁵ R. Guardini, San Francesco, Morcelliana, Bre- scia 1999, p. 30.
⁶ R. Manselli, Tre conferenze inedite su san Fran- cesco d’Assisi. Milano 1981-1983, Biblioteca francescana, Milano 2018, p. 37.
⁷ L. Santucci, introduzione a N. Fabbretti, Francesco e gli amici, Rusconi, Milano 1981.
⁸ A.Vauchez, Francesco d’Assisi, Einaudi,Torino 2010, p. 274.