St. Francis of Assisi

St. Francis of Assisi was not a priest. He was born in 1181 at Assisi in Umbria. His mother baptized him as Giovanni after the name of the John the Baptist. But his father Pietro Bernardone, who was a cloth merchant wanted his son to become a merchant like him. His father re-named Giovanni as Francesco, which is equivalent to calling him a Frenchman. When Francesco was proceeding to the fourth crusade on a horse, he had a vision where God told him to return home, as his ways were wrong. When he returned home the entire village called him as a coward and he was humiliated and laughed at by them. Once when he saw a leper face to face, he jumped from his horse and kissed the hands of the leper. Then he rode off and after some time when he turned to see him, the leper disappeared. Then he started to live a very simple life and wore only cast off rags, even though he was very rich. A story about him says that once he preached to hundreds of birds and the birds stood around him without moving. The birds left only when Frances told them to leave. Another story about him says that he preached to one wolf, which was hunting human beings for food in the town. The wolf thereafter became a friend of the town folk and discarded the habit of hunting humans. Pope Innocent-III gave him permission to preach. He received the marks of stigmata (wounds Jesus got when crucified) on his body, when he was praying on the mountain of Verna on September 14, 1224. When he was fighting the fifth crusade, he was arrested and brought before the sultan of Syria. The sultan told him "I would convert to your religion which is a beautiful one, but both of us would be murdered". He was such a saintly man. He died on October 3, 1226 at 45 years of age. He was canonized by pope Gregory-IX on July 16, 1228.