What would St. Francis Do?

Soon after my dad died, a year and change ago, I was watching PBS, mollifying my grief with a British program of some kind. After it concluded, Rick Steves appeared, touting the most romantic places in Europe. I never watch his program, but something made me this time. Second on his list of places was Assisi Italy, birthplace of St. Francis, patron saint of animals – and this blog, not to mention my rescue work. I leaned forward eagerly and turned up the volume. As I watched him stroll the beautiful hilly streets, he waxed rhapsodic about St. Francis and his impact on the world: an impoverished friar who flew in the face of the opulence of the Catholic Church of the day, challenging its core values, daring to suggest we treat animals as equals, not as edibles.

I have to go, I whispered to myself.

And a year later, here I am. Literally, staring out my window at St. Rufino cathedral, where  Francis was baptised and preached his first sermon. Earlier today I also went to the huge Basilica devoted to the man and his work.

Not being Catholic or even religious, I wasn’t sure how it would be for me. I had visited innumerable religious shrines in my visits abroad in my life, and had come away unmoved – or in fact more skeptical than ever. (My standard complaint being: why the church lets its people suffer from hunger while it builds these enormous monuments with their alms?)

But this time, I cried. I sat in a pew in silence, looked at the giant stone tomb in front of me, encircled with flowers and praying pilgrims, and cried. I cannot tell you why, exactly. I think it’s because his message of universality, tolerance and empathy speaks so directly to my heart.

His writings include this gem:
If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who deal likewise with their fellow men. All creatures have the same source as we have. Not to hurt our humble brethren is our first duty to them; but to stop there is a complete misapprehension of the intentions of Providence. We have a higher mission. God wishes that we should succour them whenever they require it.

[Succour: provide assistance and support in times of hardship and distress.]

I’ve been praised many times for my succouring (if there is such a word) – for the occasions when I see sick or wounded cat, and take it upon myself to capture them and ease their suffering. (See previous entry about Margaret, who is doing GREAT these days.) But the praise has always confused me. Why wouldn’t I help? Why doesn’t everyone? I’ve never had the conscious thought, what would St. Francis do?, but indeed that would seem to be an excellent rule of thumb for us all.

Stories abound of his strange powers over animals, from the small (a lamb he’d saved that followed him around like a dog, giving sermons to birds in the field that did not fly away), to the large. My favorite is that he learned of a wolf attacking livestock in a nearby town and insisted, to his followers’ alarm, on approaching the wolf himself. The wolf hung its head in his presence, and then Francis led it back into town, and asked the people to please feed the wolf, because its crimes had been simply out of hunger. The townspeople complied, and it never hurt another creature, and died, more or less the town pet, in its old age. No idea if there’s truth to this but I love the story.

In my early experiences of working with ferals, if I knew one of my group had been carried off by a predator, I would rage against it. Then my friend Carrie asked me if that weren’t a better death than being hit by a car? “The coyote needs to eat – probably to feed its young,” she said. It took me a while to wrap my brain around that, but she did have a point. To have compassion for one animal is ideally to have compassion for them all. No animal is born evil and they all just try to survive. I’m sure Francis would agree.

There’s a plot point in my new children’s novel (soon to be shopped to agents) during which my feral cats strike a deal with a coyote who has killed some colony cats, so that they can live together in peace. It seemed exceedingly fanciful as I was writing it, but one can dream! And one can learn, as I have here.

I leave Assisi tomorrow and head off to Venice and more glittery diversions. But I’ll carry the power of this place and the message of the man with me, to hopefully buoy me as I get back home to the hard work of giving succour. Now, I recognize how bright is my guiding light.