October 4 across 2,026 years of Catholic history

legacy · ASSISI, October 4, 2026 AD

Every church named for St. Francis offers a plenary indulgence until January

Eight hundred years after his death, the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi falls in a year of pardon, and the sick can take part at home.

A medieval fresco of the Madonna enthroned with the Child in a gilded throne, flanked by four angels, with St. Francis standing barefoot in a brown habit at the right against a blue background. — The Maestà di Assisi, painted by Cimabue and his workshop in 1278–1280 AD in the right transept of the Lower Church of the Basilica of San Francesco at Assisi, shows the Madonna enthroned with the Child, St. Francis and four angels.

Today is the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi, eight hundred years after his death in 1226 AD, and it falls in a special Year of St. Francis. Until January 10, 2027 AD, pilgrims to Franciscan churches and to churches named for him can receive a plenary indulgence. It remits all the punishment still owed for sins already forgiven, and the sick can receive it at home.

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A painting in a medieval style shows a thin, tonsured friar with bandaged feet lying on sackcloth outside a thatched hut, surrounded by kneeling, praying friars in grey-brown habits, one reading from a book, with a veiled woman kneeling at the left, a small stone chapel at the right and a row of small brown birds on the roof. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of buon fresco of the Assisi cycle, from the paper's reference portrait based on Legend of St. Francis, scene 19: Stigmatization of St. Francis (Giotto di Bondone, 1297–1300 AD, Upper Church, Basilica of San Francesco, Assisi) View source artwork.

column · THE PORZIUNCOLA, Assisi, October 3, 1226 AD

St. Francis dies in a borrowed habit, after lying naked on the earth

Saint Francis of Assisi died at nightfall on October 3, 1226 AD, in a hut beside the chapel of the Porziuncola below Assisi. In his last hours he had the brothers take off his habit and lay him naked on the ground, so that he would die owning nothing. The brother he had promised to obey then lent him a habit to wear.

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More in this edition

Ink-and-wash drawing of a dry limestone quarry. A tall, pale, cut-stone wall runs across the picture under bare autumn trees. Two wagons of broken stone stand on a narrow track, two small workmen stoop in the distance, and sledgehammers, iron wedges, a hand drill, a coil of fuse and a wooden box lie on a stone block in the foreground. — About this picture
AI-generated drawing, in the manner of reportage ink and wash, of the Zakrzówek quarry in 1940, based on a photograph of the quarry by Hippocampus (2006, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.5). No person in it is St. John Paul II. View source artwork.

feature · KRAKÓW, September 1940 AD

Quarry blaster tells the future Saint John Paul II to be a priest

In September 1940 AD Karol Wojtyła, the future Saint John Paul II, went to work as a labourer in the limestone quarry at Zakrzówek, in German-occupied Kraków. The wage kept him and his father, whose army pension had stopped, and the job kept him from being sent to forced labour in Germany. He worked beside an older blaster, Franciszek Labus, who told him he ought to be a priest, and he saw a workman killed by a blast.

An oil painting of a bare plastered student room lit from a leaded window, where a balding bearded man sits at a wooden table with an open book while a young man leans over and points to a line, and a second young man sits on a bed at the right holding a closed book. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of mid-sixteenth-century Roman and Spanish oil portraiture, from the paper's reference portrait based on Portrait of Ignatius of Loyola (Jacopino del Conte, 1556 AD, Curia Generalizia of the Society of Jesus, Rome) View source artwork.

event · PARIS, October 1, 1529 AD

Paris rector kneels to St. Ignatius instead of flogging him

Saint Ignatius of Loyola, a former soldier of thirty-eight, began his studies at the College of Sainte-Barbe in Paris on October 1, rooming with St. Peter Faber and St. Francis Xavier. The college's rector had sworn to have him flogged in front of the students for leading them astray, and in the lectures his prayers kept pulling his mind from the lessons.

4 min read

A church interior with a stone tomb monument at the centre; St. Lucy, in a yellow gown and red cloak, faces her mother Eutychia in white while a kneeling woman, a group of figures and a priest at the altar on the left fill the room, and on the right the poor receive alms at a doorway.

writings · CATANIA, Sicily, 301 AD

St. Agatha tells St. Lucy her own faith has healed her mother

In 301 AD Saint Lucy of Syracuse took her mother, who had been bleeding for four years, to pray at the tomb of St. Agatha in Catania. Tradition holds that St. Agatha appeared to St. Lucy in a vision and told her that her faith had healed her mother. St. Lucy had secretly vowed never to marry, and she then asked her mother to free her from the marriage and to give the dowry to the poor.

3 min read

Today in the Church

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Saint Francis of AssisiMemorial

Saint of the day

Saint Francis of Assisi

Saint Francis of Assisi, the son of an Assisi cloth merchant, renounced his inheritance in 1206 AD to live in poverty and founded the Friars Minor. He received the stigmata on La Verna in 1224 AD and died at the Porziuncola in 1226 AD.

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On this day in the Church

1378 St. Catherine of Siena wrote from Siena to Monna Agnese, a Florentine tailor's wife, forbidding her excessive austerities.Source
1686 On the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque was given him as her guide in a vision at Paray-le-Monial.Source
1897 St. Thérèse of Lisieux was buried in the Carmelite plot of the Lisieux cemetery with a palm branch in her hands.Source

Quote of the day

“Praised be my Lord, for sister moon and for the stars, / In heaven Thou hast formed them clear and precious and fair.”

— St. Francis of Assisi, at San Damiano, 1225 AD, The Canticle of the Sun (Canticle of the Creatures)