Saint Francis of Paola

Saint Francis of Paola was a Calabrian hermit and the founder of the Order of Minims, the “least” brothers. He became known for his austere penance, his humility, and his care for the poor. Summoned to France, to the gravely ill King Louis XI, he remained there until his death. The Church commemorates him on April 2.

He was born on March 27, 1416, at Paola in Calabria, into a family of small farmers. His parents, Giacomo and Vienna, had waited a long time for a child and attributed the birth of their son to the intercession of Saint Francis of Assisi, which is why they gave him his name. When he was about thirteen, in fulfillment of a vow they had made, he spent a year in the Franciscan friary at San Marco Argentano. Afterward he went with his parents on pilgrimage to Assisi.

On his return he settled as a hermit in a secluded place near Paola. In time disciples joined him, and a chapel and the first cells were built for them. In 1474 Pope Sixtus IV approved the community as a congregation of hermits of Saint Francis of Assisi. In the rule later approved by Alexander VI the brothers received the name of Minims: Francis wanted them to consider themselves the least of all. To the three religious vows he added a fourth, that of a Lenten life all year round, which meant permanent abstinence from meat, eggs, and dairy products. The brothers were to live on alms.

Francis was not a learned man. The bull of canonization records the reproach that, a simple layman without schooling, he promised health to the sick. Even so, word of the healings and miracles attributed to him spread far beyond Calabria. According to tradition, he crossed the Strait of Messina on his own cloak when a boatman refused him a place in his boat. He defended the poor against the abuses of the powerful and admonished rulers, the king of Naples among them. His motto was a single word: “Charitas,” charity.

The gravely ill King Louis XI of France, having heard of the wonder-worker from Calabria, wanted to have him at his side. Francis set out only when Pope Sixtus IV ordered him to. In 1483 he arrived at the court at Plessis near Tours. He did not heal the king, but he prepared him for death and was with him at its hour. Louis’s successors, Charles VIII and Louis XII, valued his counsel; when he wished to return to Calabria, he was not allowed to leave, and he spent the rest of his life in France. In 1506 Pope Julius II approved the definitive rule for the friars, the nuns, and the lay tertiaries.

He died in the monastery at Plessis near Tours on April 2, 1507, Good Friday, at the age of ninety-one. The day before, he had received Viaticum from the hands of one of the priests of his order, and on the day of his death the account of the Lord’s Passion was read at his side.

Pope Leo X beatified him in 1513 and on May 1, 1519, proclaimed him a saint. In 1562, during the Wars of Religion, Huguenots burned his body. In 1943 Pius XII declared him patron of Italian seafarers, and John XXIII declared him patron of Calabria.