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Lighting a Candle in Remembrance of Saint Francis

October 4th 2022

Pope Francis: “Saint Francis of Assisi, who saw himself as brother of the sun, the sea and the wind, sowed seeds of peace everywhere, and walked alongside the poor, the abandoned, the infirm, the outcast, the least. Let us follow his example!”

SJS / 2023: ... and remembering a day back in the late 1980s, before traveling to live in Santa Fe.

Here's an iPhone pic of a Rosary that Pope John Paul II handed to your GreenPolicy360 siterunner in Los Angeles, 1987 ...

Remembering our conversation as I spoke to him of my thoughts re his decision to announce St. Francis as Patron Saint of Ecology in 1979.

I said after, as I described my time with Pope John "back stage" in a small room after the Mass ceremony we held, where I stood near the Pope and looked out at 'Angelinos' filling the aisles of St Vibiana's church... and now am still smiling at the memory of how the Pope prior to mass greeted my parents as he walked up the center aisle, stopping at their row and how he reached out to my mother and then reached out to shake my father's hand...

An interfaith day, an eco day, a very special day in a city called Los Angeles

• https://www.ncronline.org/news/earthbeat/why-francis-assisi-patron-saint-ecology

• https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-09-13-me-7638-story.html

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Pope_Francis_on_the_Environment

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In Nov. 29, 1979, Pope John Paul II issued a papal bull that declared St. Francis of Assisi the patron of ecology and of those who promote ecology.

John Paul II wrote, “Among the holy and admirable men who have revered nature as a wonderful gift of God to the human race, St Francis of Assisi deserves special consideration.”

The pope went on to note Francis’ deep sense of the Creator at work in the world, and through it, the presence of the divine spirit. John Paul II mentioned too the “Canticle of the Creatures,” Francis’ famous prayer poem that is one of the cornerstones of Franciscan spirituality.

(The canticle’s recurring refrain “Praised be you, my Lord,” or in Umbrian dialect of early Italian, “Laudato Si’, mi signore,” inspired the name of Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical on the environment and human ecology, “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home.” And it was Pope Francis who was the first to tap the Assisi saint as his papal namesake.)

Naming Francis of Assisi as the patron saint of ecology came at the end of the 1970s, a decade that witnessed the birth of the modern environmental movement and began with the celebration of the first Earth Day, held in the United States.

Laudato Si

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