117. San Francesco d’Assisi

I come from a very Catholic corner of Massachusetts.

Yet while Catholicism was the air we breathed, I don’t recall anyone being particularly pious or devout, or taking it all too seriously. I don’t recall even a peep about all the social issues associated with Catholics today. But the one thing that you commonly saw were religious statues — typically the Virgin Mary — in yards all around town.

My husband Ben is a devoted and enthusiastic gardener, tending to a never-ending list of tasks and projects. My contribution is nearly nil, confined to buying the statuary that is stationed throughout. There’s a gnome, of course, and a frog and an angel and a fairy. Never satisfied, I decided I needed a statue of St. Francis.

My good-sport Jewish husband readily consented to this, and after all, who doesn’t love St. Francis? A rich, spoiled young man, he defied family and his social circle, to give away his worldly possessions and, although sickly and weak, roam hundreds of miles through Italy — ranging from Sicily to Bologna —  founding monasteries and serving the poor. I suppose in today’s world, as with many of the saints, we would have thought of him as crazy; at one point, he is said to have given away every stitch of clothing. But over the past eight centuries, he has remained one of the best known and revered figures in the Catholic tradition, named the patron saint of Italy, of animals and of ecology, and whose name the current Pope chose as his own. In popular culture, he is frequently pictured surrounded by birds and on his saint’s day in October, churches often sponsor ceremonies to which parishioners brings their pets for blessing.

I have seen Francis’ relics in the Basilica in Assisi, but shuffling by with the crowds, that felt more like an experience to check off on the list of tourist must-sees.

What was far more meaningful was hiking out, in 2010, to the Convento delle Celle di Cortona, on the outskirts of Cortona, a beautiful hill town best known as the setting of Frances Mayes’ Under the Tuscan Sun. There we were able to visit a still-operational monastery where Francis himself stopped on his travels. I still vividly remember the cell he slept in — a dank closet-sized space with a wooden plank on a stone bench, a bit too short for even me to stretch out on. We would not consider it an adequately-comfortable bus shelter on a city street, let alone a living space.

My research showed me that St. Francis was a prominent figure in the history of Gaeta, my father’s hometown, where he was said to perform healing miracles. Perhaps that’s why he was front of mind when my father devised one of his crackpot schemes. He felt if he only had the patience to stand outside in the backyard day after day, perfectly still with crumbs in his hand, eventually the birds would land on him and eat out of his hand, just like Saint Francis. So my statue of St. Francis, bird in hand, is largely an homage to him and his dream.