St. Francis gives his order away, then promises to obey

ASSISI, Umbria, September 29, 1220 AD — Saint Francis of Assisi had started the Friars Minor. On September 29, 1220 AD, he gave the order away. He handed it to Brother Peter of Cattaneo, a friar who had travelled with him to the East. It happened at a chapter, a gathering of the friars, at the Porziuncola below Assisi.

The order had grown very fast. That made it harder to stay as poor as the first friars had been. St. Francis wanted his friars to own nothing, just as the first ones had. But the ministers, the friars in charge of the order’s provinces, wanted it run like the older religious orders. When St. Francis was asked about the ministers’ plan, he answered that his calling was to live simply.

That September, St. Francis was given permission to write a new Rule, the rules the friars lived by. But the Pope’s advisers required one change at once. Every man who asked to join had to be tested for a whole year first. Only then could he become a friar for good. A week before the chapter, Pope Honorius III sent St. Francis a bull that set out the new rules.

At the chapter, the Pope’s bull was read out to the friars. The ministers met to settle the main points of the new Rule, and only they had a vote. St. Francis was left to write up what they decided.

Face down in front of a friar

Then St. Francis resigned. He used the Italian form of Peter of Cattaneo’s name when he spoke to the friars: “From henceforth I am dead for you, but here is Brother Pietro di Catana, whom you and I will all obey.” St. Francis lay face down in front of Peter of Cattaneo. He promised to obey and honour him.

The friars cried out loud, because losing him as their leader was like being left without a father.

St. Francis got up, put his hands together and looked up to heaven. St. Francis prayed: “Lord, I return to thee this family which thou hast confided to me. Now, as thou knowest, most sweet Jesus, I have no longer strength nor ability to keep on caring for them; I confide them, therefore, to the ministers.”

In the months that followed, Peter of Cattaneo ran the order. St. Francis stayed at the Porziuncola to write the Rule. One day the mother of two of the friars came to St. Francis and asked for alms. St. Francis called any friar’s mother his own mother, and the mother of all the brothers.

St. Francis turned to Peter of Cattaneo and asked him: “Can we give any alms to our mother?” Peter of Cattaneo answered that the house had nothing left but one New Testament. The friars had no prayer book, so they read from it at their night prayers.

St. Francis told Peter of Cattaneo to give their mother the New Testament. She could sell it for what she needed. He said the New Testament told them to help the poor. Then St. Francis added: “For my part I believe that the gift of it will be more pleasing than the reading out of it.” The book was given to her.