Sacred Calendar

Fourth Lesson - A Vocation Born from Conversion and Mercy

Francis, formerly called Ascanio, was born of the noble Caracciolo family in the town of Villa Santa Maria in Abruzzo. From his earliest years he excelled in the practice of piety. When as a young man he suffered a severe illness, he resolved to devote himself wholly to the service of God and his neighbor. Having recovered, he was ordained priest and enrolled in a sacred association whose work was to assist men condemned to death and to labor for the salvation of souls. A letter intended for another person was delivered to him by mistake. From it he learned that St. John Augustine Adorno and Fabricius Caracciolo were planning the foundation of a new religious institute. Captivated by the novelty of the project and admiring the divine counsels, he eagerly joined them. They withdrew to a Camaldolese hermitage, where he adopted the name Francis because of his devotion to St. Francis of Assisi. They then went together to Rome and obtained confirmation from Pope Sixtus V, who willed that the clerics be called Minor Clerks Regular and that to the three customary vows they add a fourth: not to seek ecclesiastical dignities.

Fifth Lesson - Poverty, Penance, and the Growth of the Institute

Two years after the death of Adorno, Francis was placed, against his will, over the entire religious family. In this office he offered his brethren a splendid example of every virtue. Most zealous for the increase of the institute, he sought it from God by continual prayers, tears, and the affliction of his body. For this purpose he traveled to Spain in pilgrim's clothing, begging his food from door to door. During a difficult journey he wonderfully experienced the help of Almighty God: when the ship in which he traveled was threatened by imminent wreck, he saved it from destruction by the protection of his prayer. When he had accomplished his vow in those kingdoms, he labored very greatly for the work; and as the fame of his holiness shone forth, he overcame the opposition of his adversaries by his singular strength of soul, founded several houses of his order, and received generous assistance from Kings Philip II and Philip III.

Sixth Lesson - Perpetual Adoration and a Humble Death

He excelled so greatly in humility that, when he came to Rome, he entered a hospital for the poor, associated himself with lepers, and constantly refused ecclesiastical dignities offered to him by Pope Paul V. He preserved perpetual chastity and even subdued the attacks of shameless women by the discipline of his body. He burned with ardent love for the divine mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist and often spent almost entire nights in adoration before It. He established this pious exercise as a perpetual practice to be observed in his order. He greatly fostered devotion to the Virgin Mother of God and was inflamed with charity toward his neighbor. Enriched with the gift of prophecy and the discernment of hearts, in the forty-fourth year of his age, while persisting in prayer in the Holy House of Loreto, he knew that the end of his life was near. He departed for Abruzzo and, seized by a mortal fever at Agnone, received the sacraments of the Church with the greatest devotion and peacefully fell asleep in the Lord on the day before the Nones of June, 1608, during the vigil of the feast of Corpus Christi. His sacred body was carried to Naples and honorably buried in the church of his order. Pope Clement XIV numbered him among the Blessed, and Pope Pius VII, in 1807, enrolled him with new and brilliant signs among the Saints.