What Did St Francis Of Assisi Do

The Man Who Kissed a Leprechaun and Started a Revolution

There's a story — probably more legend than history — about St. On the flip side, francis of Assisi meeting a leper on the road outside Assisi. Francis, then a wealthy young man dressed in fine wool and silk, was supposed to ride past. Instead, he got down from his horse, embraced the diseased man, and kissed him. The leper vanished. Or maybe he didn't. Maybe he was just a man with a skin disease, and Francis was just a man who decided that day to stop treating other people like they were problems to avoid.

That moment, whether literal or symbolic, captures something essential about Francis. He didn't just preach a different way of life — he lived it so completely that people remembered him centuries later not for what he said, but for what he did.

What Francis Actually Did

Let's start with the basics, because the legend can obscure the man.

Francis of Assisi was born around 1181 or 1182 into a well-off family in the Italian city of Assisi. His father, Pietro di Bernadone, was a cloth merchant who had made his fortune trading across the Mediterranean. Young Francis grew up expecting to inherit that wealth and status. He was well-educated, well-connected, and by most accounts, a bit of a spoiled kid who loved fine clothes, good food, and the easy life his family's money bought.

Then, around 1202, something shifted. Consider this: francis was in his early twenties, and by most historical accounts, he had a vision — or a series of visions — that redirected his entire life. The details vary depending on the source, but the core story is consistent: Francis began feeling called to live differently, to renounce his inheritance, and to follow a path of radical simplicity and service.

This wasn't just a spiritual awakening. It was a complete rejection of everything his culture valued. In medieval Italy, wealth was seen as a sign of divine favor. Poverty was shameful. Francis chose shame over comfort, and he did it publicly, dramatically, and irrevocably.

Why Francis Still Matters

Here's the thing about Francis: he didn't just give up his own wealth. He challenged the entire social order of his time.

The Catholic Church in the 13th century was wealthy, powerful, and increasingly disconnected from ordinary people. That said, monks accumulated land and servants. Bishops lived like princes. The gap between the clergy and the laity had grown wide, and many people felt spiritually abandoned.

Francis offered something different. He and his followers — the Franciscans — took literally Jesus's instruction to the rich young ruler: "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.Even so, " They owned nothing. They begged for their food. They lived in the dirt, and they loved every minute of it.

But more than that, they made poverty holy. On top of that, they turned the world's values upside down and said: the poorest person is closer to God than the richest. The outcast is more beloved than the powerful. The worm that crawls in the dust is more worthy of reverence than the emperor on his throne.

That message resonated then, and it still resonates now. So because most of us, even when we're not literally rich, still live like we're entitled to comfort, convenience, and control. Francis reminds us that there's another way.

How Francis Built His Movement

Francis didn't start with a grand plan. He started with a few friends who were willing to try this crazy thing with him.

The Early Followers

The first person to join Francis was Bernard of Quintavalle, a wealthy merchant who had heard about Francis's renunciation of his inheritance and wanted to see what this Jesus was all about. Then came Peter Catani, another rich man who gave away his money and property to join Francis in the fields outside Assisi.

These weren't monks in the traditional sense. They didn't live in monasteries or follow established rules. They wandered around the countryside, begging for food, sleeping under trees, and preaching a message that sounded too good to be true: God loves you, and you don't need to earn it.

The Rule and the Church

As the movement grew — and it grew fast — Francis realized he needed structure. He wrote a simple rule for his followers, based on the Gospels, and presented it to the Pope.

Pope Innocent III was skeptical. On top of that, here was a young man asking for official recognition of a group of beggars who owned nothing and had no real infrastructure. But something about Francis impressed him. In practice, maybe it was Francis's complete sincerity. So maybe it was his ability to draw huge crowds wherever he went. Maybe it was the fact that the people clearly loved him.

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The Pope gave tentative approval, and the Franciscan order was born.

Beyond Poverty

But Francis didn't stop with poverty. He expanded his vision to include care for creation, respect for all living things, and a radical form of peacemaking.

He preached to birds. He welcomed outcasts. He cared for lepers. That said, he made friends with wolves. He refused to carry weapons, even when it would have been politically expedient. He saw the divine spark in everything — in animals, in plants, in the very stones beneath his feet.

This wasn't just religious devotion. It was a complete reimagining of humanity's place in the world.

What Most People Get Wrong About Francis

Let's clear up a few things.

He Wasn't Soft

The popular image of Francis is of a gentle, meek man who wandered through fields singing to flowers. That's part of the story, but it misses the steel underneath.

Francis was stubborn. Plus, he argued with the Pope when he disagreed. He stood up to local lords who tried to exploit his followers. He once walked barefoot through a battlefield during a war, singing hymns, to shame the soldiers into laying down their arms.

When the Church tried to water down his rule — to allow his followers to own property, to live more comfortably — Francis fought back. He went to Rome, fasted outside the papal palace, and refused to eat until the Pope agreed to let his friars live in genuine poverty.

That's not the behavior of a weak man. That's the behavior of someone who believed so completely in his vision that he was willing to starve for it.

He Wasn't Just a Nature Lover

Modern environmentalists love to claim Francis as one of their own, and there's truth to that. But his connection to nature wasn't about preserving the environment or protecting endangered species. It was about seeing the entire created world as a reflection of God's glory.

He didn't love trees because they were beautiful. He loved them because they were alive, and life itself was sacred. Every creature, from the smallest flea to the mightiest lion, was a sibling in the family of creation.

That's a different kind of environmentalism than we usually think about today.

He Wasn't Perfect

Francis struggled with doubt, with anger, with moments of despair. In practice, he sometimes wondered if he was crazy. He had conflicts with his own followers. He experienced physical pain, emotional isolation, and spiritual darkness.

The stigmata — the wounds he reportedly received from Christ — weren't a badge of honor. They were a source of shame and pain. Francis begged God to take them away.

He was human, through and through. Which is exactly what made him holy.

What Actually Works: Lessons from Francis

So what can we learn from a medieval monk who lived in a cave and talked to birds?

Start Small

Francis didn't set out to change the world. He started by giving away his clothes to a beggar. Then he gave away his horse. Then he moved to the countryside and lived in a hut.

Big changes happen one small step at a time.

Own Less

I know this sounds obvious, but hear me out. Most of us are drowning in stuff we don't need, surrounded by possessions that weigh us down and distract us from what matters.

Francis's insight was that material possessions aren't just unnecessary — they're actively harmful. They create distance between us and other people, between us and God, between us and our own authentic selves.