On the 800th anniversary of the saint’s passing, a look at his ties to the United States and the rich Franciscan history of America.
Here we find ourselves in 2026, in the midst of the special Jubilee Year of St. Francis of Assisi proclaimed by Pope Leo XIV. This weekend, Assisi and the world will mark the 800th anniversary of his passing from this life into the next.
How ironic that this saint’s nickname was “Il Poverello,” which means “little poor one.” He may have been poor in the eyes of the world when it comes to material wealth. But Francis was a spiritual billionaire. His contributions not only to the Church but the rest of the world, including the United States of America, were so great that we see his zeal for God, the Catholic faith and nature reaching across the centuries and the miles.
As we continue to mark the 250th anniversary of the United States, we should recognize that this country would not be what it is today without the many Franciscan connections that can be found in those who helped build our great nation.
St. Francis of Assisi, pray for us.
St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226)
Francesco di Pietro di Bernardone accepted the call from God and with single-minded devotion. Regardless of the obstacles, he gave away everything, even his clothes, to set forth to spread the Gospel in strict poverty, serving the poor and even lepers. Suffering with chronic ailments most of his life, he had a deep mystical relationship with Christ that carried him through Italy and even to the Holy Land to serve the Savior and those in dire need. Toward the end of his life, partially blind, crippled with pain from sicknesses and the stigmata (the wounds of Christ), he wrote the beautiful poem Canticle of the Sun, honoring God through his creation.
Those men who were his followers, drawn to live like Francis, who begged for food while preaching, were brought together in 1209 into the “Friars Minor,” the first Franciscans. St. Clare, a devotee of Francis, overcoming her wealthy family’s great objections, started the “Poor Clares,” a cloistered religious order of women following a rule of strict poverty, manual labor, silence and prayer. Francis also founded the “Brothers and Sisters of Penance,” eventually called the “Third Order” for those already in consecrated life (hermits) and secular members, who wanted to live their lives like Francis, for the Gospel.
From these orders branched out other orders, and together they work, even today, to aid the poor and spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In the “New World,” as the Americas in the Western Hemisphere would come to be known, Franciscans were instrumental in serving the poor and ignorant in the peoples they found there. Their journeys to spread the faith also resulted in the discovery of unknown routes and lands that opened the way to expansion of what would be the United States of America. Later Franciscans served the people of the country who needed their physical and spiritual assistance.
Christopher Columbus (1451-1506)
Throughout the country’s history there were many noted Franciscans who shaped the country for the better, even though they may spark controversy now. The best known of these Franciscans was Christopher Columbus, the man who discovered the Americas in 1492. A Third-Order Franciscan who often wore the Franciscan habit, he took his faith very seriously and lived a life of deep devotion, frequently requesting missionaries from the Church to travel across the ocean to spread the Gospel. His flagship on his first voyage was named Santa Maria de la Inmaculada Concepción (Holy Mary of the Immaculate Conception).
American Jesuit Father John Hardon said:
It is one thing to say that Columbus discovered America. It is something else to realize that he opened the door to the most phenomenal spread of Christianity since the time of St. Paul.
Ven. Antonio Margil of Jesus (1657-1726)
Born in Valencia, Spain, Antonio Margil joined the Franciscan Order in 1673 and volunteered to go to the missions in Veracruz. He traveled rough terrain to minister in the Yucatán, Guatemala and Costa Rica, and back through Mexico to direct colleges, and then north into East Texas, founding missions along the way. He always walked barefoot, fasted daily and ate no meat or fish, and spent much of every night in prayer. Called the “Flying Father,” he was a fierce preacher, a miracle worker who multiplied food for entire villages to eat for months, struck a rock in a dry stream to release fresh, gushing water for his traveling companions, and had the ability to read souls. The Talamanca Indians tried to burn him on a pyre but he walked out unharmed. He was captured, beaten and left for dead several times, but lived to continue his missionary call. He is considered by some to be the most famous missionary to serve in Texas.
St. Junípero Serra (1713-1784)
Known today as the “Apostle of California,” and one of the “Founding Fathers of the United States,” Junípero Serra was born in Majorca, Spain, to a farming family. In 1730, he became a Franciscan and took the name Junípero after a companion of St. Francis of Assisi, “Brother Juniper.” He became a priest and gained a doctorate in theology and became a professor. The 5’2” priest had a strong desire to be a missionary. He and his fellow Franciscans landed in Veracruz, New Spain, in 1749, and walked 250 miles, with only their breviaries, no money or guide, through tropical forests, dry plains, and up mountains of high elevation to Mexico City. After a possible insect bite, his left foot and leg became ulcerous and afflicted him greatly for the rest of his life; at times, he could neither stand nor walk.
Serving in the missions and universities in many places of what is now Mexico, at 55 he joined a mission to spread Christianity to the natives of “Upper California,” ignoring his almost crippled leg. Over the next 15 years he founded nine missions: San Diego; San Carlos (Monterey-Carmel); San Antonio; San Gabriel; San Luis Obispo; San Francisco; San Juan Capistrano; Santa Clara and San Buenaventura, and was present when Presidio Santa Barbara was founded. He died at age 70 of tuberculosis.
Francisco Garcés (1738-1781)
Born in Aragon, in northeast Spain, Garcés became a Franciscan in 1758. He traveled to New Spain (Mexico) in 1768 and was assigned to a mission in the Sonoran Desert, near what is now Tucson, Arizona. He was instrumental in exploring the Colorado and Mojave Deserts and was the first European to enter what is today Nevada. He accompanied many explorations across the West, establishing missions and friendly relations with the Native Americans. He was martyred trying to keep peace after Spanish settlers violated a treaty.
The Georgia Martyrs (Beatified October 2026)
Pedro de Corpa and four companions were missionaries from Spain sent to what is now coastal Georgia, the area north of St. Augustine, Florida, to minister to the Guale people. When the chief desired to take a second wife, he became angry at the opposition of the Catholic missionaries and had them martyred. Their relics, and their missions, have been lost to time and the area’s climate, but they have been listed in Franciscan martyrologies since the 17th century. They are considered witnesses to the Church’s teaching on marriage today.
St. Marianne Cope (1838-1918)
Born in Germany, Barbara Cope came to Utica, New York, at 2 years old. As an adult, she worked in a factory until she joined the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis in Syracuse, New York, became Sister Marianne and started teaching elementary school.
She was a natural leader and was put in positions of authority in several places, and became mother general in 1877. In 1883, King Kalākaua of Hawaii asked over 50 communities in the U.S. and Canada to run the Kakaako Receiving Station for people suspected of having leprosy. Thirty-five of Sister Marianne’s sisters volunteered. She and six other sisters left for Hawaii. She said, “I am hungry for the work and I wish with all my heart to be one of the chosen ones, whose privilege it will be to sacrifice themselves for the salvation of the souls of the poor Islanders…I am not afraid of any disease; hence, it would be my greatest delight even to minister to the abandoned “lepers.'”
They arrived and immediately started managing the hospital, cleaning and making large improvements to the living conditions of the patients and treating them. People with serious cases were sent to the island of Molokai, served by Father Damien de Veuster. They opened a special home at the hospital to care for the healthy children of the patients with this terrible disease.
In 1887, the Hawaiian government closed the hospital and exiled all the patients to the island of Molokai. She and two other sisters went with them. They cared for their patients and opened a home for girls on the island. In 1889, Father Damien died of leprosy, and Sister Marianne was given charge of the care of boys as well. She died there in 1918 of natural causes.
Blessed Solanus Casey, OFM Cap. (1870-1957)
Born Bernard Francis Casey, the sixth of sixteen children to an Irish immigrant couple on a farm in Wisconsin, he contracted diphtheria when he was eight years old, which permanently damaged his voice. A disjointed education eventually led to a series of jobs, from lumberjack and prison guard to hospital orderly and even streetcar operator.
Disturbed by seeing an act of violence, he decided to answer the call he felt to the priesthood. Due to his poor education, being a diocesan priest was denied him. He applied instead to the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin in Detroit in 1897 and in 1904 was ordained a “simplex” priest who could not preach or hear confessions. He was given the name Francis Solanus after St. Francis Solanus, who loved the violin as much as he did.
After 20 years of being assigned to different friaries in New York, he was assigned as doorkeeper in Manhattan and eventually in Detroit in 1924. He had great humility and compassion toward the sick and the poor; he himself suffered from ill health for much of his life. He is well known for the thousands of miracles he performed, which continue to be reported today.
Mother Angelica of the Annunciation (1923-2016)
Born Rita Rizzo in Canton, Ohio, she had a difficult childhood, living in poverty with her divorced mother. She became a Poor Clare nun (a Franciscan community) in 1944. Always in delicate health, she had spinal surgery, bargaining with God that if she walked again she would open a monastery in the South. Even though the surgery did not cure her, she did walk again and eventually established a Poor Clare community in Irondale, Alabama, in 1962.
Always a good communicator, Mother Angelica began recording talks for radio and later television. Knowing little of television or technology, she founded the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) in 1981 to bring the Good News of Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church to the world. It became the largest religious media network in the world, transmitting programming 24 hours a day to more than 440 million homes worldwide, including the Middle East and Africa. She followed an invitation from God “to do the impossible, through Him, who accomplishes the miraculous.”
