The authentic St. Francis…
His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI had this to say recently about St. Francis:
“He was not merely an environmentalist or a pacifist. He was, above all, a converted man. I have read with great pleasure that the bishop of Assisi, Sorrentino, precisely in order to remedy this ‘abuse’ of the figure of Saint Francis, wants to proclaim the eighth centenary of his conversion as a ‘Year of conversion,’ in order to [...] demonstrate what conversion is by connecting us with the figure of Saint Francis, in order to widen the horizon of life. At first, Francis was a sort of playboy. Then he realized that this was not enough. He heard the voice of the Lord: ‘Rebuild my house.’ And little by little, he understood what it meant to ‘rebuild the house of the Lord’.” The entire article on; http://www.chiesa.espressonline.it/dettaglio.jsp?id=82705&en g=y.
