Francis Bernadone – who was he? None other than St. Francis of Assisi, a man with a decided message for our times.
He lived in the early years of the thirteenth century (1181-1226), preached joy, contentment, peace and the simple lifestyle. He was indeed a spiritual reformer, but also a respecter of Church and Society, and reinvigorated them by constructively working with them, encouraging and promoting the good and beauty that was already there, and minimizing and eliminating the evils. He had no time for destructive reformation, pulling everything down under some vain hope of being able to reconstruct something better.
He was deeply appreciative of the goodness of God in nature, in the plants and the animals; he has been called the most Christ-like man who has ever lived, and has become the patron saint of animals and ecologists.
There are many aspects of the life of this Poor Man of Assisi, and this book presents a few of them. Within the progression of his life certain highlights have been singled out and commented upon. The chapters are purposefully small and therefore easily readable. There is no stodgy spirituality, but a decided application of common sense principles deduced from the life of St Francis of Assisi.
Fr Edmund O’Gorman was born at Walton, Liverpool in 1913. He studied for the Greyfriars in the United States and then at the International College of the Order at Rome. In 1940 the few English-Irish students left Rome in a hurry and were very fortunate to get the last boat that crossed the Channel, from St. Malo to Southampton.
