Francis was the son of a wealthy cloth merchant, born in Assisi, Italy, in 1181. His father hoped he would follow in his footsteps and build a prosperous business, but children do not always inherit their parents’ ambitions. Many wait for their own calling, which often arrives in unexpected ways.
Throughout history, moments of profound transformation have reshaped extraordinary lives. Buddha reached enlightenment after confronting sickness, aging, and death.
Jesus faced temptations in the desert before beginning his ministry. Mahatma Gandhi began his commitment to radical self-denial and service after witnessing firsthand the misery of his people in South Africa, abandoning his sophisticated Western lifestyle. Like them, Francis lived a carefree, playful youth before undergoing a deep spiritual renewal in his mid-twenties.
His turning point came as a vivid inner calling to repair what was broken. Kneeling inside a dilapidated church, he heard a miraculous voice: “Go, Francis, and repair my house, which as you see is falling into ruin.”
Taking the command literally, Francis impulsively gathered valuable colored fabrics from his father’s shop, rode to the local market, and sold both the merchandise and his horse to fund the church’s restoration. When the poor local priest refused the money, Francis tossed it aside in disdain. Thus began his lifelong mission—not merely to rebuild stone chapels, but to renew the Church, human society, and our relationship with the Earth.
Today, Francis of Assisi remains one of history’s most beloved guardians of the natural world, but his message is needed now more than ever. Creation itself seems to be “eagerly longing for redemption” (Romans 8:19) from human greed and environmental destruction. The scale of damage inflicted on our oceans, rainforests, atmosphere, and soil threatens the very systems that sustain life.
In August 2019, catastrophic fires swept through the Amazon rainforest, destroying vast ecosystems and countless species. Yet much of the world watched with unsettling indifference. By contrast, when Notre-Dame Cathedral burned in Paris that same year, hundreds of millions of dollars were pledged for its reconstruction within hours. While honoring cultural heritage is admirable, this stark contrast reveals a troubling hierarchy in our collective values: we rush to save man-made structures while remaining passive as God’s original sanctuary burns.
We live in an age dominated by digital distractions, instant gratification, and individualistic consumption. Saint Francis offers a radical antidote. He did not view nature as an abstract concept to be admired from afar or exploited for profit; he related to it intimately, calling the Sun his brother and the Moon his sister.
As the scholar Jon Sweeney noted, Francis’s gift was his ability to love particularly. He did not love “nature” or “humanity” in vague, general terms. He loved this specific bird, that specific person, and the exact piece of creation standing before him in the moment. For Francis, living in harmony with nature was not merely an ethical stance—it was a core spiritual practice. His total solidarity with the poor and with suffering creation was so complete that, toward the end of his life, he received the stigmata—the physical wounds of Christ—reflecting his deep union with divine and earthly suffering.
In 1979, Pope John Paul II officially proclaimed Saint Francis the heavenly patron of ecology, writing a decade later that the saint “offers all people an example of genuine and deep respect for the integrity of creation.”
Eight centuries after his death, Francis invites us to abandon our drive to conquer and plunder the natural world.
Sustainable living and true peace require us to view ourselves as part of nature, not its masters. By embracing simpler lives, caring for the vulnerable, and recognizing every creature as sacred, we can answer his enduring call to heal our common home.
Fr. Lazar Arasu SDB is a Catholic Priest and Educationist
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